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Comment by jawns | Hacker News Reader

There's obviously a strong incentive for homeowners to participate: they don't have to pay for a service that is often valued at hundreds of dollars.

But what is the incentive for contractors to participate, and how does it overcome the enormous disincentive of "You are training your replacement"?

My guess is that truly skilled contractors in these trades are not hurting for work. So I doubt they're going to be swayed by just a few more extra jobs added to their docket.

Less skilled contractors who are desperate for work might be taken in, but then the quality of their output is likely to be worse, and the value of that training data is likely to be low.

My guess is that people in skilled trades who are used to working with their hands are going to be even more skeptical than white-collar folks about an AI revolution, and more guarded against change in that direction.

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>But what is the incentive for contractors to participate, and how does it overcome the enormous disincentive of "You are training your replacement"?

Seems to be working fine for AI labs and their army of data annotators (for generating training data and RLHF). Is there any reason to robotics is extra tricky?

>But what is the incentive for contractors to participate, and how does it overcome the enormous disincentive of "You are training your replacement"?

They don't need any local companies to participate in this program. This company can hire engineers with an understanding of code (even better, engineering/safety principles behind the code) from the industry. Further, they can go and recruit intelligent people who graduated from trade schools but couldn't get that apprenticeship from local unions. That's all they need, as long as home owners are compensated for any screw ups.

The first line 'Partnerships with home-service companies ...' tells the whole story. No local company with decent trades people on their payroll wants to work with home-service companies, it's always the lowest bidder who wants to get that job from home-service companies. Who are these lowest bidders? Someone brand new, who couldn't get enough clients.

If residential HVAC has more monitoring controls, it is easy to diagnose 99% of the time. What needs to be monitored: supply air temp, return air temp, suction pressure, suction temp, liquid pressure, liquid temp, compressor inrush amps, compressor amp draw, blower motor cfm, blower motor amp draw, further info from ECM and VFD modules if ECM blower motor and VFD compressor are used, etc. Many modern HVACs have some kind of error codes to show what is going on; however, every manufacturer wants his own set of codes, and their special communication prototol, their special thermostat, ...

One can extend similar controls to plumbing and electrical too. That requires a total revamp of how residential electrical/plumbing/hvac is done. This is similar to any field where robots have taken over: the field itself changes in order to accommodate robots.

> This company can hire engineers with an understanding of code (even better, engineering/safety principles behind the code) from the industry

I hate to break it to you, but previous waves of AI did exactly the same thing (e.g. expert systems). Every wave of AI insists that the problem is on the algorithmic side and that they've figured it out this time.

I agree that we should see how this plays out, but don't be surprised if it doesn't work. Much like software development, I suspect there are many strong practical reasons why the real world has a tendency to not align with the specified standards. You can't keep insisting it's mere human incompetence without this whole thing sounding like a grift.

> easy to diagnose 99% of the time

Specifications always have edge cases. Abstractions always leak. That's why everyone is still employed despite all the AI hype. It's wise to expect that 1% is a giant cliff that can totally ruin the success of any project.

The issue is not about 1%, but one of the cost of hiring trades people. HVAC companies are charging $25k for a three-ton HVAC unit+furnace in California, when the cost of the the unit is 5k. And these trades people don't want to fix any problem instead they want to sell a full replacement. Same with electrical. You call for some issue. a banktrician (PE owned company with 60 month financial plan) comes and sells a full panel upgrade, full rewiring? What is going to happen then?

Any person with a decent STEM education can learn these trades for DIY'ing. They can learn safety protocols too. When HVAC/plumbing/electricals are installed in a way conducive to robots, it is easier for those who can't afford a lot of money, to work and fix these issues.

The world (esp in residential) is not a union of two disjoint sets: (a) robots/AI (b) trades people. In fact, the third world is huge: an average tinkerer without being burdened by gatekeepers of the trade can fix many issues when these installs happen. At least it becomes easy to replace parts by oneself, instead of hiring a technician.

Your average technician is no better than a tinkerer. For instance, look at HVAC symptoms: https://imgur.com/a/FXf3iXf That's what many HVAC techs carry, they even carry apps that just takes the inputs (pressures, temperatures, etc) and spew out what could be the cause. What if a HVAC system is built in such a way that it is easy to replace parts? Right now, to replace compressor, one has to discharge the refrigerant, unbraze suction and liquid lines, vaccum out, then use nitrogen, braze both lines, then charge it back. Can we have a world where it is easy to reduce these steps so that it becomes easier for robots (as well as for humans)

How about having universal VFD boards the way ABB sells VFDs for water pumps and other motors, instead of getting tied with a particular brand?

The real problem is whether average home owner can bear the cost of trades people? Sure, trades is just like Accenture IT consulting: one rock star software engineer with 30 dummies who can jack up the billable hours; same goes for law firms too.

