Yes, that's good. It also prices out a lot of other better uses for their labor. Projects I work on have seen prices soar. I don't consider building the things everyone hates because they promise concentration of wealth and an attack on labor at the expense of building literally anything else to be somehow a big W for labor because a few people get a slightly higher temporary paycheck. Ask the Wagyu cows how they feel about the hand they are dealt.
The housing shortage has nothing to do with a lack of electrical engineers or plumbers. It’s entirely self inflicted and cheaper electricians will not change that.
More directly: I doubt there will be a meaningful increase in housing in states that have banned construction of new data centers (NY, Maine) than those where data centers are allowed to be built.
I am, exactly right this minuit, trying to explain that I am not able to quote competitivly for certain types of specialised metal work as there are specialists for that, but am facing insistent inquirys anyway.I do clean sheet custom one of a kind projects as a rule, for which, due to AI recomending my company through some imaculate process, I am exploring how much I can charge for helping the singuarity along, though all in all I am glad I have other skill sets to deploy should we run the whole thing into the ground.
Could you be more specific? Things are still competitive in the large commercial electrical market I am bidding in, if you’re bidding to make more than 10-15% you’ll get underbid by someone willing to accept a lower profit margin.
Who on Earth are you to decide what is the "better" use for labor? And do you scrutinize every construction project or only AI?
Is it a waste when contractors build a temporary set for a trashy reality TV show? A factory that makes cosmetics for dogs?
Having someone the arbiter of what is the "right" use of labor is communism. In capitalism, people get to decide for themselves what they work on and what they buy.
If Meta decided to pivot to a brothel and meth lab building spree would you consider that to be a worse, equal, or better use of their capital and the labour in the regions where they are building out this infrastructure? Why?
The people losing jobs to AI can't just pivot into the trades. When you think about it, companies announcing they're pivoting into some other area where they have no prior background is usually a bit of a desperation move, aided by the fact that companies don't need to be licensed in any way to offer particular services, other than maybe in the military/national security sector.
As for the second point, it's true that this is just old-fashioned supply and demand. I predict the outcome is that there's a rush into the construction/contracting sector followed by a bust due to either the tech bubble popping and construction slowing way down, or the replacement of construction workers by humanoid robots, or perhaps some better form factor like robot spiders that can squeeze into small places - all the benefits of child labor but with double the appendages and double the productivity!
However, I'm not worried about the possibility of a robot takeover. The American people's final safeguard against a robot uprising is the irrationality of imperial weights and measures. Robots are digitals and can't do fractions like us higher beings. That's why I'm building my data centers measuring everything in cubits.
As an engineer in the US - we already do all the math in metric units. There are conversion functions in the UI layer to transform our units to whatever you want to see. (they also convert metric units if you don't like the units were are using internally)
> AI employs unionized middle-class workers: AI is stealing cheap labor from the rest of us!
What cheap labour? Tradespeople are not cheap (especially if you factor in the quality of the work). This just makes them even more expensive. Meaning a big impact on homes – you know, the things people and families live in, in order to survive. Pretty important
"Those people" who? Homebuilders? You're saying you think the cost of homebuilding should be much higher? When I listen to some of you guys it's not hard for me to see why these DCs are so unpopular
> While we're at it, how much should small bathroom, 2 week renovation cost? $100,000 in labour?
Obviously much more than 2 weeks worth of work at a commercial job, since that's the worst possible kind of work you could ever offer any tradesman. Maybe 8x the hourly rate would be fair since it's intermittent work with generally horrible customers?
It's been interesting to watch the IT/engineering classes all of a sudden pretend to care about labor costs and outsourcing/job loss. As an industry they have been by far the most impactful in reducing wages, enabling outsourcing, and "gaining efficiency" via automation while as a class being paid top-tier wages for doing so. There is not another industry more directly culpable for blue collar job loss except perhaps finance and banking.
Only now when the shoe is on the other foot do such folks seem to care at all.
Learn to code indeed.
For any electricians/plumbers/etc. out there? Go get yours. When the shoe was on the other foot you were mocked and told to switch careers, lowballed on horrible residential projects, told to skill up and get better if you wanted to get paid more, there was no future in the trades, etc. Make hay while the sun shines and ignore the bleating. At least this time around the bubble is sharing a bit of that tech wealth.
> For any electricians/plumbers/etc. out there? Go get yours. When the shoe was on the other foot you were mocked and told to switch careers, lowballed on horrible residential projects, told to skill up and get better if you wanted to get paid more, there was no future in the trades, etc. Make hay while the sun shines and ignore the bleating.
yeah instead they did the smart thing and they got together and passed protectionist policy to artificially inflate the value of their labor. Let's see how union tough you are when the administration changes and you have to compete with a global labor pool again.
That small bathroom job is literally the worst case scenario for a tradesman. They have to work nearly as hard to line that up as better paying longer term commercial work.
The residential buyer is the source of much less repeat work, is harder to deal with, more price conscious and harder to collect from than the commercial buyer they could be working for.
Anyone that can competently market, manage, and execute that small job can do the same for better customers.
The residential buyer has one advantage though: they do not demand as much from those working. You can start this business today, and likely find enough friends and family willing to take a chance on you that you can get started and from there you have references. Commercial projects tend to be big enough that you cannot get into them without experience (which in turn you cannot get).
The crew that can build a driveway cannot build a parking lot, and they will never be able to break into that market because it requires experience that a driveway cannot give. From a parking lot there is then road building - the previous companies cannot break into them. Again there are just not enough projects of the size that sits in between to build experience.
And even in residential, building million-dollar houses is easier (or at least not harder) and more profitable than building "affordable" starter homes.
