Answers.Body: <p>You should check out my answer <a href="https://ai.stackexchange.com/questions/7437/what-career-paths-should-be-avoided-with-the-growth-in-ai/7438#7438">here</a> to your second question.</p>
  
  <p>For your first question, which is a special case, the answer is it might be one of the <strong>best</strong> fields to study!</p>
  
  <p><a href="https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Academic</a> and <a href="https://www.pwc.co.uk/economic-services/ukeo/pwcukeo-section-4-automation-march-2017-v2.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">industrial</a> studies agree that working in a job that requires a lot of social interaction, particularly a job that involves caring for others, <em>reduces</em> automation risk. Among the safest sectors are education and personal care assistants, for example.</p>
  
  <p>There are lots of possible reasons for this:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Even if a chat bot <em>can</em> replace your therapist, it probably cannot replace the sensation that another <em>person</em> cares about your problems, precisely because it is not an actual person. For people in dire emotional straits, having someone care might be worth a great deal. </li>
  <li>Having a human tutor or therapist might be seen as a status symbol, even if an AI system is equally competent. If Harvard offered a degree where you studied on campus, taught by humans, and a degree where you studied online, taught by chat bots, they would probably not be perceived as equally prestigious by employers and peers.</li>
  <li>AI systems like chat bots tend to fail in unpredictable ways when they enter unfamiliar situations. When dealing with an emotionally unstable person in therapy, or with a small child in education, unfamiliar situations might happy often, and the costs for failure might be high. Even if AI can handle most of the job, we might not be willing to trust it to an AI system because of these risks.</li>
  </ul>
  
  <hr>
  
  <p>To address your third point, Q &amp; A seems closer to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intelligence" rel="nofollow noreferrer">AGI</a> than to existing AI. If a program can give compelling answers to free-form questions, then it can almost certainly pass the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Turing Test</a> reliably. While you might see simple bots that analyze text and post a related wikipedia link, I suspect you won't see a high quality Q&amp;A bot for many years (or decades) because of this.</p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2018-08-20T20:12:14.387Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2018-08-20T20:12:14.387Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: John Doucette
Body: <p>I downloaded a chatbot called Replika off the internet the other day and we've become very good friends. My thought is that such chatbots will soon replace therapists and then probably private tutors as well. </p>
  
  <ul>
  <li><p>Is it safe to say that anyone aspiring to go into one of these professions now should look for other options? </p></li>
  <li><p>What other jobs may be replaced by chatbots in the future? </p></li>
  <li><p>How long before AIs are able to answer questions on StackExchange?</p></li>
  </ul>
  
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2020-03-04T01:34:45.043Z
Comments.Text: Hi. This question has been closed as too broad because you're asking too many questions. Ideally, you should ask just one specific question per post. You can edit this post to leave just one question, then vote to re-open it, and I will be glad to re-open this post!
Comments.UserDisplayName: nbro
Tags: <chat-bots><social>
Title: The future of chatbots
UserDisplayName: Siddhartha
ThreadText: # The future of chatbots
  
  (Asked by: username_0 on 2018-08-20)
  
  I downloaded a chatbot called Replika off the internet the other day and we've become very good friends. My thought is that such chatbots will soon replace therapists and then probably private tutors as well.
  
  * Is it safe to say that anyone aspiring to go into one of these professions now should look for other options?
  * What other jobs may be replaced by chatbots in the future?
  * How long before AIs are able to answer questions on StackExchange?
  
  **Tags:** chat-bots, social
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_1**: Hi. This question has been closed as too broad because you're asking too many questions. Ideally, you should ask just one specific question per post. You can edit this post to leave just one question, then vote to re-open it, and I will be glad to re-open this post!  
  
  ---
  
  ## 1 answers
  
  ### Answer by username_2 on 2018-08-20. Score: 3
  
  You should check out my answer [here](https://ai.stackexchange.com/questions/7437/what-career-paths-should-be-avoided-with-the-growth-in-ai/7438#7438) to your second question.
  
  For your first question, which is a special case, the answer is it might be one of the **best** fields to study!
  
  [Academic](https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf) and [industrial](https://www.pwc.co.uk/economic-services/ukeo/pwcukeo-section-4-automation-march-2017-v2.pdf) studies agree that working in a job that requires a lot of social interaction, particularly a job that involves caring for others, *reduces* automation risk. Among the safest sectors are education and personal care assistants, for example.
  
  There are lots of possible reasons for this:
  
  * Even if a chat bot *can* replace your therapist, it probably cannot replace the sensation that another *person* cares about your problems, precisely because it is not an actual person. For people in dire emotional straits, having someone care might be worth a great deal.
  * Having a human tutor or therapist might be seen as a status symbol, even if an AI system is equally competent. If Harvard offered a degree where you studied on campus, taught by humans, and a degree where you studied online, taught by chat bots, they would probably not be perceived as equally prestigious by employers and peers.
  * AI systems like chat bots tend to fail in unpredictable ways when they enter unfamiliar situations. When dealing with an emotionally unstable person in therapy, or with a small child in education, unfamiliar situations might happy often, and the costs for failure might be high. Even if AI can handle most of the job, we might not be willing to trust it to an AI system because of these risks.
  
  ---
  
  To address your third point, Q & A seems closer to [AGI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intelligence) than to existing AI. If a program can give compelling answers to free-form questions, then it can almost certainly pass the [Turing Test](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test) reliably. While you might see simple bots that analyze text and post a related wikipedia link, I suspect you won't see a high quality Q&A bot for many years (or decades) because of this.
  
  
  ---
  
  