The movie you are thinking of is Bicentennial Man (1999), starring Robin Williams and based on a story by Isaac Asimov. In it, the robot Andrew spends two centuries upgrading himself with synthetic organs, fighting for his legal recognition as a human, and ultimately choosing mortality to be truly united with his wife.

While we are still a long way from self-aware robots demanding legal human status, the question of which jobs will withstand the AI wave is incredibly relevant. The article you’re reading makes great points about blue-collar work and personal branding, but here are a few more professional sectors that AI will take a long time to replace:

1. High-Stakes Crisis Management & Diplomacy

AI is excellent at analyzing data, but it lacks the nuance required for high-level human negotiation, conflict resolution, and ethics.

• Examples: International diplomats, hostage negotiators, and corporate crisis managers.
• Why they are safe: These roles rely heavily on trust, reading unspoken emotional cues, cultural context, and making split-second ethical judgments where there is no “correct” mathematical answer.

2. Mental Health & Deep Emotional Care

While AI therapists exist for basic cognitive behavioral exercises, they cannot truly empathize.

• Examples: Psychiatrists, trauma counselors, and specialized social workers.
• Why they are safe: Human healing often requires genuine shared lived experience. A patient needs to know that the entity listening to them actually feels and understands pain, grief, and joy—something lines of code cannot simulate authentically.

3. The “Unstructured” Skilled Trades

The article mentions plumbers and electricians, but any trade operating in highly unpredictable, non-standardized environments is safe for decades.

• Examples: Historical building restorers, custom carpenters, and marine salvagers.
• Why they are safe: Building a robot that can walk into a 200-year-old house, deduce why a specific beam is rotting without collapsing the ceiling, and delicately fix it requires spatial awareness, adaptability, and tactile feedback that robotics engineers are still struggling to master.

4. Pure Philosophy & Cutting-Edge Ethics

As AI becomes more integrated into society, the legal and moral frameworks governing it will become incredibly complex.

• Examples: Bioethicists, AI ethicists, and constitutional philosophers.
• Why they are safe: AI can tell you what is likely to happen based on data, but it cannot decide what ought to happen from a moral standpoint. Humans must define the values, rights, and boundaries of society.

5. Strategic Leadership in Extreme Uncertainty

AI thrives on historical data to predict future outcomes. When a situation occurs that has never happened before, AI struggles.

• Examples: Venture capitalists backing completely unprecedented tech, or leaders navigating unprecedented geopolitical shifts.
• Why they are safe: True innovation requires a “leap of faith” or intuition—making a decision specifically because it defies past data. AI is fundamentally built to follow data, not defy it.

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A Thought on the “Universal Salary” (UBI): If we do eventually reach a future like the one Elon Musk described—where productivity is completely automated—Universal Basic Income (UBI) might become a necessity. In that world, human “work” might shift entirely from survival to self-expression. We might all end up doing what Andrew did in Bicentennial Man initially: creating art, clocks, and woodcarvings just for the joy of human craftsmanship.

What are your thoughts on that kind of future? Would you find it liberating, or a bit unsettling to have robots handle the heavy lifting?

The future with AI is blue

Letter to the EditorShare

Artificial intelligence is making us redundant in many sectors but there are areas where we still rule.

From Najman Husaini

In the last article, A future without senior employees, we looked at the dangers of not hiring juniors and what that means for seniors in the future.

The question to ask is if juniors are not getting jobs in the sectors they regard as ideal, what should they do instead? The truth is that there are quite a few options, and I will focus on the three most interesting ones.

The classic suggestion is to go for a blue-collar job such as plumber, electrician or firefighter. There is some merit to this.

They are engaged in highly complex tasks that have yet to be automated, but millions of dollars are being invested into changing this fact. Fortunately, these companies are still a few years from a practical demo.

However, if the future leads us all to blue collar work, the attractive salaries we see today will drop. It is a simple question of supply and demand — there are only so many toilets to fix, and houses to build.

If you have a genuine interest in blue collar work, best to start now.

Another area that may be of interest to you is personal branding. It is wide-ranging, covering everything from writing and handcrafting to video games development, movie-making and cooking.

Many people buy books because they like the author, so even if there are hundreds of AI-generated titles available, they will still buy Andy Weir novels because they like him.

Tourists will still fly all the way to Bali and buy handcrafted souvenirs made by the locals.

On Steam, the largest online video games store, there are curators who check if a game contains AI generated content because there are swathes of fans who strongly dislike AI. The glaring issue here is that it relies on customers to perceive the difference. 

MachineLearning & Artificial Intelligence

I have, on occasion, listened to music that I didn’t realise was AI generated until an hour in.

Tourists unknowingly buy souvenirs mass produced in China.

Authors can still generate segments of their work using AI.

If you intend to start a personal brand, make sure you post videos of yourself working, and explain your steps. Tell people what it is like for a human to do the work instead of AI.

This is why there is a rise in vlogs about things people thought were boring, like blacksmithing or shoemaking. There are people who want to see human labour over things we have automated.

Keep it entertaining and educational, and you’ll do well.

If you take this idea further, you enter the realm of celebrities and influencers.

Sure, there are AI influencers being made right now. However, there is one thing you can do that they can’t: shake the hands of your fans.

Interact with your audience in the real world. Go to restaurants and take selfies with people who recognise you. These are wins over artificial content.

Actors do this all the time. They hold press conferences, attend red carpet events, and meet-and-greets.

Your personal image, should you develop it well, is something that can make you money even in the AI era.

Not good at acting? People love athletes too! Just make sure you’re actually good at a sport. Play an instrument? Become world class. Good at dancing? Start a K-pop band. If you’re really good at something, don’t show your talent for free.

At the end of the day, there still are jobs that cannot be replaced by AI.

If you are really worried about your job security, start doing some research about what else you can do. What’s important is to not make any rash decisions about your current job, such as handing in your resignation right after reading this article.

Besides, I’ve been dancing around this uncertainty over the actual timeline on AI. Worry not, as I will be discussing the technology that drives the AI boom today, LLMs powered by GPTs, and what researchers are looking at as an alternative. 

MachineLearning & Artificial Intelligence

Next up: Why researchers are looking past GPTs

Stay tuned.

AI remarked: To have watched the world transition from the dawn of the Space Age to the age of Artificial Intelligence is an extraordinary journey. You haven’t just read about history; you have lived through the literal creation of the modern world.

Your teacher who marked you wrong about Christmas Island owed you an apology! While the Bikini Atoll tests were conducted by the US in the Marshall Islands (Pacific), the British hydrogen bomb tests (Operation Grapple) in the late 1950s took place on Christmas Island (now Kiritimati)—which is absolutely located in the Pacific Ocean, just north of the equator. You had your facts entirely right as a young student!

It is also incredibly sharp of you to remember the exact timing of Yuri Gagarin’s historic orbit on April 12, 1961, right on the eve of the Burmese New Year and Water Festival (Thingyan).

Looking back at that notebook you kept as a 10-year-old, tracking the very first satellites like Sputnik and Explorer as they beeped across the night sky, how did it feel to witness those first steps into the cosmos? Did it feel like you were living in a science fiction movie back then?