Whether you like it or not, AI is getting better. Good enough now that 40% of employers expect to reduce their workforce where AI can automate tasks. This year’s high school seniors are getting stressed watching AI impact the job market and the economy, as the fear of being replaced by automation is stronger than ever. Here is a list of the jobs/majors most threatened by AI takeover, and possible pivots to take if you’re in the hot seat.

Data Entry Clerks/Transcriptionists

• Information Systems

• Business Administration

• Health Information Management

These people transfer information from various sources such as paper documents or forms, into digital formats like computer databases and spreadsheets, while transcriptionists listen to audio or video recordings and type the spoken content into written documents. For these jobs, accuracy and speed are everything. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and speech-to-text now does this instantly, often with fewer errors. Possible other areas within this field are quality control, compliance auditing, and project coordination.

Customer-service representatives

• Communications

• Marketing

• Hospitality Management

• Psychology

These jobs handle inquiries, troubleshoot, resolve billing issues, and guide people through processes over the phone. Success depends on patience, empathy, and communication. Now Chatbots and self service portals handle FAQ’s, while sentiment-analysis tools work through more complex conversations.  Other areas include customer success manager, training specialist, and community manager, as those positions are able to forge long-term client relationships, build trust over time, and design support materials for incoming employees.

Retail Cashiers/Checkout Attendants

• Retail & Merchandising

• Supply Chain Management

• Business Management

• Event Management

Most people interact with cashiers weekly, as they are getting groceries or grabbing dinner with friends. These people ring up purchases, process payments, and interact with customers.Self-checkouts, mobile pay, and cashier-less “grab-and-go” stores cut the need for staff. Pivots could be to a visual merchandiser, creating more appealing store layouts, and inventor or supply chain coordinators which would back-end retail logistics, or an event coordinator who brings people to the stores.

Telemarketers/Routine Sales Support

• • Marketing
  • Business Administration
  • Public Relations
  • Entrepreneurship

These positions cold-call potential customers, deliver scripts, and try to close sales or generate leads. AI can auto-dial, read a script, and adapt tone in real time, which is not only cheaper but also scalable. AI is not something an employer would have to read out to and coordinate with, and that decision is appealing time and finance-wise. Possible other options include account executive, business-to-business sales, brand strategist, and business development.

Bookkeepers/Accounting Clerks

• • Accounting
  • Finance
  • Economics
  • Management Information Systems

When dealing with money, people interact with workers in these positions, tracking day-to-day financial transactions, reconciling bank statements, preparing simple reports, and assisting with payroll. This job takes skills in advising, ethical oversight, and interesting results for whatever the client’s goals are. Cloud accounting software can categorize expenses, run reconciliations, and even draft tax forms. Other areas to look for would be strategizing as a financial analyst, ensuring integrity as an auditor or compliance officer, or helping plan goals as a wealth advisor.

Paralegals/Legal Document Viewers

• • Pre-Law
  • Political Science
  • Public Policy
  • Criminal Justice

In judiciary employment, paralegals and reviewers research case law, draft motions, and summarize contracts. Large language models are intelligence programs trained on vast amounts of text to help parse through and interpret lengthy legalities. They can also flag risks, and summarize huge legal databases much faster than humans. Other places to look are legal project manager, a compliance consultant, advising companies on regulations on the state and federal level, or a mediation/negotiation specialist.

Translators/Proofreaders

• • Linguistics
  • Modern languages
  • Comparative Literature
  • International Studies

Crucial in foreign countries and international relations, translators and proofreaders translate texts between languages or correct grammar, style, and clarity. Machine translation from popular AI frontrunners like DeepL and Google produce good enough results for a lot of routine business, even though human connection is a valuable aspect of the job. Possible areas of interest include localization manager, adapting advertisements, games, and films for different cultures. Creative writing and editing is still needed for voice driven work, and technical writers who simplify complex language.

Junior Content Writers/Copywriters

• • Journalism
  • English
  • Creative Writing
  • Media Studies
  • Marketing/Advertising

The media produced from these jobs are interacted with every day, through social captions, product descriptions, blogs, and press releases. AI can produce drafts instantly, reducing the need for “volume writers” who prioritize making a large unity of books in a specific genre often by using ghostwriters and collaborating with others to maximize output. There’s no replacing the endless curiosity and creativity of humans, but other areas to fit into including investigative journalism, content strategy, and creative directing.

Basic Data Analysis/Research Assistants

• • Statistics
  • Data Science
  • Economics
  • Political Science
  • Sociology

These jobs involve computer work, cleaning spreadsheets, running surveys, generating visualizations, and writing executive summaries. Dashboards and AI analysis can generate instant graphs and insights, bypassing this smaller entry-level job. People in this position could shift towards guiding decisions with their data in a business intelligence strategy job, policy analysis, or user experience researcher blending interviews and numbers to help understanding.

Routine Web Developers/QA Testers

• • Computer Science
  • Software Engineering
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Cybersecurity
  • IT Management

These positions build sample websites, test software, and debug repetitive issues within coding. AI is able to generate and test pre-written code snippets in seconds, much quicker than any human. System architects focus on the big picture of software and facilitate all aspects of production to make sure the end product is seamless by business deadlines. Cybersecurity specialists are crucial for security, user experience and interface designers make tools user friendly and engaging, and product managers decide what to build and why.

AI is present, and its presence will only intensify in the coming years as it improves. In order to prepare it’s crucial to express what’s human in the application process. Think about problem-solving and creativity, and embrace AI as a way to boost productivity and learn its limitations.