Technology is advancing daily and a lot of adjustments are being made by different professions to cope with the changes.
One of the major revolutions in the world of work now is the use of artificial intelligence (AI). AI and robots are being used in medicine, agriculture, creative industry, banking and many more areas of human endeavors.
When we wrote about our profession off the chain last week, I wrote about farming and teaching as the two professions that I practice. I see the coming of robots as a great help to humans to get things done faster and more precisely.
Going by my work as a teacher, I don't envisage a time when robots would totally take over the duty of a teacher. Teaching is not just about standing and interacting with students, it deals with emotional and psychological connections.
There is what we call previous knowledge in education. This is where a teacher tries to guide his students to move from known to unknown. Before a lesson commences, a teacher can relate with the students deeply about what they knew that could be helpful to the students to learn the new topic. I don't see robots doing this effectively. The role of robots is to teach and possibly interact with the students about the current topic. The interaction can't be open ended like a human to human interaction.
Moving away from teaching in the classroom, we have other parts of education like policy formulation and curriculum design to suit the needs of the people. This is majorly the product of research. The culture of the people in addition to the educational problems identified would guide a researcher to formulate genuine research problems. Formulating a research problem can't be handled by AI. When conducting the research properly, AI could be of great help in the area of data gathering and analysis.
If AI takes over the role of a teacher, it will always create a room for policy formulators which will remain the controller of the robots. I can fit in the role with my years of experience.
The second profession of mine is agriculture. Agriculture is a very vast field where different people have different roles.
I am into crop production. Crop production involves getting suitable land for a crop and planting and nurturing the crop to maturity. There are many areas that artificial intelligence could be of help. The areas of planting, irrigation, pest control, harvesting and many more.
Like I mentioned, crop production starts with getting suitable land. Suitability of a land may involve soil tests. The role of a farmer in identifying a suitable land can't be taken away by robots. It is when I identify a land that I suspect could be suitable for farming that I will employ every technology at my disposal to confirm the suitability.
Artificial intelligence could be adopted in performing every other role in the farming process. As far as farming is concerned, I am not threatened by artificial intelligence. I rather see it as a helper because with it, I can multiply my output geometrically.
Robots and AI can take over the parts of the jobs that I do presently. If that eventually happens, I will adjust and move to the other areas of the profession that can't be taken over by artificial intelligence.
A teacher and a farmer will always get a role in education and agriculture respectively. AI and robots are partners in progress.