Making a brick laying robot is easy. I'm happy to do that if you want to fund my mid-life crisis... Note that I did not promise my brick laying robot can effectively compete with human break layers on cost. I fully expect my robot to be at least double the cost of humans doing the same work, and it will be less flexible than humans as well (meaning you need a different robot for different buildings)
Ummmm in time it's inevitable as in 2026 you do not need any skill to be a computer programmer. AI has replaced that once valuable skill and will continue it's way through ever white collar job til the robots (5 to 10 years) start taking the blue collar jobs away.
The blue collar job boom is great present day, but what they are helping build is their machine driven replacement.
Maybe this all sounds hyperbolic, but it's what Musk and all the AI overlords have said as far back as a 2013 or prior. Musk and Altman have noted the need for everyone to be on welfare (Universal Basic Income) since then. And no doubt we see this taking shape now within white collar jobs that once we held in high regard like programming being replaced by AI. I just created a whole startup web design, front-end, back-end development, native iPhone app, Android app and more using Codex (previously i hired others to help me a UI Design Front End guy).
Vibe coding by people with no programming skills is not going to happen.
What will happen is moving to higher and higher code representations. A compiler is already doing 99% of the actual coding when you realize that the only language computers understand is assembly.
I am a UX Researcher, UX Design and Developer by trade since 2009. I don't know iphone development, python, any back end stuff and or in depth JS stuff.
But, Codex does and just by typing I just published a startup in python in two weeks using Codex and it's iPhone app will be available soon.
How do you not think AI will not destroy programming jobs if anyone can type to create anything they want or share your screen with Codex and have it guide you via voice? I just feed screenshot after screenshot to Codex to understand what I need to do next. Look forward to being able to share my screen and have it guide me via a voice conversation.
> AI unemploys middle-class workers: AI is stealing jobs from the middle class!
> AI employs unionized middle-class workers: AI is stealing cheap labor from the rest of us!
Come on, you've got to know it's not going to employ those "unionized middle-class workers" for long. Their jobs are sort of like these jobs: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/10/business/ai-white-collar-... ("people participat[ing] in feeding their own careers into the A.I. wood chipper...Many people who contract for these companies understand that this is a short-term opportunity...before they themselves are automated out of the job").
And yeah, there's "sort of no winning" when you're gobbling up resources to build stuff people don't like.
I don't think that ANY project employs electricians and carpenters for long, because they are there to build something that will ideally last decades or more...
I'm not even sure it's as simple as "stuff people don't like." Many of the anti-AI crowd use ChatGPT which kind of complicates the question of "do they REALLY dislike it?"
I guess you could complain that robots will replace electricians and carpenters, but it's still going to be a decade before anyone trusts an LLM to wire a house.
> Many of the anti-AI crowd use ChatGPT which kind of complicates the question of "do they REALLY dislike it?"
Not more "revealed choice" BS. There's no free choice: even if someone doesn't want to use ChatGPT, they may not be allowed to avoid it. I'm literally forced to use it at work, for instance. Others may be forced to use it due to market or other pressures.
Personally, I wouldn't mind of someone dropped a couple cluster bombs on each of these AI data centers, after construction is complete, and LLMs just disappeared as a practical technology.
> I don't think that ANY project employs electricians and carpenters for long, because they are there to build something that will ideally last decades or more...
See my reply to the other guy who made the same point before you did.
> Not more "revealed choice" BS. There's no free choice
I'm not even talking about at work, I'm saying that a large majority of Americans are using AI of their own free will in situations where it's not required but is genuinely useful. The sheer number of people means that a lot of them must also say they're anti-AI, and my point is that whether or not they say they like it they're undeniably choosing to use it.
> Personally, I wouldn't mind of someone dropped a couple cluster bombs on each of these AI data centers, after construction is complete, and LLMs just disappeared as a practical technology.
This would be great if your goal was limiting AI access to the rich, but I'm pretty sure that would be much worse than democratizing access.
> See my reply to the other guy who made the same point before you did.
Yeah, and I still don't get it. Do you think that qualified electricians struggle to find work? They generally don't, these skills are in high demand and have been for decades. You really haven't made the case for "after they gain more experience on a difficult and high-paying job, they're gonna be unemployed." Everyone in these comments is complaining about waiting lists and backlogs and you're acting like the opposite is true.
>I'm not even talking about at work, I'm saying that a large majority of Americans are using AI of their own free will in situations where it's not required but is genuinely useful. The sheer number of people means that a lot of them must also say they're anti-AI, and my point is that whether or not they say they like it they're undeniably choosing to use it.
I don't think there's really a contradiction there. You can recognize the utility of something while acknowledging that, on the whole, it'd be better if it didn't exist.
If people are using it presumably they're getting some value out of it which means that most objections to datacenters are NIMBYism and not some kind of principled stance.
Datacenters are fine. They're better than most kinds of industrial buildings, by and large they don't illegally set up fields of gas turbines, and their water usage is really not that bad compared to other large users. They make for a few nice, high-paying jobs. Sure, they're ugly and large, but this is America and we have no shortage of ugly, large buildings.
>If people are using it presumably they're getting some value out of it which means that most objections to datacenters are NIMBYism and not some kind of principled stance.
No, one does not follow from the other. I might campaign against the building of a road because I believe the funds could be better spent on something else. If the road is built, am I a hypocrite for using it? No. The road is already there. Whether I use it or not, the funds are already spent. I may as well use it.
Something can be positive under a narrow lens, and a negative under a broader one. There's no hypocrisy in acknowledging both realities.
>Datacenters are fine.
Datacenters and AI are distinct things. Someone can be in favor of one and not the other, with no contradiction.
That's when you say others shouldn't use it while you use it.
I don't like the parts of the city that are full of concrete and (edit: lacking) trees. I still walk or drive through there instead of making a huge detour, I still use them because that's what's there, currently. I know processed food sucks, sometimes it's easiest to grab something that's quick to make or can be eaten instantly because the supermarket is full of them.
