You may have read about the advancement of technology and artificial intelligence (AI) in the news and been thinking about what the future holds for your child. What jobs will your child do and how will technology affect both their career and other aspects of their life such as health, politics, finance and the natural environment?
While it can feel overwhelming, the phrase ‘knowledge is power’ is a good starting point. At home with your child, you can gently begin to prepare them for some of the things that may form part of their tech-led future.
What will the future look like for our children?
“Augmented reality glasses will probably be our main interface with the internet.” – Calum Chace, writer and speaker on AI.
Whilst no-one knows exactly what the future holds, many futurists/futurologists believe we’ll see an expansion in things like AI, space travel and green technology, as well as the continuing need to tackle climate change and look after one another.
Calum Chace, who co-founded Conscium, an organisation which aims to pioneer ‘safe, efficient AI’, says: “In the coming years and decades, AI will change everything about our lives: our work, our economies, our play, our relationships. Large language models (LLMs) and their successors will be our constant companions, taking care of all the drudgery in our lives, and helping us spend our time more productively and more enjoyably.”
He adds: “Humanoid robots will become commonplace, doing our chores and our routine and dangerous work. Humans will no longer drive cars because self-driving cars are much safer. Augmented reality glasses will probably be our main interface with the internet.”
What jobs might my child do?
“Automation can’t replace the soft skills of care.” – Author David Goodhart
Jimmy McLoughlin OBE is a dad-of-three and hosts Jimmy’s Jobs of the Future podcast. He says it’s hard to predict what some future jobs will look like: “There’ll be whole sectors created that we don’t know yet. 20 years ago it would have been difficult to predict social media managers, but now companies have whole teams of those.”
He believes healthcare, education and driverless cars will be among the big areas of growth.
The Government’s ten-year industrial strategy ‘Invest 2035’ also aims to target eight UK sectors to drive growth:
Advanced manufacturing
Clean energy industries
Creative industries
Defence
Digital and technologies
Financial services
Life sciences
Professional and business services
Author David Goodhart adds on BBC Sounds podcast Rethink: “automation can’t replace the soft skills of care.” So, as well as tech jobs, caring for an ageing population will be a job that continues to exist and grow.
Jimmy McLoughlin thinks humans will still need to, “direct AI in what you want it to do,” and have an, “understanding of the language of these things.”
He also thinks other human-centric roles, for example, community leaders or people running sports and fitness clubs in the park, will continue to grow and evolve, especially if AI leads to people having more free and flexible time. And while, “the tools for doing it will change”, most private sector jobs will continue to be about, “research, design and get a product in front of people, and sell it for more than it costs.”
How can I prepare my child for the future? There are several ways you can prepare your child for this tech-led future.
1. Talk to them about AI
Chances are your child will work with AI rather than be replaced by it. So, ask your child what they already know about AI, or what they think AI does. Explore platforms together. Help your child to recognise AI-generated content… or get them to tell you, if they’re more likely to know! Then compare it to ‘real’ content.
You can also revisit conversations around online safety and being a responsible digital citizen, as well as discussing things like personal data, where AIs are drawing their information from, plus data bias. And of course, try and get to know these technologies a bit yourself, so you can model appropriate use.
Ayo Adesioye is an integrative psychotherapist. She advises keeping it simple and, “avoiding fear-based language.” If your child is worried: “Validate and normalise their feelings by letting them know many people, including adults, are feeling anxious about AI. Recognise their fears likely come from social media, media and films. Explore this with them and encourage them to question what they consume.”
Ayo adds: “Help [your child] understand it’s created and controlled by humans who are also developing AI tools to keep people safe. Discuss the benefits such as detecting diseases and discovering life-saving drugs.”
2. Equip them with essential life skills
Your child will need some knowledge of technology and how to use it but they’ll also need other ‘life’ skills.
An analysis of the demand for skills in the labour market in 2035, for the National Foundation for Educational Research, found the top skills were: collaboration, communication, creative thinking, information literacy, organising, planning and prioritising, problem solving and decision making.
As founder of the 10,000 Black Interns Initiative, Michael Barrington Hibbert, puts it during the BBC Rethink podcast: “Lean in to softer skills – that’s what AI cannot give you.”
These are all skills you can help your child develop at home, alongside other life skills such as critical thinking and empathy, which will be important for your child’s tech-led future.
A mother and son sit together on a bed using a tablet and phone respectively
Jimmy McLoughlin adds it’s “lessons not in the classroom: getting on with people, building teams, extracurricular stuff”.
Teaching your child how to interpret knowledge will also still be important: “Being able to understand the sources of things… separating out the information that matters. Data scientist has been talked about as a job of the future for a long time, but assessing what metrics matter as well is going to be quite important in terms of business… in a world of endless information.”
Calum Chace adds: “There’s no way to predict which jobs and which industries will be automated first, so the thing is to work with AI, to play with it, and to understand it.”
3. Encourage them to pursue what they’re interested in
Calum advises: “Apart from learning how to use AI, don’t try to force yourself into a career path that you hate. Do what you enjoy, because you will be better at it.”
Jimmy continues: “Go out and try things. Working out that you don’t like something and you’re not good at something and you don’t want to do it is almost as valuable as what you do.”
Ayo Adesioye says to have curious career chats while you’re doing other things: “For younger children, ask questions about their hobbies, interests and the subjects they do and don’t enjoy. As they get older, have playful and imaginative dialogue concerning the different fields in which their interests and strengths can be applied. Let them dream.”
Encourage your child to write a newspaper, watch videos about motorway construction, or organise a crafting club if that’s what they’re into. Jimmy believes, “a lot more people will have to become entrepreneurial,” so the more you can encourage your child to pursue their interests while picking up skills such as self-reliance, confidence and the ability to fail, the better.
4. Encourage face-to-face interactions
Jimmy encourages face-to-face play, learning and work, including in an office, because that’s often what tech is taking away. “Your 20s are for jumping around, getting to know people, building a professional network. That can be done online but face to face has more impact.”
He also prompts young people he works with to make phone calls, not just send messages. You can ask your child to do this from home if you so choose!
The other thing that can benefit children is allowing space for boredom and ‘free play’, whether with their peers, siblings or on their own. As tech guru Steve Jobs is credited as saying: “boredom allows one to indulge in curiosity”.
