Nowadays, I think that these are the only three jobs that will be left for us in the future.

The first is helping people. Japan’s contribution to this market is barely 80 billion yen, compared to 30 trillion yen in the US (2016).
In Japan, NPOs and NGOs have this image of noble poverty, never collecting much money or bringing in tax money. I’m involved in several Japanese NPOs, and I want to steadily change these issues moving forward. You don’t need to be impoverished yourself to help the poor. On the contrary, how can you help others if you don’t have any money or mental space to spare? I know I’m beating this point into the ground, but in the US, NPOs and NGOs hold greater status than companies. It goes without saying, but helping people holds greater social status than making money. Companies that have offered excellent services for a long time always have important social objectives. So, what Japanese NPOs and NGOs need to realize is that understanding the structures of making money will allow them to have a greater social impact.
As long as there are people, there will be jobs for helping people, no matter how far AI evolves and no matter how efficient it becomes. This will become a massive market in the future, even in Japan.

The next one is something that affects everyone: play. Art, travel, games. In other words, this is the market for how people spending their free time, and I think it’s going to grow dramatically. People involved in art, people just like all of you, have tremendous potential. Even if occupational reform reduces overtime, you can’t enjoy life if there aren’t ways to spend your free time. Games are fine, but if that’s all there is, it gets lonely. Meeting and interacting with all kinds of people is what makes your life full. And in that regard, since Japanese people tend to close ourselves off on our little island country, I think we need to travel more.

The third is thinking. That’s something that AI cannot do on its own. If you look at something like the Terminator, you tend to think of AI as this independent robot that has its own thoughts. But in reality, AI is given a certain premise (called a data set), learns that pattern to identify the message it contains, and then from that, it thinks for itself. For example, let’s say a manager decides to have a robot say “thank you” to customers who visit the store three times. The robot is made to memorize the shape of the customer to identify them and apply the service. If the premise applied is better, then the actual application will be better, and vice versa. After all, what’s important is the idea that a person has programmed into the AI.

Even before AI, our history abounds with technology that has sprung from ideas and dreams that people had and then worked on to make a reality. That’s why thinking will remain human work, something far too difficult and complex for any kind of technology.
Other than these three jobs, I think our future will be streamlined through automated programs, machines, robots and drones.