Devastating to an industry in its current form. Taking medicine as an example, I just don't see any reason to expect that, if you automated away 50%+ of the current job, you'd require less, highly trained, medical staff.

Sure they'd be doing quite different jobs, for the most part. Sure some of the current crop won't want those new jobs. But everything I've seen wrt automation encroaching on highly skilled employment would suggest that there's little to no reduction in employment. Quite the opposite.

I tend to look at it a different way. What is the likely limit on the need for medical expertise ad how far away are we from that limit? I would suggest that we're currently a very long way from capacity for medical expertise and you could automate away a significant portion of the current roles without substantially affecting numbers.

I could, of course, be wrong. And, of course, one can extrapolate to a point where AI has perfect knowledge of all human anatomy, natural and enhanced, as well as having innovation and design skills well in advance of humanity. But we're an awful long way away from that.