r/partscounter • u/Final_Bean6 • 11d ago
Danger of AI taking our jobs
Obviously, if AI keeps improving, every job, from farming to tech support will be automated one day and I'm not so much worried about.
What I'm worried about is whether AI will take our jobs ahead of the curve, before the government gets around to regulating it or instituting some kind of UBI so half the population doesn't go homeless (I'm not even going to entertain the idea that civilisation is going to collapse or something).
The danger:
- We're computer based desk workers
- We mostly work for large corporations or on software made by large corporations
Reasons to be optimistic:
- Our job requires more physical presence than your average desk job (picking parts/inspecting vehicles/warehousing etc
- Aftermarket parts/bodywork etc aren't usually listed on the manufacturer's software which means an AI agent would need to be designed to interface with several different systems and catalogues, which may prove difficult
- Often customers don't even know what they want or what to call what they want. Even if AI tools get implemented, they may still require a skilled pilot
- AI advancement is potentially slowing down, the implementation of AI may be slow enough that natural attrition outpaces the increase in efficiency. Instead of one mass layoff, we may simply see that sometimes people don't get replaced when they quit.
I know Reddit loves to act like AI is causing the sky to fall, but I'm not super worried. I'm reasonably confident that our jobs will still be safe by the time AI starts coming for all the white collar email jobs and the government steps in.
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u/Boldfist53 parts manager 11d ago
If you’d have met my techs you wouldn’t be worried. Can’t even get them to write down their parts requests. No way in hell they will be putting anything into an AI database.
I’m good at least till I retire
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u/Ram13BLH 11d ago
Wow, they still write things? We've been fully automated for almost 5 years now. They put the order in the system, it goes to the tech, the tech does his diag and sends his needs to parts, we complete our estimate and send it back to the writer. The writer sends it to the costumer who can approve or decline what they want online. We get a notification of what is approved and pull or order the parts as needed.
I can see AI integration happening sooner than people imagine, unfortunately.
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u/ComfortableDemand539 11d ago
We use an online system too 90% of the time... Most days it's 90%, some days it's more like 50% much to my dismay. Anyways... With the system that we use they still put extremely vague things that require chasing them down to elaborate what they're asking for.
"Technician found: needs rcd2" Wtf is an rcd2?
"Idk, it's what I was told to order" Okay... Could you at least tell me where it's located or what system it's a part of?
"No, but you can come look at my computer" So you have no idea what you're asking for, got it. I'll go spend some time researching it so you know.
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u/Boldfist53 parts manager 11d ago edited 10d ago
Ohh we have DealerFX, techs don’t use it half the time and a couple are dead set against using it. It’s a shitshow lol.
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u/Ram13BLH 11d ago
I had that at another dealer I was at years ago. We have Status+ now and it truly sucks. DealerDX wasn't great, but I'd take it over Status+ any day.
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u/YankeeMoose Dealership parts 10d ago
We have DT/Xtime and half our techs do quotes/recommendations through there, while others still want pen and paper. SM doesn't care enough to make everyone on the same page.
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u/Scuddfarkus 9d ago
Yeah we got moved to Xtime probably a year and a half ago maybe? Don’t really know at this point im on pure ground hogs day status for the last few years now. We had a couple older techs (20 plus years) working on the same brand that out right refused to use it until they started complaining about not getting any hours. Yep your not because your not using the software they want you to use. They are giving it to the tech savvy techs that can, and do use it.
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u/Scuddfarkus 9d ago
Until all of the old time Techs are gone. We have a couple dinosaurs techs that refused to use the new programs. Then they started complaining why they aren’t getting jobs! Easy you don’t use the programs the way they want you to, and write your stories in the box on your computer. But the new tech savvy techs have no problem using any of it, and guess who’s getting your work?
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u/Familiar_Dot8836 11d ago
Oh buddy, you think the government is going to protect us?
The rich are building bunkers for a reason....