And even assuming it means hypocrisy, so? You think you'd withstand examination? Face the arguments, instead of using some abstract fantasies about some average AI critic that doesn't exist as an excuse. At least they're only hypocritical like everyone else including you, instead of acting like a 3 yo, "yeah but you're stupid, so".
> I'm not even talking about at work, I'm saying that a large majority of Americans are using AI of their own free will in situations where it's not required but is genuinely useful.
Where is your data to back up such an assertion? I'm not even sure how you could determine "of their own free will in situations where it's not required but is genuinely useful," except maybe in a yes/no survey question, which is suspect.
It's also worth noting that AI is getting shoved down peoples throats. Want to do a Google Search? Congratulations, you're now using AI of your own "free will"!
> The sheer number of people means that a lot of them must also say they're anti-AI, and my point is that whether or not they say they like it they're undeniably choosing to use it.
Usually when people like you make points like that, they're trying to undermine the "anti" argument by implying hypocrisy. My point is "choice" can't actually reveal that, because the environment of that choice is too complex. The observation is a meaningless factoid.
I was responding to the implied symmetry in the GP: the "employs" does not balance out the "unemploys", because the unemployment is likely permanent and the employment temporary.
And then there's the fucked up resource allocation: throwing around insane amounts of money, driving up the prices of things the people actually want, to build hated things for investors and billionaires, which is a separate issue.
The unemployment of electricians and carpenters is permanent? On a long-enough timescale, where we have much more advanced robotics, probably. Not in the near or medium-term.
The fucked up resource allocation is itself an indicator of wealth inequality. A generation ago growing companies had to go public to access funding. Now they can find all the capital they need in private markets.
just don't forget these are temporary, eventually there will be "enough" data centers, and none of these jobs will exist, so if you are planning a 20 year + career, don't count on this being the norm.
Allegedly many an American 'believes' that Jesus will be back some time right about now. They are serious about this belief, however, it is never explained as to how he waves a magic wand and fixes the many, many entirely man-made problems we have.
But now I see the light. Jesus was a carpenter, right?
I am imagining that Jesus, with his carpentry skills, is driving right now in his Chevy truck to the job site, to help erect that data centre for one of our billionaire overlords.
Just saying, it could happen, and is probably needed to happen, if this data centre build out is to get anywhere near completion.
>however, it is never explained as to how he waves a magic wand and fixes the many, many entirely man-made problems we have.
It's explained in the Book of Revelations - Jesus comes back and kills everyone who isn't Christian (and actually most Christians too) with plagues and fire and violence and burns the world down to ashes. And then (something something multi-headed dragon something something Whore of Babylon) a giant cube-shaped crystal city drops down from space lit by God's radiance and all of the dead Christians come back wearing white robes to live there and eat and drink and praise Jesus forever and never leave because why would you?
And belief in this is legitimately a big part of why we will never take climate change seriously.
An overwhelming number of Christians do not believe this and do not interpret Revelation in this way. The belief that "Jesus will come back and solve everything instantly" is only held by a minority of small 2nd Great Awakening groups and a few outspoken Evangelical groups, and is unique to theological traditions that arose in the United States. The official teachings of the Catholic Church, Orthodox Churches, Anglican and Episcopal communions, Presbyterian denominations, etc and other mainline Christians don't believe this. Before you blame a group for ruining the world or rejecting climate change please actually talk to a representative sample of real people in the group you are making claims about.
Due to the southern strategy that has been cemented into 1/2 of the available political parties for the better part of the last 50 years, outspoken evangelical groups hold an outsized influence on policy at large. Evangelicals are also the largest donors to AIPAC, which heavily influences our society.
It doesn't matter that most Christians don't believe it. Most Muslims don't do violent attacks on civilians, yet they all seem to pay the price either in their home countries or in the US.
It seems world-wide, a hard-right extremist subset of religious believers are ruining things for everyone else.
An overwhelming number of Christians with relevant political and economic power believe this. Orthodox, Anglicans, Episcopalians etc. might as well be a rounding error compared to the influence of American Evangelical and Conservative Christians. Might as well bring up the Amish while you're at it.
You might have a point about Catholics in terms of sheer numbers, but... the only people still listening to Catholics are right wing chuds and Warhammer fans - and even the former aren't listening anymore because the Pope is too "woke" for them. The days when the Pope's word mattered are long, long gone. What happened when he gave his encyclical on AI? It made headlines for a day or two then the world proceeded to ignore the silly hat man as usual.
So I stand by my point. The Christians who matter as far as climate change policy is concerned don't care because as far as they're concerned this world just exists for God to burn anyway.
Are you under the impression that after the seven seals and seven trumpets and four horsemen and oceans turning to blood and earthquakes and famines and everything leading to a new Heaven and new Earth that most people will survive unscathed?
The entire thesis of Christian eschatology is that everyone who isn't Christian burns in hell. And Matthew says regarding the end times "Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity."
Maybe you should read your Bible again, it's pretty clear that Heaven is meant to be a very exclusive club that even most Christians won't get into.
>"Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity."
It's in the context of describing false prophets? It makes sense.
>Heaven is meant to be a very exclusive club that even most Christians won't get into
This is just false. At least be accurate if you have a major problem with the bible? I'm not really sure this is a great context to discuss further.
I was just looking for your reference about Jesus coming back to kill all the christians. Unfair to spout these types of things without some sort of basis right?
>It's in the context of describing false prophets? It makes sense.
I see no evidence from the text that false prophets are being described. False prophets don't cast out demons and do miracles. I know the prior verse talks about false prophets (and do please give me a definition for that which doesn't encompass most Christians) but it's just an assumption on your part that this verse is exclusively talking about false prophets. False prophets don't tend to do miracles, cast out demons, and witness. These are people who seem to put in more effort than most, and are sincere in their belief.
