Let’s look at a real-life example. Today there is a chronic shortage of medical doctors.There are simply not enough of them. So, starting medical school today seems like a good idea, because in 10 years from now there will still be jobs available in this sector, right? The shortage of medical doctors is so acute that it might even make sense for a primary school student to think about becoming a medical doctor in 20 years from now.
But AI will change this. Even if AI will probably have the least impact on the medical doctors’ activity. And even if the shortage of medical doctors is probably the greatest personnel shortage in any sector at the moment.
Here is why: AI impacts a career by automating the tasks a certain professional performs daily or weekly. AI might replace 100% of the tasks of a retail cashier or more than 90% of the tasks performed by an accountant, but AI might not replace more than maximum 50% of the tasks performed by a medical doctor – using AI to automate the boring, time consuming reporting and registration tasks.
At least this is what it’s estimated now, in 2023. AI will get much, much better at it very soon. But even so, this means that if a doctor is able to see 10 patients a day at the moment, they will be able to see 15 patients.
Imagine a hospital has 2000 patient requests a day at the moment and it can only serve half of this with its current 10 doctors. Today, they will employ 10 more medical doctors immediately. But using AI, the existing number of medical doctors can already serve 1500 patients a day. By hiring only 3 more doctors, the hospital would serve all their patient requests.
Thinking big, let’s suppose that a large European country needs at the moment 1 million medical doctors. After AI usage is fully implemented in hospitals, only 0.3 million additional doctors will be needed. The current supply of students and imported talent will cover this gap in 2 years, probably. Therefore, starting medical school right now does not look like such a bright idea anymore, does it?
Take into account that AI progress will only increase the efficiency of medical doctors over the next 5 years. So their efficiency rate could increase from 50% to, maybe, 100%.
And if we are to use the same rationale for other careers, such as software engineers, the efficiency rate increase for software developers is estimated today at 100 times. So, we are not talking about a 50% efficiency increase, but 10000%. And a 10000% efficiency increase is today’s estimation, in 2023…
