Depends if you like your history made up or not.

AI people think research is something where you go in knowing what you're looking for and you simply keep going until you find it. Which, no

Not even that. I heard it referred to as a bullshit generator, which is an unbelievably accurate description. AI produces outputs that look vaguely plausible but it's incapable of checking for errors or inconsistencies e.g. the Eiffel Tower and vikings thing elsewhere in the replies.

If you then tell it there was no Eiffel Tower at the time, it will then look for of other iconic landmarks associated with Paris (like the Arc de Triomphe or the Louvre) because "Paris" was in the prompt and those are the images most strongly associated with "Paris".

Passenger Attendants as #3 on the list…?? Suspect that the list itself was AI generated and therefore nonsense - Any job that requires someone to physically do something is going to be safe enough for now: Robot lawn mowers may be a thing but not robot gardeners

no way are historians, writers, and authors going to be replaced before customer service reps

i don't see priests on the list....

They think they can replace interpreters with LLMs notorious for making stuff up? That won't cause any wars or foul up any business or trade deals, I'm sure.

It's a great tool..but not always accurate. I have to instruct it like it's my newly hired assistant in training.

Naw. Also Plane Attendants?!?

If you are young today learn a trade. I can’t see AI ever being able to swap out a washer on a tap/faucet. It’s like we are going to regress and manual work will be a more secure occupation than academic or administrative roles. The Industrial Revolution in reverse.

I think AI brows are just cringe and will follow a new thing soon. It just needs to be stupid enough, like NFTS or Crypto before this one.

As an archivist and historian, I say not a chance. The cost to digitize all materials and make them accessible is cost-prohibitive. Then let's discuss the digital dark age and loss of history if all the digitized materials are corrupted. It wont happen, at least not in the next 50 years.

If the entirety or at least a vast majority of global archives' and libraries' holdings (in so many languages) were digitized and read by machines, I'd say AI might be onto something, and that in terms of fairly low quality stuff churned out en-masse. Long way to go to even that. So, no.

Yeah it's going to do great

What do professional historians do? The jobs most easily replaced are those where "crap but fast" is good enough to be profitable (e.g. churnalism), where margins are so razor-thin that savings outweigh quality (arts) or where skill offers limited benefits (CEOs). Not sure where historians fit.

Not a chance.

Probably yes, because you can train your AI to affirm your biases. Something far more difficult with actual historians.

History will be replaced by AI.

Supporters of AI slop don't understand such simple things as critical faculties are the key in studying and writing about history. There are no direct or secondary sources that can be accepted at face value, no secondary source without mistakes. And AI program can't put all in context either.

Even a digitised medieval manuscript would surely completely baffle AI reading. More so with palimpsest elements.

The historical sources I am studying at the moment haven't even been digitised yet, so that's one area that won't be replaced for a while yet.

I saw that yesterday and it’s not even what the paper is about, the tweet is (not shockingly) completely misinterpreting it

Totally ridiculous.

my thought: there are 4600 telephone operators?

Exactly! I thought there would have been many many more. Have you seen how many people walk around, oblivious, just operating their phone nowadays?

People complain about their being no originality now with new films; can’t wait when every script and book is literally just recycled pieces from other stories that may or may not make sense.

It wouldn’t surprise me if we start seeing an anti-ebook push going forward to try and avoid people’s books from being scraped into AI.

I'll tell you when we translators and interpreters (#1) get replaced! 🤣🤣

@grok is this true

I don't know, the image of the Eifel Tower as it was seen by vikings in 875 CE along with the made-up death of a real historical figure whose death we don't know about? Yeah, they've got the number of historials alright...

For many years, viking women wore Yves Saint Laurent heels, and dressed in Dior gowns from the rich and fashionable booty.

Wish they'd come and sack Mar a Lago.

They know it is all fake gold out there.

I think historians are already being replaced by propagandists. 😢

Increasingly, the first-draft of history IS being written by AIs.

Surely not ! The work of historian is not just collect former informations, it is to find and give sence to hidden archives in libraries. Most of them haven't been numerised....

Eh for the official histories of fascist organizations/regimes: yes Anywhere else or for the production of secret/useful histories no

Well, time to get the embalming kit out of the dust. Where did I put the formaldehyde ... ?

Nooooo

AI, notoriously difficult at managing context, is obviously keyed in to replace one of the most context dependent academic fields.

I don't believe any of this list... I'm an interpreter and translator and unless you don't care about the message or how it's received, AI isn't going to replace me any time soon.

People have started using ai for language learning and as a polygot i can tell when they do (used to assume it was duolingo they used but now its either or both). Ai cant do shit right and now we have loads of ai learning apps full of mustards people are eating up as free (saw 2 ai apps paid!)

I'd love to know the math by which they arrived at the conclusion that automotive glass installers will be replaced by AI before tire repair technicians.

No. Historians are point-of-view scientist who are forever relating their work to developments in human interactions.

Just spend the next year or two totally polluting the ai base data with spurious info - Robin hood was queen Victoria's lovechild etc, and you'll be employed for ever to sort out the mess.

LOL no

Funny how CEOs never put themselves on these lists when their jobs are the most worthless and easily replaceable of all

That's really bad news.

Where are investment bankers and venture capitalists on that list?

They'll only the first to go because they're the bulwark against AI's delusional output.

Always thought accountants and programmers would be the first to go - absolutely no clue how Microsoft believes historians would be affected unless they (or, sadly, their AI) believe we only reproduce what happened when...

I think it depends what you think a historian actually does. Sadly, I think the common perception of a historian is someone who could be replaced easily by air.

Or indeed ai

Yeah, no. Anyone who's read an historian knows this in their hearts.

Nice to see working with hazardous materials will still be left for us plebs.

Telephone operators? lol .. what all 2 of them in the uk! ?

Here's the original paper, looks like it's not quite as was presented: arxiv.org/abs/2507.07935

It definitely seems like OP has an agenda.

I may have a style of test for this (example below). Seems to apply to historians as equally as it would to engineers: bsky.app/profile/jona...