this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2023
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It's not bad.
There's one thing that people tend to neglect that I like to remember--it's going to be awhile yet before an AI can walk up to your door, knock, come in and find the specific nature of a plumbing/electrical/HVAC or whatever problem, and then diagnose and fix it. And then get safely home without getting hit by a truck or vandalized by bored teenagers or both.
That's such a complex suite of different "problems" that we're going to need nothing less than a general AI to navigate them all. Thus, one of the last jobs that'll be replaced is various kinds of repair professionals that do house calls. The constant novelty of the career, where every call is its own unique situation, is a nightmare for a current-method AI.
An hvac company that is able to adopt AI for 1st call processing and scheduling will be able to eliminate a number of jobs and remain open 24x7. They will undercut their local competitors, and the hvac techs will find themselves out of a job or working for their competitor soon.
Small companies won’t be able to compete.
I’m all for this but we need to offset these immense productivity gains with economic safety nets. I don’t know how the next 100 year will look if we don’t adopt UBI, universal healthcare, and some amount of subsidized housing.
This has been my stance for years. Automation is coming for all of us. The only reason LLMs are so controversial is that everyone in power assumed automation was coming for the blue collar jobs first, and now that it looks like white collar and creative jobs are on the chopping block, suddenly it's important to protect people's jobs from automation, put in safety nets, etc, etc.
Forgive my cynicism. haha