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鈥淐omputer says 鈥榥o鈥�.鈥� Let鈥檚 hand it to the BBC鈥檚 cult comedy Little Britain and its grumpy creation Carol Beer, who was fond of quoting computer 鈥渏udgements鈥� on matters she could easily have decided on herself. With cruel precision, it laid bare our cultural nerve ends about the dangers of too much automation in the expert services we seek.

We would struggle to call Carol Beer a 鈥減rofessional鈥� in the same vein as the ones Richard and Daniel Susskind discuss in their new book The Future of the Professions. But empathy 鈥� the capacity to read another human sensitively, the root of our moral compass 鈥� is one of the few aspects of professional roles the Susskinds imagine might survive 鈥渋ncremental transformation鈥� by information technology.

Brought together, the Susskinds (Richard the father and Daniel the son) are particularly well placed to comment. Daniel, currently lecturing in economics at Balliol College at the University of Oxford and Richard, a recent Cabinet advisor, bring a first-principles (and historical) approach to the question of why we need professionals in the first place.

Faced with legal issues, health challenges, educational needs, financial complexities, and the building and engineering of their environment, the citizens of the Middle Ages couldn鈥檛 possibly know what was required to make informed decisions. The professions 鈥� lawyers, doctors, teachers, accountants, architects, engineers and so on 鈥� emerged to answer this need, with what the Susskinds stress is their common offer: 鈥減ractical expertise鈥�.

Today, information networks are providing access to such expertise while radically bypassing the professional gatekeeper, in ways that make clients feel more personally empowered.

Thus we turn up at our doctor鈥檚 with more web-collated information on our persistent leg wound than a field paramedic. If search engines struggle to turn up the answers we seek, we find the solution ourselves in a jungle of user forums where we interpret and judge the practical opinions of others. This amounts to the devolution of a classic professional competence.

And if all this cyber-centricity puts irreparable strain on our relationships, we can kick off divorce proceedings by formulating the relevant legal documents online 鈥� completing the routine tasks with what might be, under the circumstances, a welcome impersonality.

Dispute resolution

Already eBay鈥檚 software resolves 60 million disputes per year without the involvement of a single lawyer 鈥� more than 40 times the number of civil cases registered annually in the courts of England and Wales.

And more students sign up for Harvard鈥檚 online courses in a single year than have ever attended its Massachusetts campus. The Vatican has even launched an official app to help sinners prepare for confession (though with the usual proviso that it is no substitute for the real thing).

鈥淭his debate is not about what鈥檚 best for you,鈥� Richard Susskind warned an increasingly agitated audience of professionals at University College London鈥檚 Kennedy Theatre last week, at an event to mark the book鈥檚 release. 鈥淚t鈥檚 about what鈥檚 attractive for recipients.鈥�

By the time the distinguished panel assembled for the event was due to speak, the mood resembled that of the proverbial turkey farm recently privy to the true significance of Christmas. But the panellists鈥� confidence in the uniqueness of their individual cases was undimmed.

Michael Briggs, a judge in the Court of Appeal of England and Wales, welcomed the efficiency that machines could bring to the legal profession, but stressed that clients would never choose a smart computer program over a lawyer with moral principles at heart. And David Lomas, who leads UCL鈥檚 School of Medical and Life Sciences, asserted with equal confidence that machines could never match the relationship of trust patients require from their physicians.

Given the increasingly high costs of accessing legal assistance and the unavoidably high false diagnosis rates among doctors, one cannot help but wonder whether the public truly shares the concerns over technology that some so readily attribute to them.

As the professionals in the audience piled in with increasingly frantic justifications of their own indispensability, the authors鈥� frustration was palpable. When one doctor took to the floor to say that machines would never be able to deliver babies, Richard Susskind cut in to explain it was no longer a question of whether they could encroach into such sensitive areas, but whether or not they should.

Moral boundaries

Instead, the debate we must have before it is too late should centre on where we place the moral boundaries. Should a robot judge ever be given authority to pass a death sentence, or a digital physician advise a family on when to pull the plug on their relative鈥檚 life support system?

The unusually patient explanations in The Future of The Professions give a sense of the official pushback the authors have encountered. Richard Susskind recalls being censured by the UK Law Society for 鈥渂ringing the legal profession into disrepute鈥�. His crime? A mid-1980s prediction that email would become a natural medium for lawyer-client relations.

As creator of the world鈥檚 first commercially available 鈥渆xpert鈥� legal software in 1988, the elder Susskind loves the current renaissance of applied AI. In a world where a new medical paper is published every 41 seconds, the vast data-crunching of 鈥渓earning-machines鈥� such as IBM鈥檚 Watson or Google鈥檚 DeepMind could not just provide a safety check for the judgements of human professionals, but also make fresh diagnoses.

The Susskinds foresee the professions 鈥渄ecomposed鈥� into their various tasks and scattered across new divisions of labour like 鈥減rocess analysts鈥�, 鈥渒nowledge engineers鈥� and 鈥渟ystem providers鈥�. 鈥淨uasi-trust鈥� is all that would be required for open networks of expertise shaped by reputation and ratings to flourish: think eBay, Airbnb or Uber.

In this new compact of digital access, DIY enthusiasm and ever-smarter machines, human professionals are no longer the 鈥渟age on the stage鈥� but the 鈥済uide on the side鈥�. No doubt the traditional credentialing (and occupational ego) of the lawyer, doctor or teacher will have to change.

The writers leave a meaty role for 鈥渃raftspersons鈥� 鈥� those professionals whose rare talent and sensibility can still surpass the capabilities of the coming matrix 鈥� though in a scenario where AI is embedded throughout our social exchanges, it鈥檚 hard to see how they鈥檒l be anything other than relics.

If she took empathy classes, Carol Beer could still draw a para-professional wage in the coming years. But she might also have to hear what her devices are actually telling her. 鈥淐omputer says: 鈥楽hall we?'鈥�

Image credit: Floris Leeuwenberg/The Cover Story/Corbis