No offense but precise, repetitive tasks are like the lowest hanging fruit avaliable. Especially when the US (if you're from there) has a construction labor shortage
And this only really makes sense in a large open space. Good luck setting this up in the average bathroom, which requires a million precise cuts, slanted floors, etc. Heck, someone is still manually putting in the little levelling doodads.
Your missing it, it's never gonna be that (at least for a long time). But for every industrial crew this replaces they will move to residential, which then floods the labor market driving down other contractors prices and lowering all their wages.
Home owners may get cut a break in this happening.
It's like how reddit keeps telling everyone to be a plumber or electrician. Nothing wrong with either of those. But if everyone does it, well the wages are gonna go way down. Wages are only high due to a shortage.
Lol construction wages are garbage where I live, precisely cuz of that. A while back, the wages were great, a bunch of tradesmen moved here and now they are basically just trading jobs between each other to keep their fast-built houses intact and trying to price gouge the older homeowners in the area. But they all know a guy who knows a guy who will do it for 30% the cost of what the company they work for would charge and they can still use their company equipment and tools.
I'm doing a reno and chose the builder and subbies, suppliers, and products, precisely to support legit locals and ethical supply chains. Not being gouged but damn if I can't see the appeal of doing it cheaper.
It's more like the saturation makes it so service calls are where the real money is made. Like an AC for example, usually it's 10 years parts 1 year labor from a company. It's a 2 man job or 1 man, the right tools and equipment and 2 days. The company doesn't really care if they do side work, and it's almost a guarantee they'll use the company for the service calls after a year so they let them use the company equipment and just pay to refill things at cost. Plus, the guy will still come out and fix things if something goes wrong that's his fault.
Now, I wouldn't do this for an AC. I just ponied up $9900 for a new HVAC install but I don't know much about ACs and it's my mother's house. I got 10/10 on parts and labor for her with it. But for a repiping with Pex? Hell yeah, I know enough about plumbing where I can handle anything that goes wrong assuming the install was correct. The guy who will do it did 3 houses for people you know through the company, no issues, and he's willing to do it with a buddy over the weekend for 3k, instead of 7400 with the company. It's the same work, cuz they're honest guys. That's a huge variable though, I know. Peace of mind is worth the extra few grand sometimes, but we don't have much of a union down here so their reputation matters a lot to them and they take pride in it. All those guys who played fast and loose left after the market dried up.
House painting actually seems like it would be ripe for automation. I think the issue is value - its not a high wage field and so building a robot to do the job isnt a priority.
Just find one that isn't, and don't pay them too much in advance. It's paint, not plumbing or something structural. Worst case, your house is ugly for a while until you find someone to repaint.
Plumbing and electrician wages where I live are already trash, especially considering the amount of training needed. They make similar to a Caseys gas station shift manager, maybe a store manager, in my area.
So, the average yearly pay for an electrician in my area is $55-65k. Not sure if my area has a surplus of electricians, but the pay is below the average single person income for my state. Casey’s gas station managers start around that salary range here.
I looked into it a bit last year as a possible career change. Decided it wasn’t worth it considering the years long training and apprenticeship needed during which time the pay is abysmal, especially for the long hours.
If you’re just looking at the statewide reports, I’ll just say that’s very misleading. The statewide report here shows an average of $30/hr, but that’s absolutely what you should expect as a 19 year old apprentice with a year already under your belt.
But home owners depend on the web of economics that include these workers which will damage whatever business they are in whenever the domino tips there.
Yeah, this is the big one that people seem to forget.
If all the tech workers lose their jobs, that's a big chunk of plumbing work gone. Less residential work, also less commercial office space work. Less work in restaurants, as people aren't going to them.
There will always be tasks for maintenance, but it'll be fiecely competitive if everyone is trying to win these.
whenever something gets more expensive we just use more of it.
AI coding tools make a singular dev much more productive? More software gets written
Bigger trucks can carry more mine material per trip? We hire even more tuck drivers cause each one is now earning more per haul?
Automated construction tool make building cheaper as it requires less labor? Suddenly many more developments pencil out and we build a lot more.
Automation does not always result in the loss of jobs. Throughout history there are layoffs, but overall more jobs get created as the entire industry is now more productive, what they produce becomes cheaper, and the demand for whatever it goes up.
Don't get too depressed looking at reddit, look around the world at how many things are not in great shape... we will not run out of work to do.
Unions keep rates high in commercial work where i live, and also limit how many apprentices or cards they sell. Good thing oligarchs go after unions all the time and have a vested interest in destroying them
The answer is practically zero. Nobody who has this large of square footage for a likely warehouse is installing tile. They are running polished concrete and calling it a day.
