Richard Golian

1995-born. Charles University alum. Head of Performance at Mixit. 10+ years in marketing and data.

Castellano Français Slovenčina

Manage subscription Choose a plan

RSS
Newsletter
New articles to your inbox

Article

The Future of Work: Which Jobs Will AI Replace — and Which Will not?

Jobs surviving the AI revolution
Richard Golian
Richard Golian · 3 573 reads
Hi, I am Richard. On this blog, I share thoughts, personal stories, findings — and what I am working on. I hope this article brings you some value.
Listen to this article
0:00 / 0:00

I often come across the question: “Which professions will survive the technological revolution and the rise of artificial intelligence?”

And I get it. Who would not want to know if their job will still matter in the future? But maybe we should be asking a different question.

What will people truly need in 10 years? What problems will they need to solve to not only survive but also live a good life? If we can answer this, it will ultimately lead us back to the original question.

Survival

Let us start with the basics. What is absolutely essential for survival? Clean water, food, breathable air, and other fundamental requirements. Each of these needs and the potential problems that arise from them could fill an entire blog post on its own.

Additionally, survival today also depends on:

Safety. Physical security remains the foundation for everything else. In an increasingly uncertain world, protection from threats – whether natural disasters or social unrest – will be critical.

Housing.

Energy. Accessing, storing, and using energy efficiently will likely remain a relevant topic even a decade from now.

Healthcare and Elderly Care. People need care. With aging populations, support will be crucial not only for a good life but also for basic survival.

A Good Life

Surviving is one thing. But what do we need to truly live well? I believe it all starts with meaning. We need life and the world around us to have some significance, or at least to be on a journey toward finding it. When this is missing, life feels empty, and a sense of unease creeps in. (Read more at: The Meaning of Life in the Age of Machines, Algorithms, and Artificial Intelligence)

To live a good life, I believe we need:

Freedom. Everyone needs it in some form or should at least be on the path to achieving it. This is a complex topic that deserves its own blog post.

Mental Health.

Access to Information and the Ability to Interpret It. The ability to distinguish between what is essential and what is irrelevant, between credible and misleading information, and, based on this, to discern right from wrong, will become one of the most crucial skills.

Community and Relationships. Genuine relationships and a sense of belonging have always had, and will continue to have, immense value.

The Opportunity to Participate in Public Affairs. We need to feel that we have an influence on our surroundings. The ability to impact public events, participate in decision-making processes, contribute to societal issues, or simply have the chance to express our opinions. Being an active part of something greater is, for many, an inseparable aspect of a good life.

Protection and Safety of Loved Ones. A good life is not just about personal happiness. We feel better knowing our loved ones are safe. Protecting family and friends, whether from physical dangers or psychological challenges, is and will remain a fundamental need.

Protection of Property.

Digital Security. As more aspects of life move online, protecting digital identities and assets will be of unprecedented importance. (This raises an additional question: How likely is it that this trend could reverse due to a lack of digital security? This topic certainly deserves its own blog post.)

The Second Question

Now that we have a clearer idea of what will be essential, a second question arises: What can hardware and software handle, and where will humans still be needed?

Will a robot be capable of caring for an elderly person with the same empathy as a human? Can an algorithm grasp the depth of human relationships? Perhaps. But perhaps not anytime soon. And do we even want an algorithm to handle the complexity of human relationships and the meaning of life? Would we entrust our child to an artificial being that could potentially be hacked to cause harm?

The future of work will not be determined solely by new technologies but primarily by our needs and how we choose to fulfill them.

Continue

Join the Library

Full access to my thoughts, personal stories, findings, and what I learn from the people I meet.

Join the Library — €29.99 per year
Read only this one · €2,99

Get the full article by email and feel free to reply if you want to discuss it further.

Visa Mastercard Apple Pay Google Pay

Sources

Population structure and ageing statistics in the EU: Eurostat, European Commission

Summary

The question is not which professions will survive AI. The question is what will people truly need in 10 years. Water, food, safety, meaning, mental health, community. Can a robot care for the elderly with empathy? The future of work depends on human needs, not technology alone.

Common questions on this article's topic

Which professions are most likely to be replaced by AI and automation?
Professions centred on production, logistics, and routine services without emotional complexity are the most likely to be automated — and sooner than many expect. Even roles in security, firefighting, and parts of military work may eventually be handled by unmanned systems. The article also notes that many knowledge workers are already automating their own tasks, effectively building systems that replace parts of their own roles.
What human needs will remain even as technology advances?
The article distinguishes between survival needs and needs for a good life. Survival needs include clean water, food, safety, housing, energy, and healthcare. A good life requires meaning, freedom, mental health, access to reliable information, community and relationships, the ability to participate in public affairs, protection of loved ones, and digital security. These needs define which roles will still require human involvement.
Will doctors and teachers be replaced by artificial intelligence?
Not entirely, but their numbers will likely decrease and their roles will transform. Even when AI surpasses human diagnostic or teaching capability, people may still prefer human doctors and teachers — for trust, empathy, or the comfort of human presence. The shift is not about whether these roles disappear, but about how they change.
Why might philosophy become more relevant in the age of AI?
As technology limits traditional options for self-realisation and the anxiety of meaninglessness grows, philosophy — in its original Socratic form of open conversation and shared reflection — could become a remedy. The article imagines experiential philosophy retreats and regular philosophy evenings in cafés as formats people would pay for, because we pay for presence, live thinking, and conversation that happens here and now.
What skills will be most valuable in the future job market?
The article suggests that the most important skills will be those that machines cannot easily replicate: emotional intelligence and empathy in caregiving roles, the ability to distinguish credible from misleading information, capacity for deep reflection about meaning and ethics, and the ability to participate meaningfully in political and societal decision-making. The future of work depends more on human needs than on technology alone.
How can I prepare if my profession might be automated?
Rather than asking which specific jobs will survive, the article recommends reframing the question: What will people truly need in 10–20 years? By understanding fundamental human needs — from healthcare and safety to meaning and community — you can position yourself in areas where human presence remains essential. The author, who works in data-driven marketing, describes how he is already automating his own role and views this not with fear but as an opportunity to move toward more meaningful work.
Richard Golian