>I was just looking for your reference about Jesus coming back to kill all the christians. Unfair to spout these types of things without some sort of basis right?
I never said Jesus was coming back to kill all the Christians, I said Jesus was coming back to kill most Christians and all of everyone else.
And that is simply and unambiguously the canon. The only point that can be argued is how many Christians are a part of the body count. It certainly isn't zero.
I had the guy rocking up in his truck to spend a day doing carpentry for our AI overlords, and could not see the magic wand.
So now we have him solving the world's problems by killing everyone, apart from a few good people, so have we moved on from a magic wand to a magic wonder weapon?
We should be scared of this man coming back, not waiting patiently for thousands of years. Honestly, I try my hardest to understand it, but I see a greater chance of vast AI data centers in space due to a shortage of resources on earth.It is not going to happen.
Oh, so you are happy for them? You do realize that home owneer and landlords don't get any contracts anymore and prices skyrocket for normal people? That makes you happy, huh?
>50% of the US population live in single-family, detached houses. It is one thing to be combative, it is another to be combative and wrong. "normal" people live in detached homes
What passes for "AI" these days hasn't successfully replaced workers doing even the most menial jobs. Several efforts have been made by massive corporations to get "AI" to take fast food orders at the drive thru and so far they've failed. While I think there are still some trials out there, "AI" hasn't managed to take humans out of that workforce and that job is so simple that literal children often do it successfully.
I don't think we have to worry about "AI" being capable of replacing electricians and carpenters any time soon and that's ignoring all the unsolved problems with the robotics.
It's nice to have sci-fi fantasies and everything, but in the real world tradespeople are going to be around for a very very long time. They won't be building data centers for that long though. This is a short term hike in demand that just isn't going to last.
I think you'll be surprised about that. I'm not in the robotics field (though perhaps I should be) but at an earlier stage in life I spent several years on remodelling and building houses - as in swinging a hammer, not singing deeds and checks.
Repair/remodeling is challenging because you need (approximate) knowledge of construction techniques from across a 150 year timespan, buildings settle and change shape over time, and generally owners don't usually want the building completely gutted and rebuilt from scratch. But it's not that hard. New construction is relatively straightforward. The biggest challenges for construction robots will be handling dust/debris (25% of construction work is cleaning things up) and maintaining health and safety (of the robots themselves; self-preservation is a skill that has to be learned).
That said I don't think you'll see this with the current generation of humanoid robots. A lot of the design assumptions seem almost comically wrong to me.
Factory workers maybe but all processes have to be redesigned with design for robotic automation in mind. That will displace a lot of people and they will naturally go into the trades since the skills translate more easily so while I agree they wont be replaced there may be downward pricing pressure.
I hear China is doing a lot of this already to stave off their upcoming demographic collapse. I haven't seen raw details or videos though other than demonstration stuff (anyone have anything to share?)
“Every time you ask for another dollar in wages, a thousand more robots start looking more practical.” -Roger B. Smith (GM CEO in the 1980s).
Factories have been automating for decades. Last factory tour I took they said in 1950 this plant had over 2000 employees working, now (2019) about 200. Then he pointed to the laser cutter which alone replaced 150 workers with just 2. This factory is not considered very automated by modern standards either.
Yes I am very familiar with auto automation. They are amazing. Tesla went so overboard that maybe the ROI isn't even there for some processes (installing wheels on a car by industrial robot? They repeated the mistakes GM made in the 70s and 80s with being too early and robots being ripped out and left in the parking lots.
Already products are designed for robotic automation: reduce fasteners, make a single piece do more, make sure a blind one armed dumb person can put the thing together(thats basically the industrial single arm robots you have in factories today).
Still maybe this time is different...but to be fair I put the caveat that you must design the product from the ground up for this new kind of potential automation. (I was talking about the new bipedal vision robots not the old school industrial robot arms) What that looks like? Well the Chinese are probably cooking something up for sure and hopefully somewhere in the US its happening as well.
Yes, that's good. It also prices out a lot of other better uses for their labor. Projects I work on have seen prices soar. I don't consider building the things everyone hates because they promise concentration of wealth and an attack on labor at the expense of building literally anything else to be somehow a big W for labor because a few people get a slightly higher temporary paycheck. Ask the Wagyu cows how they feel about the hand they are dealt.
"It also prices out a lot of other better uses for their labor...."
"Projects I work on..."
Considering we are in a gigantic housing shortage, it would be great if a house didn't have to compete for talent with a data center.
The housing shortage has nothing to do with a lack of electrical engineers or plumbers. It’s entirely self inflicted and cheaper electricians will not change that.
More directly: I doubt there will be a meaningful increase in housing in states that have banned construction of new data centers (NY, Maine) than those where data centers are allowed to be built.
tbf, I don't think Wagyu cows were that thrilled about their lot in life before Wagyu became a thing, either.
You may have a unique perspective on that, though...
wouldn't the analogy be Wagyu farmers?
resi has been drained pretty hard in the last 10 years, this just adds more fuel to the fire.
I am, exactly right this minuit, trying to explain that I am not able to quote competitivly for certain types of specialised metal work as there are specialists for that, but am facing insistent inquirys anyway.I do clean sheet custom one of a kind projects as a rule, for which, due to AI recomending my company through some imaculate process, I am exploring how much I can charge for helping the singuarity along, though all in all I am glad I have other skill sets to deploy should we run the whole thing into the ground.
> Projects I work on have seen prices soar.
Could you be more specific? Things are still competitive in the large commercial electrical market I am bidding in, if you’re bidding to make more than 10-15% you’ll get underbid by someone willing to accept a lower profit margin.
>a lot of other better uses for their labor
Who on Earth are you to decide what is the "better" use for labor? And do you scrutinize every construction project or only AI?
