"I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1.) Anything that is in the world when you're born is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2.) Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3.) Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things."
- Douglas Adams
Oh, if Adams had lived to see AI in its present form. He speculated a lot about it in his books, but here it is now. It seems like every week we're getting another news article about how the technology will impact us, with some people saying we'll be in paradise and never half to work again, and the other half saying that 85% of us will be laid off and die in the streets. So, the usual tech forecasts.
Zookeeping, presumably, will be one of those fields less directly-impacted by AI, but the technology is still making its impact felt on the profession. People use AI to record and summarize meetings. Vets use AI to write their preliminary charts and record their rounds. Despite some scowling, office folks are using it to generate materials for marketing, education, etc. I could envision a future where registrars use AI to process permits and records, vets feed data through AI for diagnoses, and education produces AI talks and presentations. But actually working with the animals? I don't see that being switched to AI.
Personally, I'm not a fan of the tech. I feel like it's not only bad for the environment (using an amazing amount of energy and water) and bad for employment, but also generally contributing to the loss of skills and the overall dumbing-down of mankind. To say nothing of the spread of false information, which is going to only make it harder to identify and correct as it gets more sophisticated. It's nice to think at least our corner of the workforce will remain less-impacted... or so I hope.
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