Something I saw online a while back that caught my attention was an article titled "Jobs That Will Disappear and Work That Will Vanish in the Next 10 Years."

It was an article introducing "The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation?", co-authored by Associate Professor Michael A. Osborne, who researches artificial intelligence at the University of Oxford in the UK, and Carl Benedikt Frey, a researcher at the same university.

Roughly speaking, it examines the question of whether advances in AI and robotics will replace most of the jobs currently done by human hands. Its conclusion is that within the next 10 to 20 years, about 47% of all jobs in the United States, the country surveyed, will be automated. It also listed the occupations most likely to disappear.
Here are a few examples…

The list also included many other occupations, such as bank loan officers, sports referees and casino dealers. Even just picking out the jobs that feel familiar to us, there are quite a lot of them.

So then, what about our own occupations — "designer," "web director," "website production specialist"? Well, they're not on the list.

Alright, website production companies are safe and sound!!

...I don't think that's the case at all. Unfortunately. If anything, I feel a real sense of crisis.

It's true that even as AI technology advances, web design places a premium on sensibility, so it does seem like an occupation that will relatively continue to require the human touch.
But the work of web design itself is something done using computers. I can hardly believe it will continue in the future just as it is now.

To begin with, looking back from the early 2000s when I started this job up to now, technology has evolved in ways that were completely unimaginable back then.
The same goes when we focus on our own working environment. First of all, PC performance has become dramatically faster, and the applications that run on PCs have gained more advanced features in step with the evolution of the hardware.
As for photo materials, you can easily obtain high-quality images by downloading them from stock sites online, and features that once couldn't be reproduced without understanding programming languages like PHP can now mostly be found with a quick search online.

In short, "thanks to computers, everything has become incredibly easy and convenient."
So what happens if this evolves even further?
Naturally, it will become even more incredibly easy and convenient.
And then what?

"Hey, we can do it ourselves without hiring a pro!"

That's what will happen.
In fact, that trend is already well underway. Whether paid or free, tools have appeared that let you build a website far more cheaply than outsourcing to a professional. In the past, websites made with such tools tended to fall short in terms of design, so people would conclude, "If you want something that looks good, leave it to a pro." But today, with just a little tweaking and by purchasing and dropping in high-quality assets, it's possible to build something to a considerable level.

And over the next five or ten years, that will surely evolve to a startling degree again... I certainly don't feel like we can rest easy.

So what will become of the future of web production companies?
This is just my personal prediction, but I think the current situation — where small and mid-sized production companies exist in abundance — will eventually consolidate into a handful of major players.
For small-scale websites, I suspect it will become common for companies to build them in-house using production tools that will only keep advancing and becoming more convenient. They may outsource just some of the creative elements. So there will still be work for designers with truly good skills and taste. That said, the market for it probably won't be large.

So what's left after that? I don't know either (laughs)
But the hints are:

I believe the people and companies that can provide these two things are the ones who will survive.
In the end, when you think about what our job really is, it comes down to just this: "building a website that creates opportunities for the client to sell."
Things like "a beautiful website" or "a smartphone-friendly website" are only done because a site that's easy to view and appealing to end users raises the chances of making sales — the website itself has no value on its own.

And once technology keeps advancing to the point where anyone can easily build a beautiful, easy-to-read website with their own hands, there are only two things we can do.

Provide "something even more beautiful"
or "something that differentiates beyond design"

Providing something even more beautiful strikes me as extremely difficult. Which leaves something other than design... and I think that's copywriting, or passing on know-how through education.
Because for clients too, a beautiful website is hardly a differentiator anymore; they have to compete on something else. And where can they differentiate? It comes down to ideas, or crafting clever headline copy. When they reach that conclusion, won't they be looking for somewhere to turn? That's what I think.

Right now there aren't many production companies here in Hamamatsu that can offer that kind of guidance, but personally I intend to make that a key focus going forward.