Is it a waste when contractors build a temporary set for a trashy reality TV show? A factory that makes cosmetics for dogs?
Having someone the arbiter of what is the "right" use of labor is communism. In capitalism, people get to decide for themselves what they work on and what they buy.
Uhm, aren't we all allowed to have an opinion on what's best for mankind?
FWIW I am a high voltage test engineer.
I used to be an electrician.
I would prefer to build the substations that power machines for the benefit of all mankind, rather than data centers that feed the already wealthy.
For example, keep the lights on for schools.
You have a warped view of the world if you believe anything should be allowed to be built just because someone has the capital to build it.
These sort of moral grandstanding arguments are annoying.
There is no "moral grandstanding". I wish to live in a functional society.
> Who on Earth are you to decide what is the "better" use for labor?
> In capitalism, people get to decide for themselves what they work on
Feels like there are some mixed signals here.
If Meta decided to pivot to a brothel and meth lab building spree would you consider that to be a worse, equal, or better use of their capital and the labour in the regions where they are building out this infrastructure? Why?
I mean, at least some of us would consider it better with meth and hookers than them ruining the internet with their panopticon shit.
There's sort of no winning here!
AI unemploys middle-class workers: AI is stealing jobs from the middle class!
AI employs unionized middle-class workers: AI is stealing cheap labor from the rest of us!
The employment is temporary, what follows a net negative, is the idea.
And "AI" as a concept has has no agency. This is all about humans who seek to further concentrate wealth.
That's pretty disingenuous.
The people losing jobs to AI can't just pivot into the trades. When you think about it, companies announcing they're pivoting into some other area where they have no prior background is usually a bit of a desperation move, aided by the fact that companies don't need to be licensed in any way to offer particular services, other than maybe in the military/national security sector.
As for the second point, it's true that this is just old-fashioned supply and demand. I predict the outcome is that there's a rush into the construction/contracting sector followed by a bust due to either the tech bubble popping and construction slowing way down, or the replacement of construction workers by humanoid robots, or perhaps some better form factor like robot spiders that can squeeze into small places - all the benefits of child labor but with double the appendages and double the productivity!
However, I'm not worried about the possibility of a robot takeover. The American people's final safeguard against a robot uprising is the irrationality of imperial weights and measures. Robots are digitals and can't do fractions like us higher beings. That's why I'm building my data centers measuring everything in cubits.
As an engineer in the US - we already do all the math in metric units. There are conversion functions in the UI layer to transform our units to whatever you want to see. (they also convert metric units if you don't like the units were are using internally)
> AI employs unionized middle-class workers: AI is stealing cheap labor from the rest of us!
What cheap labour? Tradespeople are not cheap (especially if you factor in the quality of the work). This just makes them even more expensive. Meaning a big impact on homes – you know, the things people and families live in, in order to survive. Pretty important
>Meaning a big impact on homes – you know, the things people and families live in, in order to survive.
Maybe those people should pay their tradespeople better then. Everybody's all "workers should be paid more" until they're the one paying the worker.
"Those people" who? Homebuilders? You're saying you think the cost of homebuilding should be much higher? When I listen to some of you guys it's not hard for me to see why these DCs are so unpopular
Everyone should just compete with the trillions of dollars of capital floating around for AI? And it's their fault for suddenly being 'poor'?
Sounds like you're assuming people are paying pennies for labour. I don't think that's true at all
While we're at it, how much should small bathroom, 2 week renovation cost? $100,000 in labour?
> While we're at it, how much should small bathroom, 2 week renovation cost? $100,000 in labour?
Obviously much more than 2 weeks worth of work at a commercial job, since that's the worst possible kind of work you could ever offer any tradesman. Maybe 8x the hourly rate would be fair since it's intermittent work with generally horrible customers?
It's been interesting to watch the IT/engineering classes all of a sudden pretend to care about labor costs and outsourcing/job loss. As an industry they have been by far the most impactful in reducing wages, enabling outsourcing, and "gaining efficiency" via automation while as a class being paid top-tier wages for doing so. There is not another industry more directly culpable for blue collar job loss except perhaps finance and banking.
Only now when the shoe is on the other foot do such folks seem to care at all.
Learn to code indeed.
For any electricians/plumbers/etc. out there? Go get yours. When the shoe was on the other foot you were mocked and told to switch careers, lowballed on horrible residential projects, told to skill up and get better if you wanted to get paid more, there was no future in the trades, etc. Make hay while the sun shines and ignore the bleating. At least this time around the bubble is sharing a bit of that tech wealth.
> For any electricians/plumbers/etc. out there? Go get yours. When the shoe was on the other foot you were mocked and told to switch careers, lowballed on horrible residential projects, told to skill up and get better if you wanted to get paid more, there was no future in the trades, etc. Make hay while the sun shines and ignore the bleating.
yeah instead they did the smart thing and they got together and passed protectionist policy to artificially inflate the value of their labor. Let's see how union tough you are when the administration changes and you have to compete with a global labor pool again.
That small bathroom job is literally the worst case scenario for a tradesman. They have to work nearly as hard to line that up as better paying longer term commercial work.
The residential buyer is the source of much less repeat work, is harder to deal with, more price conscious and harder to collect from than the commercial buyer they could be working for.
Anyone that can competently market, manage, and execute that small job can do the same for better customers.
The residential buyer has one advantage though: they do not demand as much from those working. You can start this business today, and likely find enough friends and family willing to take a chance on you that you can get started and from there you have references. Commercial projects tend to be big enough that you cannot get into them without experience (which in turn you cannot get).
The crew that can build a driveway cannot build a parking lot, and they will never be able to break into that market because it requires experience that a driveway cannot give. From a parking lot there is then road building - the previous companies cannot break into them. Again there are just not enough projects of the size that sits in between to build experience.
