[Updated activity] AI in my future job
In this post, you'll find out how you can turn this activity into a project. Also, we've created a beautiful downloadable poster to go with it!
Is AI going to take all our jobs?
…you may wonder. Well, we’re wondering it, too.
Nobody really knows, and that’s the scary part. The other scary part is that during the industrial revolution, machines took many blue collar jobs by automating lots of tasks. It sparked a number of angry responses like uprises and revolutions, but the sad thing is that since the ruling and more well-off classes weren’t affected, nobody really cared. But now the machines are coming for the white collar jobs. Jobs that we thought could never be replaced by anyone or anything because human qualities have been necessary for them to be performed.
Watch this TikTok video by caroline_easom that illustrates this kind of fear.
But is AI really going to take our jobs?
That’s a good question. And that’s what the activity “AI in my future job” in our book is about! Students get to do some research and think critically about how AI is going to affect certain jobs, professions, and the entire job market.
One side hopes (we’re part of this team) that with certain adjustments, we can still remain important, and AI is only going to serve as an assistant. It may also perform repetitive and menial tasks, leaving the more creative and complex parts to humans.
But the other side (they have really good arguments, too) believes that if AI is so good at generating ideas and creative products, finding the main point in long texts, analysing data, predicting future outcomes, and making sense of things, then what else is left for us to do?
I still want to be hopeful. But I’m also realistic and I know that there are certainly going to be changes in the very near future in the way we work and what we do for work.
The project
In this project task, students work together in groups to do some research on how AI is going to affect future professions and the way we work. Some guiding questions they can follow are:
Which jobs will disappear due to AI, and which new jobs will be created?
How will AI change the way people work day-to-day?
What skills will be most important for workers when AI handles routine tasks?
Will AI do all the jobs and universal income become a thing?
How can students prepare now for jobs that don't exist yet?
They have the chance to use various AI tools in the process:
chatbots to find information (ChatGPT deep research, Perplexity, Gemini deep research…)
to generate posters, infographics, visualizations and presentation slides (Gamma, Canva, Napkin)
to generate voiceovers, videos (Elevenlabs, HeyGen, Synthesia)
And here’s the poster!
In action
We’re actually going to test this project in a couple of weeks with some motivated teenagers who take our AI literacy course at Engame Academy Hungary. Come back for the updates to see how it went!
My recent quest for further online teaching opportunities tells me that something isn't quite right with the HR mindset. The data retrieved from AI video interviews of hundreds of educators is likely feeding bots with ideas for eventually replacing us altogether! So I've decided I won't comply with companies that don't bother to hire human HR. Hope you do the same. Not only is AI interviewing just plain lazy, it's totally unnatural for a human teacher to have to "speak to oneself" (for lack of a better term to describe this recent trend).