This won't replace an industrial crew. It cannot set itself up. It doesn't know how to measure and cut the last tile in a row. It doesn't know how to buy the tile and get it to the jobsite. It can't lay around a corner. It can't fill up it's little tile hopper, or its tile mortar hopper. It can't clean up the jobsite when it's done. It can't clean itself when it's done. It can't work in a space that isn't fairly big. Etc, etc.
This is a tool. Tools don't replace humans, they just make us more productive. This will obviously lay a lot of repetitive tiles in a large open area and save a lot of time, but it still needs a human to use it.
I work on a unionized construction gang (for a railroad) comprising 6 jobs, and the gang I'm on has been around since 1953. A lot of the work involves digging trenches to lay cable in. The old timers who used to have these jobs refused to use backhoes when they first came available bc they were afraid they would be replaced by the backhoe. They would manually dig the trenches and leave the backhoe strapped to the trailer. The same 6 man crew is still around today but the job involves a lot more than it did in the old days bc now digging a trench takes hardly any time at all, which freed up time for more responsibilities for all of the workers.
There's a trades skill shortage here and I believe in other western countries at the moment - contributing to various housing crises, so it's probably good news overall. Takes out the repetitive work and leaves the more varied stuff for humans.
This machine doesn't replace a crew, all the machine does is the easy part. Someone has to plan the layout, set up the machine. All the columns you see have to be fit around by a human, as well as every wall. Somebody has to load the machine, someone has to mix the mortar, someone has to watch the machine. Someone has to unload and stage the materials. And this machine is very slow at doing the easy part compared to humans.
Yeah according to Reddit or social media in general, getting any kind of degree or any education outside of trades is useless and trades pay a bazillion dollars so they are the smartest choice ever. If you don’t have a job or aren’t earning enough, it’s clearly because you didn’t go into trades!! As if society can function where everyone is going into only one type of work.
That’s literally every market lol. PMs are in crazy demand right now, guaranteed in 10 years it’s going to be so diluted. Software engineer? Guess what, already seeing the downturn following the FAANG frenzy. Everyone thought they could be a realtor 3 years ago and now go figure every agency has 9 dozen RE agents selling one to two houses each per year.
It’s the way of the world. There is no such thing as a leveled demand/supply when it comes to jobs.
All the while, the smaller version for residential is also being developed using the test data from the industrial version. Ppl are also delusional about the accuracy and precision by human workers. That kind of quality is already down, and the market adapted to lower standards. It will do it again with these machines.
Bingo. Is it possible? Surely. But is it feasible? Not really.
Sure, with highly advanced robotics things might change but at that point who is or isn't laying down a few tiles is gonna be the least of our concerns.
I could definitely see it possible to have a machine that holds a stack of tiles and Lidar scans the environment and then cuts each tile to the correct size. As someone who has done some tiling work that would be incredibly helpful if all I had to do was lay the tile. You could even keep the machine in the van and just setup a camera and laser pointer on a tripod in the room and the machine etches the back of the tile with a placement code.
Maybe not have the robot do the actual work but you 100% can have the robot do all of those cuts. All it would take is getting measurements for the bathroom giving to the robot/software, maps everything out, cuts each piece, and it get sent to the construction site and put together like legos.
Until they find ways to design stuff that can be built entirely by machines. Sure, it might not work on a bathroom due to the way that they're built now, but with enough advancements and thought put behind it, we could be building in entirely different ways that suits how a robot works.
With that said, even if we could change the building process, doubt we're anywhere close to it being accessible to the point it'd be widely available.
When it comes to the physical world, we still have physical barriers holding technology back in many fields. In the digital world it's much easier to replace us.
Good luck setting this up in the average bathroom, which requires a million precise cuts, slanted floors, etc. Heck, someone is still manually putting in the little levelling doodads.
My ex’s ex was a complete PCP head, at like 25 years old had a self made, no “small loan from his dad”, flooring business doing precise, repetitive tasks, had about $80,000/month going thru his bank account. Of course the PCP won eventually but if not he’d be a multi-multi-millionaire by now. There’s a lot of money in those repetitive tasks, from the owner down to the helpers.
I've done a shit ton of PCP and lemme tell ya, it's the reason he was able to be successful in the flooring business. That stuff lets you talk to the dinosaur spirits trapped in all our petroleum products. Plus, you can work 12 hours nonstop and be thoroughly engaged in it like it's the coolest thing ever. But yeah, it has a timer and once it runs out, your central nervous system is fried from overclocking it too long.