And even in residential, building million-dollar houses is easier (or at least not harder) and more profitable than building "affordable" starter homes.
And in time AI robots will reduce the need for these blue collar workers who are presently helping replace the white collar workers.
Just learned of a new acronym today "NILF," not in the labor force with over one million supposed NILFs out there -- dropped out and gave up.
Good luck with robots traing to lay up bricks, or doing plumbing in a home.
Making a brick laying robot is easy. I'm happy to do that if you want to fund my mid-life crisis... Note that I did not promise my brick laying robot can effectively compete with human break layers on cost. I fully expect my robot to be at least double the cost of humans doing the same work, and it will be less flexible than humans as well (meaning you need a different robot for different buildings)
Ummmm in time it's inevitable as in 2026 you do not need any skill to be a computer programmer. AI has replaced that once valuable skill and will continue it's way through ever white collar job til the robots (5 to 10 years) start taking the blue collar jobs away.
The blue collar job boom is great present day, but what they are helping build is their machine driven replacement.
Maybe this all sounds hyperbolic, but it's what Musk and all the AI overlords have said as far back as a 2013 or prior. Musk and Altman have noted the need for everyone to be on welfare (Universal Basic Income) since then. And no doubt we see this taking shape now within white collar jobs that once we held in high regard like programming being replaced by AI. I just created a whole startup web design, front-end, back-end development, native iPhone app, Android app and more using Codex (previously i hired others to help me a UI Design Front End guy).
Vibe coding by people with no programming skills is not going to happen. What will happen is moving to higher and higher code representations. A compiler is already doing 99% of the actual coding when you realize that the only language computers understand is assembly.
I am a UX Researcher, UX Design and Developer by trade since 2009. I don't know iphone development, python, any back end stuff and or in depth JS stuff.
But, Codex does and just by typing I just published a startup in python in two weeks using Codex and it's iPhone app will be available soon.
How do you not think AI will not destroy programming jobs if anyone can type to create anything they want or share your screen with Codex and have it guide you via voice? I just feed screenshot after screenshot to Codex to understand what I need to do next. Look forward to being able to share my screen and have it guide me via a voice conversation.
That's correct! AI is a negative for society no matter how you look at it. That's the entire idea!
> There's sort of no winning here!
> AI unemploys middle-class workers: AI is stealing jobs from the middle class!
> AI employs unionized middle-class workers: AI is stealing cheap labor from the rest of us!
Come on, you've got to know it's not going to employ those "unionized middle-class workers" for long. Their jobs are sort of like these jobs: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/10/business/ai-white-collar-... ("people participat[ing] in feeding their own careers into the A.I. wood chipper...Many people who contract for these companies understand that this is a short-term opportunity...before they themselves are automated out of the job").
And yeah, there's "sort of no winning" when you're gobbling up resources to build stuff people don't like.
I don't think that ANY project employs electricians and carpenters for long, because they are there to build something that will ideally last decades or more...
I'm not even sure it's as simple as "stuff people don't like." Many of the anti-AI crowd use ChatGPT which kind of complicates the question of "do they REALLY dislike it?"
I guess you could complain that robots will replace electricians and carpenters, but it's still going to be a decade before anyone trusts an LLM to wire a house.
> Many of the anti-AI crowd use ChatGPT which kind of complicates the question of "do they REALLY dislike it?"
Not more "revealed choice" BS. There's no free choice: even if someone doesn't want to use ChatGPT, they may not be allowed to avoid it. I'm literally forced to use it at work, for instance. Others may be forced to use it due to market or other pressures.
Personally, I wouldn't mind of someone dropped a couple cluster bombs on each of these AI data centers, after construction is complete, and LLMs just disappeared as a practical technology.
> I don't think that ANY project employs electricians and carpenters for long, because they are there to build something that will ideally last decades or more...
See my reply to the other guy who made the same point before you did.
> Not more "revealed choice" BS. There's no free choice
I'm not even talking about at work, I'm saying that a large majority of Americans are using AI of their own free will in situations where it's not required but is genuinely useful. The sheer number of people means that a lot of them must also say they're anti-AI, and my point is that whether or not they say they like it they're undeniably choosing to use it.
> Personally, I wouldn't mind of someone dropped a couple cluster bombs on each of these AI data centers, after construction is complete, and LLMs just disappeared as a practical technology.
This would be great if your goal was limiting AI access to the rich, but I'm pretty sure that would be much worse than democratizing access.
> See my reply to the other guy who made the same point before you did.
Yeah, and I still don't get it. Do you think that qualified electricians struggle to find work? They generally don't, these skills are in high demand and have been for decades. You really haven't made the case for "after they gain more experience on a difficult and high-paying job, they're gonna be unemployed." Everyone in these comments is complaining about waiting lists and backlogs and you're acting like the opposite is true.
>I'm not even talking about at work, I'm saying that a large majority of Americans are using AI of their own free will in situations where it's not required but is genuinely useful. The sheer number of people means that a lot of them must also say they're anti-AI, and my point is that whether or not they say they like it they're undeniably choosing to use it.
I don't think there's really a contradiction there. You can recognize the utility of something while acknowledging that, on the whole, it'd be better if it didn't exist.
If people are using it presumably they're getting some value out of it which means that most objections to datacenters are NIMBYism and not some kind of principled stance.
Datacenters are fine. They're better than most kinds of industrial buildings, by and large they don't illegally set up fields of gas turbines, and their water usage is really not that bad compared to other large users. They make for a few nice, high-paying jobs. Sure, they're ugly and large, but this is America and we have no shortage of ugly, large buildings.
>If people are using it presumably they're getting some value out of it which means that most objections to datacenters are NIMBYism and not some kind of principled stance.
