Mike Rowe's warning to white collar workers 'The robots are coming' for your job

A few other notes:

1. Lag Effects.

My father in law worked at an auto plant for most of his career and regularly pointed out that his job didn't exist at any of the newer factories. He continued working at that factory for over a decade after his position had already been automated on newer lines, and lost his job only when the factory was scrapped and replaced (and moved to a different state in the process, for tax benefits).

Robots destroyed a lot of skilled labor, em masse, over the last thirty years. And many of the jobs that it didn't already destroy will cease to exist over the next thirty years as new major capital investments are made and capital investments from 30+ years ago are wound down.

2. Automation/Optimization of Labor Management.

Over shorter time frames -- in-between large capital outlays -- automation of labor management ("Uberfication") is a lot more impactful than automation of labor. There are a lot of skilled jobs, both blue-collar and white-collar, which are now effectively commodified. Not automated, mind you, but definitely commodified. I think that's a much larger threat to plumbing and electrical work than automation.

3. Meta RE: Mike Rowe

Mike Rowe is a (very rich) media personality whose brand was built on calling attention to the trades as a viable path to the middle class and questioning the necessity of "four-year college for all". I think that's admirable.

Lately he's turned this into a wedge for separating two components of the non-managerial working class. I think that's deplorable. Software Engineers and Welders should be in solidarity, and as far as I can tell people like Mike Rowe function -- intentionally or unintentionally -- as lackeys for the ownership class.

IMO, the distinction between white collar and blue collar work is just red meat. Of course language models won't have any effect on plumbing or electrical work! But the idea that robotics won't de-skill a huge portion of blue collar work as well seems extraordinarily naive. (NOT automate. De-skill. Which, combined with automation of labor management, turns a career track into low-pay/no-benefit gigwork.)

Can somebody please dig up all the “the internet can potentially replace all jobs by next Tuesday” articles written 20 years ago?

Who was saying that? It was established (and has come to fruition) that robots would replace a lot of manual workers in unskilled jobs in places like factories. Much of this has been automated or outsourced. But we have millions of factory workers today that are working with robots and/or doing more complex manufacturing than in years past.

I also think there's a real 80/20 problem with LLMs right now. Having worked with them for a few months they are undoubtedly helpful, especially for simple things. And people will build useful and productive tools with them. But, in my experience, they only get you at best 80% of the way there - the remaining 20% just isn't there. Not yet anyways.

I see AI as an enhancer, not a replacement, like computers or the Internet were before it.

For example, utility companies would send someone round to read our meter. Now they want us to have a smart meter (or, failing that, report our consumption online ourselves).

A current development in the automotive sector is toward systems that can be diagnosed and monitored automatically and remotely, and in some cases even fixed remotely, cutting out physical visits to a service centre. This will happen in other sectors as well.

Once your boiler or heat pump has enough sensors to monitor everything that could go wrong, physical visits will only be required once there is actually something that needs physically fixing. Etc.

Breaking news: someone with financial interest in something says something to further said interest.

"Somebody heard two things about a popular topic and now desperately need media attention to broadcast their uninformed clickbait opinion".

Maybe just call it "clickbait". It should stand right next to "flag".

The robots are ALWAYS coming to get you.

Not Engineering. Someone has to prompt the machine and check (almost always correct) its output. If you have copilot or codegen set up you know it's just better omnicomplete. This appears to be a fundamental limitation with language modeling.

Not Leadership, that requires humanity with all of the extra associated costs.

Maybe they could do some of the spam copywritting etc. Only really stuff that wasn't worth anything anyway. Businesses don't really seem to hire most White collar workers because their output is directly valuable though IMO. It's this super complicated social thing.