The Future of the Professions

What actually makes a doctor, lawyer, teacher or consultant valuable?

Is it their knowledge? Their experience? Their judgement? Personal contact? Or above all the fact that our society allows and trusts them to solve certain problems on behalf of others?

In The Future of the Professions , Richard and Daniel Susskind challenge precisely this assumption. Their starting point is not the simple claim that AI will eliminate entire professions. They ask a more fundamental question: How is practical expertise produced and distributed in a digital society—and will we still need the same professional structures as today?

1. Professions are based on a social bargain

The authors describe established professions as part of a “grand bargain”—a major exchange between professionals and society. Certain occupational groups receive special status, entry requirements and, in some cases, exclusive rights. In return, they are expected to develop complex specialist knowledge, uphold standards and use their expertise responsibly in the interests of others.

This model emerged in a world where high-quality specialist knowledge was scarce, difficult to access and closely tied to trained specialists.

Digital technologies change precisely this premise. Knowledge can be stored, structured, replicated and made available through systems. The central question is therefore not only how professionals use technology, but whether particular services will still need to be delivered in the same way by an individual professional at all.

This is an important shift in perspective: The profession is not the ultimate purpose. The purpose is the problem that needs solving for a person or for society.

2. There are two very different technological futures

The Susskinds distinguish between two possible paths of development. The first looks familiar: technology makes existing professions more efficient. Doctors analyse faster, lawyers conduct better research, teachers gain new tools and consultants automate routine work. The profession remains essentially intact—just more productive.

The second path is more radical. Here, technology does not merely support professionals; it changes how expertise is provided. A digital system can consolidate and standardise specialist knowledge and make it accessible to many people simultaneously. Services are broken down, recombined or taken over by other people and systems.

With today’s generative AI, this idea seems remarkably relevant. However, it should not be read prematurely as proof that entire occupational groups will disappear. Between technical possibility and actual adoption lie regulation, liability, trust, costs, institutional interests and societal choices.

The book’s strength therefore lies less in an exact prediction than in its analytical question: What changes when expertise is no longer automatically tied to the traditional form of the expert profession?

3. Professions consist of tasks—and tasks develop differently

This idea is particularly relevant to Future Skills. A profession is not an indivisible block. It consists of many different activities: gathering information, recognising patterns, developing options, documenting, explaining, advising, deciding, building relationships or taking responsibility.

Technology does not affect these tasks simultaneously or in the same way. Some can be standardised. Others receive AI support. Some may disappear. Others become more important precisely because automated systems prepare or execute more decisions.

This makes the common question “Is my job safe?” too broad. More helpful questions include: Which tasks solve the underlying problem? Which can a system take on? Where is human judgement still needed? Who explains uncertainty? Who has the authority to legitimise a decision? And who bears responsibility when something goes wrong?

This is also the reasoning behind our JobRadar 2040: we are not simply looking for new job titles. We investigate which human tasks and roles of responsibility might emerge or persist in systems that make greater use of technology.

4. Humanity is not an automatic protective barrier

A convenient response to AI is often: “The human element will always remain.” That may be true—but initially it is only an assertion.

The Susskinds force us to ask a more precise question: Which tasks should actually remain reserved for humans—and why?

Perhaps because of responsibility and liability. Perhaps because trust and relationships are themselves part of the service. Perhaps because a decision needs social legitimacy. Perhaps because we do not want certain powers to be delegated entirely to technical systems or their operators.

These are not merely technical questions. They concern values, institutions and power. As expertise is increasingly provided digitally, it also matters who owns and controls these systems and determines the knowledge they apply.

For the Future Skills Institut, the implication is this: human relevance should not be justified by a vague appeal to empathy. We need a more concrete understanding of where people need to exercise judgement, take responsibility, negotiate goals, build relationships and translate technological outputs into a real-world context.

5. Future Skills should start with future responsibilities

When tasks within a profession shift, the significance of skills changes too.

Specialist knowledge does not automatically lose its value. People need foundations to ask questions, assess results and take responsibility. But a professional’s competitive advantage may increasingly lie less in possessing knowledge exclusively and more in applying knowledge and technology meaningfully to complex situations.

Judgement, critical thinking, learning ability, technological literacy, communication, relationship skills, handling uncertainty and the ability to take responsibility do not simply become “more important” in the abstract. They matter when they are linked to concrete new tasks.

This is precisely why Future Skills research should not stop at lists. The decisive question is: What abilities does a person need to fulfil a relevant responsibility well within a changing division of labour with AI?

What we take from this

The Future of the Professions was first published in 2015, long before the breakthrough of today’s generative AI. The updated 2022 edition adds a new preface addressing more recent developments. The fact that many questions now feel even more pressing makes the book interesting—but does not automatically make it a confirmed prediction.

How quickly individual professions change depends heavily on technology, regulation, organisations, trust and societal choices. Some activities may remain human for considerably longer than technological scenarios suggest; others may be transformed more quickly.

The book’s most valuable question may therefore not be:

“Which profession will AI replace?”

But rather:

“How should expertise be organised in future—and for what do we want people to remain responsible?”

If specialist knowledge in my field were available cheaply at any time, what should a person still be responsible for—and what abilities would they need?

Context: This 3-Minute Insight summarises selected arguments from The Future of the Professions in our own words and connects them with the Future Skills Institut’s research questions. The book analyses long-term paths of technological transformation and deliberately advances far-reaching arguments. It does not predict which professions will disappear when, or which tasks will actually be automated. The connections to current generative AI and JobRadar 2040 are identified as FSI interpretation.

Source: Richard Susskind & Daniel Susskind (2015; Updated Edition 2022): The Future of the Professions: How Technology Will Transform the Work of Human Experts. Oxford University Press. Further information: Official book website ↗ · Oxford University Press · Updated Edition ↗ · Oxford Martin lecture on the book ↗