Geographers Aren’t Going Anywhere – The Santa Barbara Independent

Recently, Microsoft released a report that has gone viral in social media. It includes a list of 40 jobs that AI will make obsolete. Geographer is on the list.

As a professional geographer, I think Microsoft has it wrong. Breakthroughs in AI have made a meaningful career in geography more exciting, essential, and impactful than ever before.

The study by Microsoft evaluated tasks that were effectively performed or supported by Co-Pilot, stratified by career. The study scored how well the AI completed or assisted tasks, and labelled careers with a high degree of successful task completion as likely to suffer job loss. We don’t know for certain, but it’s likely the AI assistant succeeded at tasks like name identification and navigation. Without putting too fine a point on it, there’s a lot more that goes into being a geographer than memorizing country names and capitals.

Let’s talk about what a geographer does in 2025. At parties, people are always surprised to learn that I direct a geographic research center because their assumption is that all the bodies of water are already named. What could we possibly be researching?

Being a geographer isn’t about knowing names of capitals. It involves thinking about our planet holistically. It’s leveraging cutting-edge technology to connect the where and the why, not sifting through dusty atlases in the back of a library.

Simply put, in 2025, being a geographer is about using the lens of place and a systems approach to people and the planet to solve some of our most pressing challenges. From affordable housing and sustainable businesses to food security and physical security, geographers are actively working across organizations and agencies to map a better future.

Geographers have historically been hard to spot, which means they’re not top of mind. After all, nobody hangs a shingle that says “geographer for hire.” But geographers work in many fields and across all levels of agencies. Geographers solve health epidemics, triage resources during disasters, manage water availability, track supply chains, and find optimal locations for everything from conservation areas to the best place to open a new coffee shop. Geography touches every industry you can imagine, and the approaches to solving location problems are just as diverse.

AI is not taking over for geographers. It’s actually empowering them with new tools and capabilities that operationalize and make sense of massive amounts of geographic data that already exist and the petabytes of new data created every day.

There is more geographic data available today than ever before. Thanks to the proliferation of GPS-enabled devices, drones, and satellites, there’s been an explosion of data about the built and natural world. Today’s geographers routinely leverage data form cell phones, weather stations, vehicle navigation, and satellites that measure everything from the atmosphere to geology. AI makes the process of sifting through that data and transforming it into actionable insights easier and faster.

For geographers, AI is a heaven-sent tool that enables us to have more impact — and fun. Geographers are systems thinkers who use the lens of location to tackle issues relating to people and place. Speeding up data crunching means that geographers can spend more time on higher order tasks.

For example, my graduate research on forest change required that I start by mapping trees from a satellite image. I spent 80 percent of my two-year degree writing code to map trees, leaving little time for addressing substantive questions that can inform decisions and improve forest management. Today, AI could map those trees in seconds. Which means today’s geographers have more time to do the creative and impactful work that addresses meaningful challenges. AI can count cars in an image, interpolate missing data, and even translate images into text descriptions. But it takes a human to analyze and combine traffic counts, dwell patterns, utility networks, and local regulations to realize that the corner of Main and Second is the best place to build a new EV charger.

AI is not replacing the geographer; it is super-charging the geographer. Geographers are poised to have the biggest impact on communities, businesses, and the planet in decades.

Of course, not all geographers are AI wonks. It’s a diverse field. But, for anyone considering careers with potential for employment and impact, the intersection of AI and massive amounts of novel spatial data make the skills and perspectives of geographers more powerful and essential. AI makes geography more relevant than ever in the modern world.

If you’re looking for a meaningful career that will be energized, rather than threatened by developments in AI, consider geography.

Professor Trisalyn Nelson is the Jack and Laura Dangermond Chair of Geography at the University of California Santa Barbara. She is director of the Center for Spatial Studies and Data Science. Nelson is a Public Voices Fellow of The OpEd Project.