No, one does not follow from the other. I might campaign against the building of a road because I believe the funds could be better spent on something else. If the road is built, am I a hypocrite for using it? No. The road is already there. Whether I use it or not, the funds are already spent. I may as well use it.
Something can be positive under a narrow lens, and a negative under a broader one. There's no hypocrisy in acknowledging both realities.
>Datacenters are fine.
Datacenters and AI are distinct things. Someone can be in favor of one and not the other, with no contradiction.
>You can recognize the utility of something while acknowledging that, on the whole, it'd be better if it didn't exist.
There's a word for that: hypocrisy.
That's when you say others shouldn't use it while you use it.
I don't like the parts of the city that are full of concrete and (edit: lacking) trees. I still walk or drive through there instead of making a huge detour, I still use them because that's what's there, currently. I know processed food sucks, sometimes it's easiest to grab something that's quick to make or can be eaten instantly because the supermarket is full of them.
And even assuming it means hypocrisy, so? You think you'd withstand examination? Face the arguments, instead of using some abstract fantasies about some average AI critic that doesn't exist as an excuse. At least they're only hypocritical like everyone else including you, instead of acting like a 3 yo, "yeah but you're stupid, so".
No. That's not what the word means.
> I'm not even talking about at work, I'm saying that a large majority of Americans are using AI of their own free will in situations where it's not required but is genuinely useful.
Where is your data to back up such an assertion? I'm not even sure how you could determine "of their own free will in situations where it's not required but is genuinely useful," except maybe in a yes/no survey question, which is suspect.
It's also worth noting that AI is getting shoved down peoples throats. Want to do a Google Search? Congratulations, you're now using AI of your own "free will"!
> The sheer number of people means that a lot of them must also say they're anti-AI, and my point is that whether or not they say they like it they're undeniably choosing to use it.
Usually when people like you make points like that, they're trying to undermine the "anti" argument by implying hypocrisy. My point is "choice" can't actually reveal that, because the environment of that choice is too complex. The observation is a meaningless factoid.
But that's true of most carpentry and electrical jobs. In-house carpenters and electricians are a minority.
I was responding to the implied symmetry in the GP: the "employs" does not balance out the "unemploys", because the unemployment is likely permanent and the employment temporary.
And then there's the fucked up resource allocation: throwing around insane amounts of money, driving up the prices of things the people actually want, to build hated things for investors and billionaires, which is a separate issue.
The unemployment of electricians and carpenters is permanent? On a long-enough timescale, where we have much more advanced robotics, probably. Not in the near or medium-term.
The fucked up resource allocation is itself an indicator of wealth inequality. A generation ago growing companies had to go public to access funding. Now they can find all the capital they need in private markets.
just don't forget these are temporary, eventually there will be "enough" data centers, and none of these jobs will exist, so if you are planning a 20 year + career, don't count on this being the norm.
Nah. If USA returns to its senses we are going to need tons of tradespeople to build all the stuff we need for the billion Americans.
Allegedly many an American 'believes' that Jesus will be back some time right about now. They are serious about this belief, however, it is never explained as to how he waves a magic wand and fixes the many, many entirely man-made problems we have.
But now I see the light. Jesus was a carpenter, right?
I am imagining that Jesus, with his carpentry skills, is driving right now in his Chevy truck to the job site, to help erect that data centre for one of our billionaire overlords.
Just saying, it could happen, and is probably needed to happen, if this data centre build out is to get anywhere near completion.
supply side jesus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Jesus
>however, it is never explained as to how he waves a magic wand and fixes the many, many entirely man-made problems we have.
It's explained in the Book of Revelations - Jesus comes back and kills everyone who isn't Christian (and actually most Christians too) with plagues and fire and violence and burns the world down to ashes. And then (something something multi-headed dragon something something Whore of Babylon) a giant cube-shaped crystal city drops down from space lit by God's radiance and all of the dead Christians come back wearing white robes to live there and eat and drink and praise Jesus forever and never leave because why would you?
And belief in this is legitimately a big part of why we will never take climate change seriously.
An overwhelming number of Christians do not believe this and do not interpret Revelation in this way. The belief that "Jesus will come back and solve everything instantly" is only held by a minority of small 2nd Great Awakening groups and a few outspoken Evangelical groups, and is unique to theological traditions that arose in the United States. The official teachings of the Catholic Church, Orthodox Churches, Anglican and Episcopal communions, Presbyterian denominations, etc and other mainline Christians don't believe this. Before you blame a group for ruining the world or rejecting climate change please actually talk to a representative sample of real people in the group you are making claims about.
Due to the southern strategy that has been cemented into 1/2 of the available political parties for the better part of the last 50 years, outspoken evangelical groups hold an outsized influence on policy at large. Evangelicals are also the largest donors to AIPAC, which heavily influences our society.
It doesn't matter that most Christians don't believe it. Most Muslims don't do violent attacks on civilians, yet they all seem to pay the price either in their home countries or in the US.
It seems world-wide, a hard-right extremist subset of religious believers are ruining things for everyone else.
An overwhelming number of Christians with relevant political and economic power believe this. Orthodox, Anglicans, Episcopalians etc. might as well be a rounding error compared to the influence of American Evangelical and Conservative Christians. Might as well bring up the Amish while you're at it.
You might have a point about Catholics in terms of sheer numbers, but... the only people still listening to Catholics are right wing chuds and Warhammer fans - and even the former aren't listening anymore because the Pope is too "woke" for them. The days when the Pope's word mattered are long, long gone. What happened when he gave his encyclical on AI? It made headlines for a day or two then the world proceeded to ignore the silly hat man as usual.
So I stand by my point. The Christians who matter as far as climate change policy is concerned don't care because as far as they're concerned this world just exists for God to burn anyway.
