In the post-industrial age a lot of professions will become obsolete. We'll transition almost completely from manual to intellectual work. Most mechanical tasks will be performed by robots while humans will be pursuing science and exploration.
Computational power will become our main asset for finding answers to any question across any domain. As this power grows, existing computational techniques (like machine learning, generative design and simulation) will offer us better and eventually even perfect solutions to problems in the main fields of chemistry, physics and biology.
We will genetically engineer and grow perfect food that takes the least amount of resources and offers the best nutritional value.
We will come up with the perfect engineering materials with properties such as high strength and low weight for alloys, smooth surfaces with perfect reflectivity or transparency for glass, biodegradability, superconductivity and dense energy storage.
Robo doctors will both diagnose and treat any medical condition. Eventually we'll start genetically engineering ourselves to resist and even become immune to diseases, ageing, radiation, etc. We'll make ourselves live long healthy lives while consuming the least amount of resources.
Even
some intellectual jobs will eventually not be entrusted to humans
any more. Political and judicial disciplines will be implemented by
artificial intelligence or at least by computer optimized systems that
minimize reliance on humans and our biases.
All of the remaining future-proof professions, that is chemists, biologists, physicists and maybe engineers, will be reduced to operators of our computational tools, whatever form those might end up taking. Imagine an AI controlling a completely automated laboratory and factory. All you need to do is formulate the problem and it will find out the best answer as well as produce the physical product if the problem requires one (food, medicine, organism, mechanical device).