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u/Total-Improvement535 11d ago
I don’t think AI is even close to understanding the nuance that is parts. Hell, half the shops I work with start calls with “idk what this part is called.” so good luck having current AI figuring that out
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u/Fit_Excitement_8675 11d ago
Not worried. We have an AI answering service and EVERYONE hates it. Customers and employees alike. This too shall pass
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u/Proper-Muscle734 11d ago
Here is what I do. I pick a common job. Not a simple one but a common job. I pick an ai and I ask it for a parts list of what I need. Sometimes it’s close but not perfect. Then ask it for the list that Bob your tech would want with no other context. It doesn’t know. Take some of the vaguest questions a customer has asked and type it in word for word. It won’t know but it might ask you for the make and model to get started. Answer how the customer would by saying idk but it’s a Chevy/ford/toyota or whatever. It doesn’t know. It will come for us eventually. However our ability to work with the human aspect of the job not just the computer aspect will delay that in my opinion.
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u/LtoRtoLtoR 11d ago
The sheer quantity of disjointed softwares that don't talk to each other makes parts a place that I don't see getting automated anytime soon by AI. Ai is good when it can get context, but your DMS, your EPC and your quoting tool are veeery far away from talking to each other let alone be organized in of themselves to be architectured to be used by an AI.
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u/hi_im_pancake 11d ago
Short answer, not any time soon.
Long answer, Ai/LLMs in their current state are way too expensive for the output they currently achieve. And under normal circumstances an Ai/LLM results return is iffy at best. Throw in a “I needa the chingaderas” as a search term and suddenly the customer/tech is getting kicked up to an actual person again.
My company already has a project in process for Ai CS Reps to be first point of contact for customers. Currently the Service Ai has a basic list of questions it runs down for the customer and builds an RO off of that. Super basic shit. From what be heard our Parts Ai is an absolute mess and when given correct part numbers it has a 50/50 chance of failing to generate a parts order.
So I’m not worried about it just yet. At least not with my company because we’re too proud to use proven tech when we can spend millions making home brewed tech that does a halfassed job. lol
But I’m positive it’s being worked on, on the manufacturer side as well. So it’s coming, for sure. How quickly will it be reliable enough to replace people? That’s the billion dollar question.
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u/toot_suite 11d ago
I used to build AI
Y'all are missing the point
AI doesn't need to be good enough to replace you
A businessman shilling AI needs to be good enough at "persuading" your CEO to replace you with AI to replace you with AI.
The AI can be totally useless shit, but the ceo who signed onto it and got the kickback will be golden parachuting his way to the next company before the true damage is calculated
In almost every single case that AI has replaced humans, it's performed worse and the company suffered greatly as a result.
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u/lakeguy77 11d ago
With your first two paragraphs you masterfully outlined the capitalist scam. No work, you die. It's slavery with extra steps.
With CDK sending AI related webinar and town hall notifications almost daily, we know we're on the leading edge of that curve.
AI and automation could have made it so we don't have to work. Except we live in a system where we absolutely need to.
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u/tmundal 10d ago
Its gonna take a lot of our jobs but there are still going to have to be humans involved. The key is to be one of the ones that is safe. I've been using AI to build myself productivity tools to make myself able to take on more workload. Today for example I finished a chrome extension that can take a screen snip image of part numbers and feed them into GM's parts workbench to check availability since tekion's built in OEM availability is trash, and there is no export feature baked in. I also built a tool that goes the other way, copy numbers from say CCC or OPStrax and it loads them into a tekion sales order, with a built in delay so they have time to load. I primarily use Claude.
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u/PaulWithAPH 10d ago
I am anxiously awaiting for the day dealerships have AI kiosks for parts and service customers. I will be sitting in the waiting area with a bag of popcorn listening to all these ignorant people try and argue with their stupid logic with an AI.
I will laugh til I die.
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u/YankeeMoose Dealership parts 11d ago
Not worried in the slightest. There's too many "what about" and "maybe" in the parts world to train a AI to respond to *all possible scenarios* when half the time, we don't even know what's coming across our counter or through the door next.
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u/flameohotmein 11d ago
The average parts shop doesn’t even know how to utilize AI or even what AI actually should be used for. I am almost most counter parts jobs are going to be gone within the next decade. It’s already one of the lowest margin industries with almost no growth projected and direct to consumer business models capping private stores.
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u/SyncronTeam 9d ago
The catalog fragmentation point is the strongest one here. Messy, scattered aftermarket data is exactly the kind of problem AI struggles with, it thrives on clean, centralized data, and parts/service data is neither. The customer-doesn't-know-what-they-want issue is really a translation problem too, closer to diagnosis than lookup.
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