College student looking for unbiased career advice.

Im struggling to pick a career the way the world Is going and didn't realize how censored reddit is. I'm considering optometry or accounting, possibly engineering. I want to know the true threat of ai on accounting and if people believe it'll last another 50 years esp with outsourcing. or if i'm better out going to school for many years to do optometry. i like the idea of accounting because of the overall career progression and the ability to make more than an optometrist eventually, but also have my worries about ai and outsourcing. if anyone has some useful unbiased advice please feel free to chime in.

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I'm considering optometry or accounting, possibly engineering

Those 3 are VERY different. You gotta narrow this down a lot. Usually, when it comes to selecting a career, people lack precision, or they lack direction. If you lack direction, it means you generally know where you're going and what you like, but you don't know the exact role. A lot of high end business students fall into this category, not being 100% sure if they want to do IB, consulting, PM, or something else. They lack precision on an exact role, but it's all generally in the same high end business world. You lack direction. That means you'll just be spinning your wheels 

I want to know the true threat of ai on accounting and if people believe it'll last another 50 years esp with outsourcing

I did Math+Stats in my undergrad and did AI research in the field of statistics and probability. I also work with AI models and ML models pretty frequently. What I will say is that while AI has improved a ton, it isn't entirely there yet. I'm not going to hash over all that right now. What I will say is that the role of accountants will almost certainly change. Most roles will change. We have a good example of this: Computers. When computers came into the accounting and business world, people did think spreadsheets would make accountants useless. If you can do all the tasks of an accountant through excel, why spend money on accountants. So, the role of an accountant changed. Same with IB, Consulting, trading, hell being a Doctor or Lawyer changed quite a lot. SInce computers have taken over, there's simply more use of digital tools and machines to assist in the work. Don't fear it. Don't fear Ai. Find some way to be the best working with it. Companies will always find ways to need smart people. 

I would suggest looking into Ikigai. It's useful in helping you find direction

 

Thank you for replying, i know that i want to do accounting, get my cpa and if there’s avenues for specialization or skills that will make me stand out more id also do that. i’ve just been searching around since all i read is about how outsourcing and ai are going to ruin everything.

 

Well, you mentioned reddit. While this site can be very doomer(DEI doomerism is a common one) WSO at least has more professionals and people with experience to comment on shit, so you'll find less doomerism here. 

Just do the things you love and will be good at. Don't worry about goddamn Ai right now. If Ai can replace accountants, it won't be long before it can replace optometrists. So just keep working on shit and block out the noise. It only makes life harder when you let uninformed people constantly tell you how shit things are. 

 

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