Here's what to do in college if you don't want to lose your job to a robot
A 2013 Oxford study estimated that 47% of all American employment could be automated.
Jerry Kaplan, author of "Humans Need Not Apply: A Guide to Wealth and Work in the Age of Artificial Intelligence" told Tech Insider that there's no secret key to succeeding in a workplace that's being overcome by artificially intelligent systems.
But learning specific skills early and relying on a few unconventional resources might give students a big head start.
Here are a few tips to get the most out of your college years.
Learn how to read, think, and communicate well
"Critical thinking skills are applicable in just about every important profession," Kaplan said. "Just getting a really good liberal arts degree that involves critical thinking and basic skills, like being able to put words on a page that make sense, are really being valued a lot."
Kaplan noted that work that seemed unrelated to his studies during his own undergraduate study at the University of Chicago, he now thinks helped him learn a few helpful skills.
"I learned a lot of specific stuff, most of it was about Kierkegaard or something," he said. "But when I got out, I knew how to look at a problem and figure out what to do with it."
Do (the right) research before choosing a major
"When you go to get a job, you go to the recruiting center," Kaplan said. "But people who list there are the big employers who are looking for lots of people, but that isn't necessarily where the good jobs are, or for that matter, where the money is."
Instead, Kaplan advises that people looking to pick a career look to a more nontraditional resource - the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Their website houses data on what professions are in demand, what kind of skills and education you need, and salary and benefits for each profession.
Even Kaplan has pointed his own children to the website.
"It's amazing what you can find out there with just a little time looking at it," he said.
For example, you can search the database for jobs that have a "Job Outlook" that is improving.
"If you want to become a nurse, and that's for men and women, that's a great profession right now," Kaplan said. "There's tons of opportunity for nurses."
That bodes out when you look at the labor statistics, which says that nurse job outlook between 2012 and 2022 is "31% (much faster than average)"
Don't rely on traditionally-prosperous careers that involve a lot of routine tasks
Many white-collar jobs might not be safe from the onslaught of automation. Kaplan said any employee who toils through many "repetitive and structured" tasks for a living won't be safe from the bread lines.
"Even for what you think of as highly-trained, highly-skilled, intuitive personable professions, it is still true that the vast majority of the work is routine," Kaplan told Tech Insider.
Lawyers, for example, may conjure up images of formidable debators pontificating in front of grand juries, but the reality is much more mundane. Most entry-level lawyers do a lot of work that's already being done by computers.
"The vast majority of activities that lawyers are engaged in are straightforward drafting of contracts, putting together things like apartment leases, real estate deals, pre-trial discovery," Kaplan said. "It's these very tasks that make the profession susceptible to automation."