When I finished university in 2003, it was with the threat that no computer scientists would be needed in Europe because everything would be developed in countries where salaries were much lower. That never materialized, thank goodness, for many reasons. I’d venture that one of the larger issues was that companies underestimated the problem of developers not understanding the culture where their software was going to run. Software requests were implemented, but the functionality was different from what customers expected.
Today, there’s a similar menace for people interested in machine learning and data science. But now the threat is not low salaries, but software as a service (SaaS), where you upload data and then the system does the work for you.
I’m as concerned as anyone else that machines don’t understand domains and people. Machines aren’t intelligent enough yet that you can take humans out of the equation. Things are moving quickly, but I venture that anyone who is reading this book will be able to work with recommenders until the end of their career.