Does AI concern you?

The Coffee Shop
48

We are experiencing this in a big way in Canada. The generation in their late teens - 20s right now seems totally screwed with respect to home ownership.

What is fascinating, and kind of scary, is there are politicians now in their mid-late 20s who have “renter” as part of their ideology and bio, to signal to other people who will never afford to buy they are looking out for their interests. The part that is scary is they seem to find current homeowners as the Boogeyman, not massive corporations buying and developing all the housing. As such, they are making policies that are squeezing people out of their homes and basically serving the housing market up to corporations on a silver platter. In their eyes, If you own a SFH in Canada, you are part of the problem.

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49

I asked once one of these woke idiots from which corporation he is renting. He started arguing and saying shit like its not about me…

50

Terrible Story

ChatGPT assisted suicide

The family of teenager who died by suicide alleges OpenAI’s ChatGPT is to blame

51

I have one daughter a freshman in college and one a junior in h.s. AI is a frequent topic of conversation. Older daughter is wanting to become PA, she may be assisting an AI “Doctor” at some point. At least the technical skills and patient interface will “probably” be human for the foreseeable future. Other daughter is highly adept at STEM topics, specifically math. Her future is a bit more challenging to predict, but we are certainly keeping a high degree of awareness about the influence of AI on future careers. At least as much as we can try to predict…

Wife is working with AI as a software engineer/architect in a major international company. To her, it’s an awesome tool that magnifies her influence and productively, but to lower level people in her field, it may smother career development.

My own career, I’m safe from being replaced and AI is taking over one of my most hated tasks, which is nice. I’m hoping that AI will streamline my procedures and reduce my front office staff in the near future.

It’s hard to wrap our minds around this concept.

Cautiously optimistic, but highly aware of it’s ever growing presence, is my current tone

52

My son’s college writing course this semester requires assignments be done in class due to AI (cheating) concerns. As a computer science and math major, AI is a significant topic with his advisor in regards to his job prospects after graduation.

53

Wow. This is black mirror level insanity.

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54

Beyond the singularity AI is projected to double US electricity use in ten years. Much of which will be generated by fossil fuels. Divert water from municipal systems. Increase electricity costs for regular people. Be configured to enrich wealthy TECH bros who control. Lay off workers. Make the population dumber.

55

Computer science grads be advised to go for the most complicated high level jobs as many lower level ones will be replaced by AI.

56

For a young person right now I would advise becoming a plumber, electrician etc My son is software engineer and daughter in healthcare.

57

The future isn’t particularly bright for trades, either.

58

Can I ask why not?

Many of the white collar parents in my town ruefully say the same thing spockman said about telling kids to go into trades.

People say it half jokingly because they still assume that kids in our town (or at least their kids) will ace the SAT, go to an Ivy or near-Ivy, get that coveted job in law/medicine/consulting/ whatever, etc.

But they’re also not joking because they see the price inflation on college; they see AI threatening their white collar jobs and think it can’t come for hands-on work; and they see that some of the folks who work blue collar jobs in our town have done very well for themselves.

60

A few reasons, some which may be area specific. In general, it feels like trades as a meaningful career has “peaked”. When I graduated highschool in the early 00’s, the prevailing wisdom from parents, guidance councilors and teachers was “just get a degree, any degree, and you’ll have a job for life”. That may have been true for the previous generation, but certainly didn’t prove true for mine and moreso the next gen of kids. I feel like we are at this point with trades. People like myself got in to the trades in a sweet spot. Lots of boomers were retiring, wages were pushed up, but the industry hadn’t really modernized so there was still a large demand for high skilled workers.

Now, due to cost and profit pressure, various shortages, and a drive for efficiency the industry is adapting and changing.

In Canada, we are expanding our temporary foreign worker program, which floods labour markets with cheap labour that the government subsidizes, to the skilled building and trade sector. This is going to suppress wages (which is already happening in the field) and make it incredibly difficult to land an apprenticeship.

Secondly, building is becoming a lot more modular. I feel like the value of a knowledgeable journeyman is becoming diminished as most of their decision making is now being made by engineers and design in pre-construction. As building processes become more efficient it is becoming more about low skilled assembly than highly skilled craftsmanship. A construction crew used to have a pretty healthy ratio of journeymen to apprentices. The journeyman would work, the apprentice would help. Now, it’s typically one journeyman on a crew and cheaper apprentices doing the bulk of the work. The journeyman just supervises. The tradesperson of the future will not have a broad spectrum of experience but a very narrow area of expertise, which will eventually be turned in to a job someone cheaper with less experience can do.