If you have any thoughts, questions, or feedback, feel free to drop me a message at mail@richardgolian.com.

NEWSLETTER
What I write about, what I am working on, what I learned.
Sent the first Sunday of the month. Unsubscribe anytime.

Related articles

Dead internet: will we return offline?

For a long time we treated the internet as the main road. The place where work and relationships happen. Yet most of what we see on it today is, or soon will be, AI-generated: text, images, profiles and comments. The internet is turning into an online game full of bots, where you cannot be sure that a human is on the other side of anything. So I ask: was the online world the main road, or only a temporary detour that part of us will return from, back offline?

7 June 2026·192 reads
Where the Money Goes When AI Takes the Work

Prague, 13 May 2026. On my way to work I started thinking about something that stayed with me for days. If most routine work on a computer disappears in the next ten years, and a large share of repetitive manual work disappears with it, what happens to the flow of money? Who pays whom for what? Which economic layers will exist, how large will they be, and what relationships will run between them? This is the six-layer map I sketched as an answer.

15 May 2026·842 reads
Full AI agents or fully offline.

Four days in Catalonia. No computer, no AI, almost no social media. I bought this notebook so that I could write down what I would think about, and what I would come across and learn on the trip.

10.5.2026·534 reads

More articles

The Gap Between Professionals in the AI Era

A few days ago I interviewed a senior marketer. An experienced man, years of practice. I asked him about AI. He said he barely uses it. He had one bad experience with the output and decided he was too senior for it to add value when it is not perfect. I know the other side too — professionals who automate everything that can be automated.

6 June 2026·281 reads
Europe Is Not Ready for Drone Warfare

Europe does not have the capacity to face a full-scale, mass drone war of the kind we see in Ukraine. Three dependencies weaken it: China supplies the physical material for defence systems, the United States supplies capabilities Europe does not have, and twenty-seven states cannot agree how fast, or who pays. Rearmament plans exist, but they are being carried out slowly.

31 May 2026·285 reads
Can AI Replace Human Judgement?

AI produces the graphic, the newsletter and the product page faster than a person. What is left for the one who used to do it is the judgement — knowing whether the output is good. But most people have worse judgement than AI. And whoever cannot judge quality cannot delegate either. How do you tell whether yours is the judgement a company relies on, or the kind it can replace?

30 May 2026·266 reads
What Determines a Stock Price?

In April, in the first part of this series, I wrote about an AI prediction system I had started building on my own machine. At the time the software was a few hours old and the prediction record was empty. The record since then has shown one thing — the system does not yet understand the market it is being asked to forecast. It can pull macro context, book value, earnings. But it cannot put those together into something that helps it understand the price.

23 May 2026·317 reads
Building an AI Stock Market Prediction System That Grades Itself

I am building an AI system to predict the S&P 500. It runs on my own machine, uses free public data — yfinance, FRED, the Shiller dataset — and grades every forecast against reality. This series documents the build itself: the decisions, the methodology, the mistakes. What I will eventually share from the running system is a separate question, and an honest one.

26 April 2026·812 reads
AI sales forecast: 9 traps so far

Yesterday I could not tear myself away from the computer. When I lifted my head, it was half past eight in the evening. I had been sitting alone upstairs for about three hours.

25 April 2026·754 reads
Will AI take my job?

Will AI take my job? A certified Google trainer told me in June 2024 that my profession would cease to exist. Twenty-two months later, my job title has not changed — but ninety percent of what I do during the day is different. I have delegated more of my thinking to AI agents than I thought possible. I am not afraid. This is why, and what it means for anyone asking the same question.

23 April 2026·485 reads
€50,000 Quote vs. Two Hours with Claude Code

One hour. Fifty-five minutes. That is how long it took to build what a Czech software firm had quoted at over €50,000. I built it with Claude Code. Not a prototype. Not a proof of concept. A working tool — the one the company actually needed. By the evening of the same day, it was running on staging. This is not about Claude Code. It is about what Claude Code exposes.

18 April 2026·920 reads
NEWSLETTER
What I write about, what I am working on, what I learned.
Sent the first Sunday of the month. Unsubscribe anytime.