Daniel susskind

^The Future of the Professions¹

DANIEL SUSSKIND Fellow in Economics
Balliol College, Oxford University

RICHARD SUSSKIND Visiting Professor Oxford Internet Institute

Two Futures

There are two possible futures for the professions. Both of these rest on technology.The first is reassuringly familiar to most professionals—it is simply a more efficient version of what we have today. In this future, professionals of many different types use technology, but largely to streamline and optimize their traditional ways of working. In the language of economists, technologies “complement” them in these activities. The second future is a different proposition. Here, increas-ingly capable systems and machines, either operating alone or designed and operated by people who look quite unlike doctors and lawyers, teachers and accountants, and others, gradually take on more of the tasks that we associate with those traditional professionals. New tech-nologies instead, in the words of economists, “substitute” for profes-sionals in these activities.
For now, and in the medium term, we anticipate that these two futures will be realized in parallel. As we do today, we will continue to see examples of both uses of technology. In the long run, however, we expect that the second future will dominate. Through technological progress, we will find new and more efficient ways to solve the sorts of important problems that, traditionally, only very particular types of professionals have been able to tackle.This presents an existential chal-lenge to traditional professionals, which is one central theme of our book The Future of the Professions.

1 Read 27 April 2017. This paper is based on Richard Susskind and Daniel Susskind, The Future of the Professions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).All references in this paper are taken from that work, unless cited otherwise.