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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.

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.

frankdorr35 1y ago
Same here, however with the new meta glasses or the augmented reality glasses you're going to see people with no knowledge of our field actually troubleshooting machines with technicians remotely. They will be paid a lot less than us.
- i_am_proteus 1y ago
  I wonder who will be held at fault when the low-paid in-person troubleshooter discovers 15kV with his fingers (I do not wonder who will be killed) while his lock opens the wrong breaker. The business is not broken and does not need "fixing."
  - techpineapple 1y ago
    > The business is not broken and does not need "fixing." Welcome to tech, that’s what we do here.
  - idkwhattocallme 1y ago
    But it is broken. There is a shortage of every type of trades worker. Sure it's been great for existing trade folks because there are plenty of jobs and the pay is great more demand than supply. But the lack of supply has meant that it's too expensive to build/fix stuff. If you're in the US look around. It looks like we literally stopped building in the 1950s. Every renovation/building project is multi-year. Why? The lack of plentiful skilled trades people is one of the reasons the US building and infrastructure are deteriorating.
Rover222 1y ago
My grandpa was a master electrician. My father was a master electrician. I am a software engineer. I am sweating. I feel like we have another 2 or 3 years and then it might be over. I will go work in the mines.
Uehreka 1y ago
> 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.
- nopinsight 1y ago
  Humans being who they are, there's still a tremendous amount of work to do in this world (and beyond). 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy Comparative Advantage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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.
- dzink 1y ago
  The big upside here is that more web designers make more web sites, but more electricians and crafts people make more houses eventually (whatever is most valuable) and we can use more of that.
  - shit_game 1y ago
    More tradespeople don't make more housing, capital and legislation do. Both capital and legislators (a disturbing number of whom are either landlords or realestate tycoons) are perversely incentivised to keep housing supplies low because that creates a market in which housing appreciates and generates more income than a market in which housing is plentiful.
orwin 1y ago
Home electricians will always be fine. But if you work under a manager, I guarantee you some in your business will start to use AI to micromanage you if nothing is done. Hopefully I'm too negative.
- quickthrowman 1y ago
  I sell and run electrical work and I don’t see any good use for LLMs for what I do on a day to day basis. 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.
  - tsunamifury 1y ago
    “The internet is a passing fad”
    - do_not_redeem 1y ago
      Ah yes, the same quote often used by cryptocurrency enthusiasts. "One time a new tech succeeded despite skepticism, therefore all new tech will succeed despite skepticism"
      - tharmas 1y ago
        Distributed ledger/blockchain is an interesting idea but far too energy intensive to be of practical use. And then theres the whole concept of what currency actually is.
JALTU 1y ago
Brief anecdote: A friend hired an electrician to wire some things and he asked how the electrician's business was going. The reply was (paraphrased): We hired seven people two weeks ago, now only one is left because the rest either didn't show up, couldn't show up regularly, or couldn't focus on tasks long enough to get work done. We let them go because this is electricity. We are not going to pay for anyone's funeral!

frankdorr35 1y ago

Same here, however with the new meta glasses or the augmented reality glasses you're going to see people with no knowledge of our field actually troubleshooting machines with technicians remotely. They will be paid a lot less than us.

i_am_proteus 1y ago
I wonder who will be held at fault when the low-paid in-person troubleshooter discovers 15kV with his fingers (I do not wonder who will be killed) while his lock opens the wrong breaker. The business is not broken and does not need "fixing."
- techpineapple 1y ago
  > The business is not broken and does not need "fixing." Welcome to tech, that’s what we do here.
- idkwhattocallme 1y ago
  But it is broken. There is a shortage of every type of trades worker. Sure it's been great for existing trade folks because there are plenty of jobs and the pay is great more demand than supply. But the lack of supply has meant that it's too expensive to build/fix stuff. If you're in the US look around. It looks like we literally stopped building in the 1950s. Every renovation/building project is multi-year. Why? The lack of plentiful skilled trades people is one of the reasons the US building and infrastructure are deteriorating.

Rover222 1y ago

My grandpa was a master electrician. My father was a master electrician. I am a software engineer. I am sweating. I feel like we have another 2 or 3 years and then it might be over. I will go work in the mines.

Uehreka 1y ago

> 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.

nopinsight 1y ago
Humans being who they are, there's still a tremendous amount of work to do in this world (and beyond). 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy Comparative Advantage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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.
dzink 1y ago
The big upside here is that more web designers make more web sites, but more electricians and crafts people make more houses eventually (whatever is most valuable) and we can use more of that.
- shit_game 1y ago
  More tradespeople don't make more housing, capital and legislation do. Both capital and legislators (a disturbing number of whom are either landlords or realestate tycoons) are perversely incentivised to keep housing supplies low because that creates a market in which housing appreciates and generates more income than a market in which housing is plentiful.

orwin 1y ago

Home electricians will always be fine. But if you work under a manager, I guarantee you some in your business will start to use AI to micromanage you if nothing is done. Hopefully I'm too negative.

quickthrowman 1y ago
I sell and run electrical work and I don’t see any good use for LLMs for what I do on a day to day basis. 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.
- tsunamifury 1y ago
  “The internet is a passing fad”
  - do_not_redeem 1y ago
    Ah yes, the same quote often used by cryptocurrency enthusiasts. "One time a new tech succeeded despite skepticism, therefore all new tech will succeed despite skepticism"
    - tharmas 1y ago
      Distributed ledger/blockchain is an interesting idea but far too energy intensive to be of practical use. And then theres the whole concept of what currency actually is.

JALTU 1y ago

Brief anecdote: A friend hired an electrician to wire some things and he asked how the electrician's business was going. The reply was (paraphrased): We hired seven people two weeks ago, now only one is left because the rest either didn't show up, couldn't show up regularly, or couldn't focus on tasks long enough to get work done. We let them go because this is electricity. We are not going to pay for anyone's funeral!