There will always be the service side of things, the industrial sector will be going strong and some cushy union jobs will persist for a while. But I see the commercial and especially residential sectors becoming a lot less lucrative for tradespeople.

Personally, I would caution people going in to the trades to see it as a stepping stone to something else perhaps trades-adjacent. Use the apprenticeship time to build as much skill and knowledge as you can, and after a few years as a journeyman move on. Sales, management, real estate, building tech, engineering etc.

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61

Interesting. I appreciate the thoughtful response.

62

In addition to BCtri’s excellent response above, I suspect there will be a trickle down effect from white collar jobs being displaced by AI. In the trades, there is an equilibrium between job supply and demand. If there is a huge surge in trade apprenticeship because the white collar jobs have dried up, it will depress the demand (and wages) for trades.

Everybody can’t be a plumber…

63

To balance out the doom and gloom, the positive side is that you get paid to learn, unlike a degree.

If you’re 18 right now, don’t want to go to college, and lacking direction, a trade would still be a decent choice for the time being. If you work hard, you will have your certification by 21 with money in the bank. Hopefully you will have kept your eyes and ears open during your apprenticeship and exposed yourself to other career paths in the construction industry. Talk with the engineers, inspectors, consultants, salespeople, designers etc who come through. Be curious and ask questions. There is a pretty strong chance you will find something that catches your interest, and you can leverage your experience to move in to that space with a bit of a leg up.

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64

Yeah, I think that’s how people in my town tend to view their half serious comments.

As in, a parent who is slightly nudging their kid towards the trades, is doing it with the idea that the kid will end up like the guy down the street, who started as a plumber, but now owns and manages his own small regional plumbing business and pulls down a half mil a year.

That guy is great and I admire what he’s built. But I wouldn’t call him a “plumber“ anymore. To me, he’s a small business owner whose business happens to be plumbing. I don’t think he’s had to personally deal with a fecal Jackson Pollock situation at a customer’s house in 20 years.

65

A friend of mine did something similar. He started as a residential carpenter. He always noticed the realtors coming through rolled up in a Mercedes, not a dusty truck. They were well dressed and not in worn out Carhartts, etc. he thought “that looks like a way better gig than what I’m doing”. He befriended the realtor and eventually went to work for him as his assistant. Eventually got his own real estate license, then after maybe 7 or 8 years started doing his own developments. Last year at 40 he celebrated his first million dollar year. Not bad for a guy who never went to college.

66

Has anyone else been following the Robby Starbuck lawsuit against Google’s AI?

67

we’re the same age and this is pretty true.

my wife and i both were good kids in high school, she went to harvard, i went to a respectable school in boston. she went on to get her masters, then phd at mcgill, i went on to get my doctorate.

her cousin, who was a drug dealer, addict, arrested mutliple times, etc became a plumber.

in 2025, he makes more than the both of us combined. i’d be happy for him, but he’s ignorant AF super MAGA, him and his wife are hardcore anti vaxxers, constantly spewing the dumbest shit on fb.

makes me hate the world sometimes. here is someone who got his life better because of social welare systems (he grew up in mass), and “progressive” parents who supported him, never booted him out of the house, got all the 2nd chances in the world and supports and votes against 2nd chances essentially.

68

This NYT article outlines multiple cases, including Starbuck’s.

Last month, Mr. Starbuck also sued Google over its A.I. In the defamation suit, which seeks $15 million in damages, he claimed that Google’s large language models — the technology that helps power the chatbots — had made patently false statements about him. This time, however, he argued that the errors were the deliberate “result of political animus baked into its algorithm.”

Google has not yet formally responded to the complaint, but Jose Castañeda, a company spokesman, said the majority of Mr. Starbuck’s claims dated to 2023 and were addressed at the time. He added, “As everyone knows, if you’re creative enough, you can prompt a chatbot to say something misleading.”

Starbuck has posted a half-hour video describing some of the disturbing, and completely fabricated, claims made by Google AI tools that seem to be more than merely hallucinations. It is partisan in places, but disturbing nonetheless what this tool is capable of doing to anyone.