A very scary conversation, and especially one for those already in IT who have a better understand of what's coming.. No job or career is safe, and almost everything can be automated in some aspect.
For instance, you now have a robot that can cook 3,000 meals for you. It's certainly not foolproof, still a work in progress. And who knows when it will reach consumers. But as a restaurant owner, how can you not go for this? Perfect meals, no time off, no alcoholic chefs going off the handle.
Or pharmacists. They already have a product that can merge all your pills into one and have it mailed to you on a regular basis. How long before pharmaceuticals are just dispensed like a vending machine and we don't need so many pharmacists?
What to do? I really don't know. Any career that involves human interaction and reasoning is probably safe (Sales, Law, etc.) and anything with a computer background is fine for now. I mean, someone will have to create, manage and fix these automated chefs and pill dispensers.. at least until we have a robot for that.
Again, very worried about this, more so for our children and such, but my hope is that this will just be a bigger version of the automobile in the 1900's. Plenty of horse-related jobs took a hit through the decades that followed. People just had to adjust. Instead of working on horses, people worked on cars.