I'm an industrial electrician. I have zero fears of being replaced by any any sort of AI. Maybe by someone younger and smarter, but I have 38 years experience. The trades are a decent living, and lots of people could do worse.
I sure hope this remains true after the number of people trying to become electricians quintuples in size.
I feel like in a lot of these discussions, people think about themselves first and go “I’ll just become an electrician if my white collar job goes away, how bad could it be?” But then you need to realize that many many people are going to have this problem, and the phrasing “Well, we’ll all just become electricians if our white collar jobs go away.” doesn’t have the same ring to it.
It’s not enough for there to EXIST non-automatable jobs. The demand for those jobs must be so massive that a gigantic number of currently well-paid people can take jobs in the sector without massively depressing wages.
In my childhood in the Soviet Union “plumber” was what parents scared their kids with “if you don’t study, you’ll become a plumber”. And that profession was extremely undesirable and didn’t pay well.
Also in many SEA countries both professions aren’t paid well.
I think in North America it’s different because it’s highly regulated and barrier for entry is high.
What that framing misses is that a lot of plumbers have to fix situations where a sewer line ruptured and someone’s basement is covered in shit. Or like, you get called in because someone’s garbage disposal is clogged with something nasty, and the person won’t tell you what it is. Plumbers definitely should get paid a lot for what they do, though whether that’s actual true varies.
I'm sure the cost of his excavator ran into ~$1k of wear/depreciation over that day but two men basically cleared $5k in a combined 20 man hours.
If you can deal with poop you can make a lot of money. Doesn't seem to be much interest in that trade either, no one thinks to become a septic installer.
It's such a privileged first world attitude to just assume that no matter how bad it gets, we'll always have all this money to pay for expert labor for our homes and businesses.
The idea never even comes up that if the economy gets pushed too far and the middle class truly disappears, nobody can afford a plumber or an electrician. You either make do or go without. And that entire sector of work crumbles too, which creates a feedback loop for economic failure.
That why we call it a house of cards.
Does everyone alive already have the best quality of life imaginable, not to mention future generations?
Lump of Labor fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy
Comparative Advantage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage
*The key challenge* we all share is making the transition as smooth as possible for everyone involved.
Build less charge more applies to practically everything.
It's like the economic version of "who will watch the watchers"?
The business is not broken and does not need "fixing."
Welcome to tech, that’s what we do here.
LLMs don’t understand constructions drawings so they’re no help when it comes to doing a takeoff. Construction specifications are already well-organized and able to be searched so LLMs don’t help there.
They can’t synthesize information from different sources (words from a person spoken on a phone conversation, napkin sketches, information that is embedded in an electricians head about a specific facility, etc) or coordinate multiple parties through a variety of communication methods (email, text, phone calls, RFIs, in-person meetings, etc)
About the only use I’ve found for them in my line of work is cleaning up data from outside sources. YMMV. Construction is a very relationship and trust based business that has been around longer than almost every other profession.
If a consensus arrives in 5 years and we decided that yes, LLMs can in fact reason, reasonning would be an emerging capacity, and that would be incredibly interesting.
"One time a new tech succeeded despite skepticism, therefore all new tech will succeed despite skepticism"
And then theres the whole concept of what currency actually is.
Thank you, I'm glad someone understood my comment at least.
Our county eliminated building codes, licensing requirements, and inspections so now everybody just does it themselves. The electricians here are going to the wayside unless they work for the power company. Us 'DIYers' have mostly replaced them by sharing knowledge and accumulating the wealth of knowledge prior held tightly by tradesman who have attempted to overplay their hand by charging exorbitant rates and refusing to hiring apprentices and are at a dead end.