Have you ever heard of overhead? When running a technician type job, a 5x cost multiplier on materials / labour is extremely reasonable. I ran an FTTP ISP, and the minimum cost of a service call started at $250, with labour (at $25/hour) frequently being only $50 of inputs to that cost (1/5th of the cost). Every service call has to cover the cost of the travel time (easily 1+ hour), fuel, vehicle, insurance, tools, and materials. Plus there is dead time when a tech isn't being fully utilized. That means billing 5x to 10x the labour cost just to break even.

Having AI robots do the work does not materially change or reduce that basic cost structure, as labour is one of the smaller inputs to the cost of the service call.

I get that people on the outside of the service industry looking at 5x or 10x markups see them as being "ridiculous", but that is because they aren't looking behind the scenes to see how the sausage is made. The service industry is nothing like tech where the marginal cost of delivering software drops as the number of the users (and developers) increases. A single truck equipped with the required tools can only be used for so many service calls in a given week, and swapping out the human with a robot isn't going to change that. Moreover, increasing utilization significantly beyond 8-12 hours per day seems unlikely to happen as there probably isn't much appetite in the general population to meet and greet a service robot into their home at 3am then explain and show what the issue is that needs to be resolved. There's no way that a 3am service call can cost 50% less than daytime service call.

In contrast, the marginal cost overhead of spinning up one more software developer for big tech is almost nothing. You might spend $2000 for a computer and another $1000 for a desk and chair for them to sit on, and virtually everything else (data centers, servers, networks...) is shared infrastructure. That's nothing compared to trades where you have to buy a truck and outfit it with tools for $100k to support 1 employee. [The bucket truck I have cost $125k, and equipping it with the bare minimum of tools required was another $25k on top of that.]

Sometimes I wonder if anyone has done the basic napkin math to figure out if pushing AI into certain jobs is going to be even remotely economically viable. Personally I view this as a symptom of the larger problem that there are very few "good" ideas left for VCs to throw piles of otherwise idle money into, which directly leads to a kind of VC slop where unprofitable ideas get subsidized and offered to the general public "for free"... until it isn't. Then we'll be stuck with monopoly AI HVAC firms and their 27B stroke six forms making everything miserable for us.

I am not against trades, nor am I against overhead. HVAC trade is something I follow. Many honest HVAC trades people on their YouTube channels say how many companies are ripping off of customers: recommending full replacement instead of fixing it; using tools like ServiceTitan and apps to add more line items to rip off customers; etc. r/hvacadvice on Reddit attests this new phenomenon. This is not about how home owners find trades expensive. Fellow trades people also agree with it.

I understand about overhead. Diesel price, truck depreciation, commercial space lease, dispatcher salary, non-uniform demand, workers comp, taxes, ...

Absolutely, one should charge 200% if they want a service at 3 am or during weekends. I would even charge 50% extra if they have a furnace in the attic, crawl/inaccessible spaces. 100% extra, if their attic/crawl faces have rodent feces. Home owners should better put these stuff in an accessible mechanical room. Accessibility is an important factor, and helps trades people to troubleshoot faster.

> My guess is that people in skilled trades who are used to working with their hands are going to be even more skeptical than white-collar folks about an AI revolution

If I was confident that an AI couldn't do my job, I would happily sign up to do this "training" because it's free money and my job is at zero risk.

> My guess is that truly skilled contractors in these trades are not hurting for work.

Why? Are you assuming these folks are also good at marketing, or customers are sharing via word of mouth?

I rent. I assume homeowners use AngiesList or Yelp, but those reviews don’t guarantee skill or that someone will be in high demand.

> Are you assuming these folks are ... or customers are sharing via word of mouth?

Seems fair to me (interjecting: not the parent poster). I rent, too, but have heard countless conversations along these lines among Proper Adults.

Often grown-up #1 complaining about their latest project and grown-up #2 offering someone that served them well in the past. Point being, bad experiences are both so common and costly... that those who are good tend to stand out and stay busy. IME, those listings or the phone book are most suitable when you don't have a relationship to leverage (effectively rolling the dice).

Yes, "truly skilled" contractors get work entirely through word of mouth. All the best contractors I have discovered were through a relationship, and are always fully booked, frequently doing work on my home due to our relationship, and not due to natural availability.

> But what is the incentive for contractors to participate, and how does it overcome the enormous disincentive of "You are training your replacement"?

They don't need an army of contractors to do this. They just need a few, much like the AI labs that have a handful of SME staff for each particular subject to guide the corpus of data. See mathematics example.

It is not about knowing if someone can be bought. It's knowing just how much is just enough to buy them.

And then you have individuals whose pride is more than enough. See Terence Tao for a great example of a Useful Idiot.

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