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Comment by somenameforme | Hacker News Reader

There's a simple litmus test for these sort of nearish future dystopias - how long before you have an 'AI plumber' or an 'AI electrician'? I'm not just listing random skilled trades, but listing jobs that are extremely complex, 100% context sensitive in a way that just doesn't generalize well, requires a mixture of high dexterity and high strength, and a million other things. To say nothing of the numerous [oft extremely expensive] task specific tools you also need.

And those are only two of the jobs for maintaining households. If those two things aren't automated, we're not having these 'robo households' - period. Instead I think the future holds mostly the present - glorified clappers [1] and ad-tech masquerading as some sort of something that mostly does a mediocre to awful job of whatever it's supposed to be, Alexa.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTNuJXi6UUk

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We have YouTube plumbers. Has destroyed the industry? No. But it’s made plumbing accessible to a whole range of DIYers.

Maybe AI will be just as productive.

Seriously YouTube has been amazing for the world of self learning. AI could learn a lot from it.

True. I have a serious DIY porn addiction due to Youtube.

But do you actually do any DIY? And is it more than you would have done without watching hours of it on YouTube?

I have at times watched a lot of videos of people making stuff or doing DIY. I suspect like 99% of the audience of those videos, they are just entertainment.

not OP but I am forced to. Services are too expensive these days and even when you pay, the quality is usually very hit or miss. I have lost count the number of times where a mechanic does the job right but its sloppy. Even my plumber or electrician gets things done but my drive for perfection cringes at the sloppy craftsmanship. I'm not a multi millionaire so I can't get the people that supposedly made things like Apple Park. A DIYer might not be able to do every job but many of the low hanging fruit can be done well.

Yes, I do a lot. Everything I feel confident doing and have the time for.

The availability of (mostly) accurate, in depth information snout any rabbit hole you can think of has certainly impacted some industries. There’s an entire generation of doctors who are infuriated by “Doctor Google” And another generation of doctors who embrace the ability to quickly research topics and fact check suggestions online collaboratively with their patients.

You need more to maintain a house, drywaller, gardener, carpenter, painter. The most important robotic help though will be cleaner and nurse. As our population ages and shrinks home help will become scarce and we'll desperately need an alternative to take care of ourselves as we age.

Perhaps in response housing will become even more homogenized so that AI has an easier time maintaining it in a standardized way?

But is your house iHouse compatible, or only OpenHouse compatible?

>not using GNoUse

Why do you hate freedom?

Wait brb, the ceiling fan I wrote in Lisp is spraying yogurt again

Immigrants from countries whose populations aren't shrinking could fill that role.

Who will maintain their houses? Why would it be immigrants instead of an underclass of citizens already in the country?

What houses? In Canada we stick 5 of them in every basement with no path to ownership. They’re happy to share bedrooms because it’s better than where they came from. The “underclass” of today got in early enough to own land and will be the landed gentry of tomorrow

Central BC is full of low-skill nobody boomers who happened to have affordable Vancouver starter homes. These people are driving Porsches and sipping wine thanks to their good fortune.

The most likely future is that we start standardizing infrastructure and building in a different way that’s easy for robots to use. Kind of like how cars would suck if we didn’t have roads and Benjamin Franklin couldn’t have predicted power plants and wires to every home. Then people who can’t afford the new stuff will keep paying plumbers but there’s a slow path to get rid of them. The old stuff will always be around but much less important.

I expect new “robo friendly” roads will be the first example but of course homes could do the same.

Think like how the Catholic Church never disappeared but the rest of the world moved on around it. We will never get rid of context sensitive plumbing and electrical work but it just won’t really matter

> Think like how the Catholic Church never disappeared but the rest of the world moved on around it

What does this mean? The world didn't start Catholic and gradually reduce its Catholicism over time. There are apparently about 1.4bn Catholics out there[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church

The Catholic church once decided which kings and princes could marry which queens and princesses, which alliances would be allowed and which wouldn't. Now it's nothing but a shadow of its former self.

I don't think we're that far away but I also think it looks different than humanoid robots.

I can see a drain plumbing system that maps out a new construction home and some sort of automated robot that builds out large sections of pipe. It wouldn't completely eliminate the plumber. But it'd change it from something like measuring, cutting, and gluing 100 times to walking around with a camera for 5 minutes and then gluing 10 things together.

That's just for new construction though. What about all the existing homes that need repairs?

Well, there's going to be less of those. As construction industry is further incentivised to use more efficient methods and materials for their plumbing, driven by the ever-competitive housing market (that would likely see a crash in our lifetime, you know?) making the point moot. I think nobody is delusional that there's blue ocean in plumbing, or some hidden plumbing Renaissance of human labour. Do people even want to do manual plumbing in the first place?

Good luck given the codes in place for all these things, not to mention trade unions.

The unions only protect employees from the employer, not the market. The point of contention here is whether modern-day trade school could ever provide that which they say they do—career security, that is. Nobody dreams about becoming a plumber when they're little. Clue

Sure, but it's still an AI plumber even if it can't replace every single plumber.

agree with all your points with the anecdata that the Roomba is awesome for dog hair. awesome.

My Roomba painted the whole room With dog excrement. The roomba thus went straight in the trash.

lol, that sounds crappy. there are some that avoid that and some that don’t.

We do, however, have computer assisted plumbers, electricians, and other technicians. With nothing more than YouTube one can fix appliances and cars, or do some DIY home improvement, and the projects that are possible are much more involved than they were in the old days. It's very hard to pick up these skills from a book, but if there's a video to walk through the process - the projects become possible.

AI-assisted plumbers will follow this archetype.

I have four books that I got from my dad - one for construction and repairs, one for electrical, one for plumbing, and one for landscaping. They’re in simple English with excellent illustrations. Using those books, I’ve been able to fix/improve pretty much everything in my house for ten years.

Could you list the titles/author of these books? I'd actually really like to get more into DIY home improvement, and having a starting reference like this would be really valuable

I know of a couple: - How to fix damned near everything [1] - Reader's Digest Fix it yourself [2] - Audel's Carpenters and Builders guide [3]

That Audel's, my wife got me for Christmas a few years back at Lee Valley Tools, I think. Was about 1/3 of what the listed price is here.

[1] https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?ds=20&kn=how%...

[2] https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?ds=20&kn=read...

[3] https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/title/audels-carpenters...

The electrical and plumbing books are from a series from Home Depot called "1-2-3": "Plumbing 1-2-3" and "Wiring 1-2-3". I love them but some other posters have shared books that look even better; I plan to check them out. The construction book is "Modern Carpentry" by Willis H. Wagner. I can't find the landscaping book - haven't needed that one as much - but in my stack I noticed Reader's Digest's "Home Improvements Manual" which I've also used quite a bit.

Thanks!

It's still a human doing it and not an AI or robot. All of these jobs are not uniform enough for a robot or AI to be able to handle everyone's uniquely built house.

you also got standardized parts and plug-in systems that use them; standardized tools that were available for a reasonable cost; and you have basic health and mobility

You’re absolutely correct. The point was that I don’t need AI.

Would love to know what these books are.

Its more likely that we’ll hire plumbers who are going to throw a robot at the job and double check the work

Absolutely. It will be a while before AI is the absolute replacement, AI will enable the people in these professions to do faster, better (hopefully) work.

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