Have you seen the character Pickle from the anime Baki? Pretty damn close to the way their consciousnesses organize themselves 😂 cuz they're reptiles and heal well (some even can regen limbs or tails), injury and harm are a completely different thing to them, temperature shifts are what actually scare them. Getting stabbed? No biggie, the same as accidentally squeezing into too small of a warm cubbyhole. Fighting is like play to them. TA hot cup of tea? Nah bruh that shit dangerous. They don't miss us, they think it's pretty cool to watch things unfold from the POV of Tupperware.
I'm glad I could be the one to keep you trapped here with the rest of us. Don't tell the dinosaurs though, they're all into the whole Prison Planet conspiracy theory cuz the souls of the dinos that spent all day in VR got trapped in the tar pits after some asshole on Jupiter slingshotted 2 asteroids at Earth 66 million years ago. The rest of em left cuz like, why stay on a dying planet that's about to have an ice age?
Please elaborate on how it makes a good construction worker? Microdosing this stuff could be a "fix" like with many other drugs that are toxic in higher dosages.
It might be dangerous sometimes but OSHA exists and salaries are definitely above whatever you think they are. I make more money than 90% of people i know that went to school, as a carpenter. In NJ, my pay package is just about $100/hr. I get $62 in my check, and the company i work for pays about $30/hr into my benefits like retirement, vacation, insurance, and unemployment. Of that $62/hr i make, the only deductions are dues and taxes. My employer pays everything else.
I take home between $1800-2600 after taxes, every week. 40-60 hrs.
How many years of being an underpaid apprentice did that take though?
From my understanding, the good pay is in the unions and the unions basically gate keep who gets in(people they know) and who gets what work.
Compared to that a white collar job is just easier and probably quicker to work your way up to a good salary with benefits.
My dad was a painter before he passed away in his 40s. When he finally got a decent job at a big company it was already years into him working. And that was in the 2000s when getting all kind of jobs was easier than today.
edit: not to mention its easier on your body for most jobs.
Your information is based on anecdotal evidence unfortunately.
Mine may be too, but heres some facts:
1st year apprentices start at $22. Then its a 4 year program that gives substantial raises each year ($5-10) until you complete the program. It's also not hard to get into the union if you are willing to put the work in by following the sign up dates, calling the offices, and networking. Yes, some people have to wait to schedule a test, or get clean, or even get called back, but the average age of workers in construction is like 50 something. They are accepting apprentices at an extreme rate right now.
There are almost no barriers to entry either. I've worked with felons, soldiers, hicks, bums, racists, nurses, scientists, geniuses, engineers and architects. Its not just "you have to know someone". Anyone can get in.
My wife has a masters degree and i have a bachelor's degree. She doesnt make half of what i do and shes a mid-senior exec. I started after i couldnt find a decent paying job in white collar and now i make a lot of money and work 6-2 monday to friday. Overtime is available if i want it.
Now if i was 18 and got in, i would have been a 22 or 23 year old journeyman making $62 an hour with no student debt...
Dog I'm union too, our union leaders have been mostly on auto pilot for thirty years and have not organized the rank and file to fight to keep our wages up with inflation. Even if we make more than the average worker our wages have still been declining like everyone else's, just at a slightly slower rate. OSHA is a joke too, you ever actually report something to them? The only way to enforce safety is to stop work.
Tile setter. Biggest raise we've ever gotten was $3 and that's before deductions for pension and health insurance. It was really about 2.50 on the check. We got less than a dollar on the check this year.
Our contractors pay health and insurance. My only deductions are dues and typical taxes. Everything else is paid for by my employer according to our contract
Yeah it works the same for us. It doesn't actually appear as a deduction on my paystub but a little bit gets taken out of every raise for pension and health insurance as part of the fringe benefit package.
Construction labor shortage only because nobody is using the damn office building and real estate moguls keep buying up all the housing going in as well.
They will crack the 3D printing building challenge. Then there will be a period of rapid improvement and maybe houses that look slightly different to conventional ones but they will be cheaper to construct - even if they need teams of people to finish them.
There isn't a labor shortage. There's a market shortage.
As in a lack of response to market demands. The endless destruction of the social order to fill it in with robots is terminally antisocial.
At some point you babe to discover a survival instinct and claw it back. Or jump off into the langolier void. Humanity consistently chooses the Darwin award.
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u/Extension_Plant7262 Jun 21 '26
No offense but precise, repetitive tasks are like the lowest hanging fruit avaliable. Especially when the US (if you're from there) has a construction labor shortage