>Jesus comes back and kills everyone who isn't Christian (and actually most Christians too)
I don't recall this part what's the reference
Are you under the impression that after the seven seals and seven trumpets and four horsemen and oceans turning to blood and earthquakes and famines and everything leading to a new Heaven and new Earth that most people will survive unscathed?
The entire thesis of Christian eschatology is that everyone who isn't Christian burns in hell. And Matthew says regarding the end times "Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity."
Maybe you should read your Bible again, it's pretty clear that Heaven is meant to be a very exclusive club that even most Christians won't get into.
>"Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity."
It's in the context of describing false prophets? It makes sense.
>Heaven is meant to be a very exclusive club that even most Christians won't get into
This is just false. At least be accurate if you have a major problem with the bible? I'm not really sure this is a great context to discuss further.
I was just looking for your reference about Jesus coming back to kill all the christians. Unfair to spout these types of things without some sort of basis right?
>It's in the context of describing false prophets? It makes sense.
I see no evidence from the text that false prophets are being described. False prophets don't cast out demons and do miracles. I know the prior verse talks about false prophets (and do please give me a definition for that which doesn't encompass most Christians) but it's just an assumption on your part that this verse is exclusively talking about false prophets. False prophets don't tend to do miracles, cast out demons, and witness. These are people who seem to put in more effort than most, and are sincere in their belief.
>I was just looking for your reference about Jesus coming back to kill all the christians. Unfair to spout these types of things without some sort of basis right?
I never said Jesus was coming back to kill all the Christians, I said Jesus was coming back to kill most Christians and all of everyone else.
And that is simply and unambiguously the canon. The only point that can be argued is how many Christians are a part of the body count. It certainly isn't zero.
As one miracle is solved, another is opened.
I had the guy rocking up in his truck to spend a day doing carpentry for our AI overlords, and could not see the magic wand.
So now we have him solving the world's problems by killing everyone, apart from a few good people, so have we moved on from a magic wand to a magic wonder weapon?
We should be scared of this man coming back, not waiting patiently for thousands of years. Honestly, I try my hardest to understand it, but I see a greater chance of vast AI data centers in space due to a shortage of resources on earth.It is not going to happen.
Oh, so you are happy for them? You do realize that home owneer and landlords don't get any contracts anymore and prices skyrocket for normal people? That makes you happy, huh?
> home owneer and landlords don't get any contracts anymore and prices skyrocket for normal people
i like how you differentiated "normal people"
>50% of the US population live in single-family, detached houses. It is one thing to be combative, it is another to be combative and wrong. "normal" people live in detached homes
What’s the detachment of the home have to do with it?
It specifies that these are not condos, these are homes on lots. "Normal" people live on properties with a yard, not apartments
I guess us "Normal" people prefer to discuss all relevant information and not just post jaded comments that defy reality
For the next 6 months until they get all replaced by robots
What passes for "AI" these days hasn't successfully replaced workers doing even the most menial jobs. Several efforts have been made by massive corporations to get "AI" to take fast food orders at the drive thru and so far they've failed. While I think there are still some trials out there, "AI" hasn't managed to take humans out of that workforce and that job is so simple that literal children often do it successfully.
I don't think we have to worry about "AI" being capable of replacing electricians and carpenters any time soon and that's ignoring all the unsolved problems with the robotics.
It's nice to have sci-fi fantasies and everything, but in the real world tradespeople are going to be around for a very very long time. They won't be building data centers for that long though. This is a short term hike in demand that just isn't going to last.
Sounds like Elon months, that means a decade of safe employment at least..
Doubt we'll see electricians, plumbers or carpenters being replaced anytime soon.
I think you'll be surprised about that. I'm not in the robotics field (though perhaps I should be) but at an earlier stage in life I spent several years on remodelling and building houses - as in swinging a hammer, not singing deeds and checks.
Repair/remodeling is challenging because you need (approximate) knowledge of construction techniques from across a 150 year timespan, buildings settle and change shape over time, and generally owners don't usually want the building completely gutted and rebuilt from scratch. But it's not that hard. New construction is relatively straightforward. The biggest challenges for construction robots will be handling dust/debris (25% of construction work is cleaning things up) and maintaining health and safety (of the robots themselves; self-preservation is a skill that has to be learned).
That said I don't think you'll see this with the current generation of humanoid robots. A lot of the design assumptions seem almost comically wrong to me.
Factory workers maybe but all processes have to be redesigned with design for robotic automation in mind. That will displace a lot of people and they will naturally go into the trades since the skills translate more easily so while I agree they wont be replaced there may be downward pricing pressure.
I hear China is doing a lot of this already to stave off their upcoming demographic collapse. I haven't seen raw details or videos though other than demonstration stuff (anyone have anything to share?)
“Every time you ask for another dollar in wages, a thousand more robots start looking more practical.” -Roger B. Smith (GM CEO in the 1980s).
Factories have been automating for decades. Last factory tour I took they said in 1950 this plant had over 2000 employees working, now (2019) about 200. Then he pointed to the laser cutter which alone replaced 150 workers with just 2. This factory is not considered very automated by modern standards either.
Yes I am very familiar with auto automation. They are amazing. Tesla went so overboard that maybe the ROI isn't even there for some processes (installing wheels on a car by industrial robot? They repeated the mistakes GM made in the 70s and 80s with being too early and robots being ripped out and left in the parking lots.
Already products are designed for robotic automation: reduce fasteners, make a single piece do more, make sure a blind one armed dumb person can put the thing together(thats basically the industrial single arm robots you have in factories today).
Still maybe this time is different...but to be fair I put the caveat that you must design the product from the ground up for this new kind of potential automation. (I was talking about the new bipedal vision robots not the old school industrial robot arms) What that looks like? Well the Chinese are probably cooking something up for sure and hopefully somewhere in the US its happening as well.
More like 6 years than 6 months.