From the author: My thoughts and recommendations to parents of schoolchildren who are afraid that their child will choose an endangered profession The other day I was at Sberbank in a small town in the Leningrad region and observed a typical picture. One of the 2 cash dispensing terminals did not work. While I was depositing cash and then paying the bill through the terminal, a queue of eight people formed. In addition, before I found myself at a non-working terminal, I tried to pay bills by bank transfer through Sberbank Online on my computer. But they politely asked me to free the computer, because... I needed to configure it to print receipts, and at that moment the master came up, whom I was preventing from doing his work. Unfortunately for me, I also needed a check and I had to search long and hard for a girl consultant who, as I was told, had secret knowledge for me of how to print a paper check through a terminal if the bill was paid through a computer. To my shame, I didn’t know this, although I’m 31 and can consider myself an advanced user of online services and self-service devices. And then I came home and thought about it. Here is the 2017 version of Sberbank: 7 “live” consultants, 1 computer self-service, 5 self-service terminals. The task is to pay 4 receipts. The time spent is more than an hour, taking into account terminal breakdowns, software problems and artificially created queues. And here is the same Sberbank during my childhood in the late 90s, early 2000s: 3 cashiers, queues, long writing of current account numbers by hand with a ballpoint pen. The task is to pay 4 bills (rent, electricity, gas, water). Time spent - 1 hour. What has changed? Number of people working in the office. There are more of them. With self-service terminals in the same city with the same population, the number of cashier consultants has doubled in 15 years. Plus, PEOPLE have been added who SERVICE ROBOT TERMINALS. Until a technician arrives who understands its software and hardware when it breaks down, all scientific and technological progress with its automation goes to hell. A ROBOT NEEDS A PERSON who will invent it, develop it, construct it, assemble it at the factory, program it, deliver it to the site, and then repair it and clean it from dust. I’ve already immediately sketched out 8 specialists needed for 1 robot. I shared my thoughts with my father, and he told me that back in the 70s in Japan, which is decades ahead of us in the field of robotics, it was noticed that it was profitable to replace only the simplest human operations (such as assembly lines) with robots. And to manufacture and maintain complex robots, more people will be needed than a person would do the same procedure. So I want to reassure schoolchildren, their parents and specialists who are afraid that people will not have enough work in the future. After all, now parents have a new fear: “my child will choose a dying profession.” Nothing wrong with that. For a very long time, even in simple operations, a robot will not be able to completely replace a person. People will be needed to service the robot. And consultants who teach how to use it, and not only pensioners, but people much younger. After all, we are not yet born with innate ideas about how to use technology and we need to be taught this. But developing in a child and in ourselves mobility, flexibility, communication skills, systems thinking, readiness to change according to the demands of the time is what is worth it pay attention in order to keep up with the times and not lose in the inevitable competition between robots and humans. Insisting that a child choose a reinforced-concrete prestigious and “correct” profession is a thankless task. Maybe he will appreciate it in the future, maybe not. All sorts of stories happen. Children scold their parents for “forcing them” and for not “insisting” at one time, and these are real stories. The only factor that at all times determined the survival of man as a biological being in.