Space Tour Guides, Algorithm Bias Auditors, and Other Jobs of the Future

Image credits: Sergey Nivens via Shutterstock

Want to be an algorithm bias auditor? How about a human-machine teaming manager or a genomic portfolio manager? These are just three of the potential “jobs of the future” predicted by Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work way back in 2017 and highlighted more recently by the World Economic Forum.

If you have trouble picturing these jobs, it’s no surprise—because they haven’t been invented yet!

💡 Today’s technological revolution is opening up completely new careers all around the world. But an important part of building the future is imagining the future. How hard is it to imagine ourselves in the not-so-distant future of work?

To find out, I designed an icebreaker game for a small group of young people in Mumbai. At the beginning of our event, each participant (ranging in age from 14 to 29 years old) picked a card with a future job. Some of the jobs came from the WEF report, and some I imagined based on my own interests in biotech, food, health, and space. Then each participant had to walk around and act out that job in order to identify the one other person in the room who had the same job.

The space tour guides located each other pretty quickly, thanks to some physical antics; so did the personalized organ salespeople. But the human-machine teaming managers had a tough time, as did the environmental rewilders. Both of those teams agreed that they could see the purpose of their assigned jobs, but they couldn’t really picture the lived experiences of those careers. What does an environmental rewilder do every day?

As I reflected on what happened during that game, I realized that even though I had tried to choose “easy” future jobs to act out, half of the participants were stumped despite being educated, cosmopolitan, tech-savvy digital natives. Would it be even more challenging for folks in midcareer, or at a later stage in life, to support a young person interested in being an XR immersion counselor or a tidewater architect?

💡 As business leaders, educators, mentors, role models, and parents, we’re helping members of Gen Z, Generation Alpha, and other generations acquire the mindsets and skills that will be critical to the future.

But we’re aiming at a future that we can only glimpse imperfectly. That’s why when people ask me what my son is going to be when he grows up, I can only shrug and confess that I have no idea.

That’s a scary challenge. But to be honest … I think it’s a pretty exciting opportunity, too.