Over time, the traditional approach to work has typically followed a familiar pattern: discover an interest, pursue education, enter the workforce, and remain in that field until retirement. However, with technological advancements and revolutions ahead there is a potential threat of AI replacing jobs leading to people having to consider multiple career shifts throughout their lives.
This signifies a shift where past job-specific skills might not be as critical in the future if you are forced to give up a career path to pursue something else. Instead, emphasis may shift towards cultivating soft skills like adaptability, continuous learning, and maintaining mental agility, to easier overcome the challenges of transitioning careers more frequently. As our professional lives are expected to extend due to us living longer, the ability to learn and adapt becomes very important.
Reflecting on such insights shared by influential author Yuval Noah Harari, I’ve contemplated my own career path. While I might optimistically (naively) believe it won’t significantly affect me, I acknowledge this might come from me not fully understanding the extent of AI’s potential implications. However, since the field of sustainability is still on its rise in society, I believe that the importance of such jobs will only increase in the future. Personally, I am looking forward to being challenged at my future workplace and I will hopefully have the possibility to evolve in many different fields and have the opportunity to constantly learn more and deepen my knowledge day by day. Therefore I think that will give me an edge against the possibility of being replaced by AI or automation processes.
This realization has deepened my understanding of the significance of continuous learning. I’m committed to maintaining an open mind and challenging myself in many ways to be prepared to improvise, adapt and overcome future challenges if the need for a career shift should arise.
About WILMA JONSSON
Hello! My name is Wilma Jonsson and I am currently studying Environmental Engineering at Lund University. At the moment I am doing my Erasmus exchange in Madrid at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid.
