AI in the trades. Older people don’t understand (Page 3 of 7)
Indelible in the Hippocampus, the Sylvan
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I've looked at implementing it seriously for a few years now at my business and it came up miserably short every single time I went down that road until now. The last few months it has really turned the corner. I don't know that it turned the corner in what it could do, I think IT always could do it... It's turned the corner in actually being able to perform the function I want understanding some pretty normal prompts. It now asks good questions on clarification, it now has finally improved where it leaves shit alone that is boiler plate (ie contract terms etc.). I've spent most of last week and this week cranking up the juice on grok bots and Claude Cowork. Both are legit good at what they do so far. I'm cautiously optimistic, and that's a huge improvement over being repeatedly disappointed in all of my previous ventures in to leveraging "AI". |
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Originally Posted By flcroc: And a side thought.... What happens when everyone uses AI to process bids, and someone drops their price b/c you now have substantially less overhead? That's when the real nut-cutting will start and then contractors will be bitching that they don't the price they used to. Prices come down. That's all. Bitching doesn't change the competitive market. |
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Originally Posted By EncoreGolf: vague statements like that irk me. How? What can it do for my golf shop? It can 100% run your financials. Financial forecasting, new vendor research, costing to see what your margins actually are, not just, “I think I’m making XYZ%.” Social media marketing, advertising, SBA loans. It can do an insane amount of things. You have to do the paid business versions though, the free versions are like the slow cousin that you keep around, but sucks at everything. |
| I offense, OP but the business side of Trades work is not Trades work. It’s office work. |
Never make another person a priority when they merely see you as an option...
"Some People Are Like Slinkies. They're Not Really Good For Anything, But They Bring a Smile To Your Face When Pushed Down The Stairs."
"Some People Are Like Slinkies. They're Not Really Good For Anything, But They Bring a Smile To Your Face When Pushed Down The Stairs."
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Originally Posted By IceChimp: Yeah, I read it, he fired a bunch of people and hired some more to do work which is fine for now, those jobs will be replaced by AI in the future as robotics improves. Further, gaining efficiencies is a temporary boost, there is only so much work to do - every company that wants to survive will adopt AI to gain the same efficiencies or go out of business, those jobs will ultimately be filled from the increasing pool of the jobless from the defunct companies. Let me ask you why you think something designed to replace humans will somehow ultimately create jobs for humans? I don’t think it’ll create as many jobs as it replaces. My case is unique. I also think we don’t actually have as many great workers as people think. Our labor market is already crap. Too many people want money to just sit around and do quality control. Those people can sit on a couch now. |
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Your CPA is going to just love you when you hand them a bunch of AI slop during tax time. I saw it a lot last year and spent an ungodly amount of time having to unf*ck peoples books. A lot of folks just trust AI to not make any mistakes and they themselves have no idea what the output is supposed to look like and they laid off the people who do. I've been informed at least a few of them have gone back to a human thank God. 
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Originally Posted By cash50: Prices come down. That's all. Bitching doesn't change the competitive market. Originally Posted By cash50: Originally Posted By flcroc: And a side thought.... What happens when everyone uses AI to process bids, and someone drops their price b/c you now have substantially less overhead? That's when the real nut-cutting will start and then contractors will be bitching that they don't the price they used to. Prices come down. That's all. Bitching doesn't change the competitive market. Once the slow to adopt crowd finally buys into that tech, mine is paid for so I'm ahead in the overhead race, I'm the SME locally and I've already captured a chunk of the market that way. They just continue to be late to the market over and over and over. 
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Originally Posted By Foxxz: It'll be real fun when it finally screws you. I got screwed by an AI after months of working with it on a computer project which was intricately planned and in which it had the opportunity to course correct at least 10 times over. In the end, it conflated documentation for the stable and developer branches of a piece of software and lead me down the path right until the bitter end when a core tenant of the project finally didn't work and it said "oppsie! i messed up! this won't work!". Literally months of work down the drain. And that was with intense planning, clarification of goals, technical requirements, and so on. It provided me with links to supporting documentation to prove interoperability. Too bad those documents were for software that didn't exist yet or for which there was only partial support for what I was trying to accomplish. 
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"This is a free country, and I have the permits, background checks, licenses, and tax receipts to prove it." --Zippster (4/10/13)
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In ten years when you finally realize you actually do need the skilled office people you laid off nobody will know how to do it or they won't work for someone like you and it'll be some big emergency of your own making. The AI bullshit and trans thing are about neck and neck for the most tiresome lately. |
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Originally Posted By Jayne_Cobb: I never claimed a Marxian definition of value, so your ditch filler example is absurd. I DO claim that employment is better than unemployment, and producing more idle folks is a recipe for societal disaster. |
"This is a free country, and I have the permits, background checks, licenses, and tax receipts to prove it." --Zippster (4/10/13)
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Wait till the AI companies raise token prices to be commensurate with the value folks like OP get out of them… “Oh, that’s nice you’re saving $150k+ a year in labor by using our $100 a month product Mr. Customer. Keep enjoying those new profits, we won’t raise prices on you!” Said no company ever… |
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Originally Posted By 15fanatic: Your CPA is going to just love you when you hand them a bunch of AI slop during tax time. I saw it a lot last year and spent an ungodly amount of time having to unf*ck peoples books. A lot of folks just trust AI to not make any mistakes and they themselves have no idea what the output is supposed to look like and they laid off the people who do. I've been informed at least a few of them have gone back to a human thank God. Automated bookkeeping also can be relatively risk free as most accounting software has had rules for eon's that handle the vast majority of items so we still handle that 5% of transactions manually and then still let the CPA handle review/setup on benefits/taxes etc. Some folks are just lazy and try to offload everything onto the bot and I'm sure they are perfectly capable of a Grade A mess!!! |
| Amazing work, OP. Now that you’ve eliminated those pesky office positions, you and your wife can spend that extra money on imported Turkish shotguns, Chinese consumer goods, and that expensive streaming live sports package. And you still created highly skilled jobs, like a trucker and a couple of laborers. America needs more of you! |
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Originally Posted By Windustsearch: In ten years when you finally realize you actually do need the skilled office people you laid off nobody will know how to do it or they won't work for someone like you and it'll be some big emergency of your own making. The AI bullshit and trans thing are about neck and neck for the most tiresome lately. lol. The problem with bureaucratic bullshit isn’t that it’s something super hard to do, it’s just annoying and takes time. Eliminating it is a good thing. |
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Originally Posted By sirbordsalot311: Amazing work, OP. Now that you’ve eliminated those pesky office positions, you and your wife can spend that extra money on imported Turkish shotguns, Chinese consumer goods, and that expensive streaming live sports package. And you still created highly skilled jobs, like a trucker and a couple of laborers. America needs more of you! If we want to build stuff in this country, the laborer is essential to doing that. The social media or office manager isn’t. You can not like that, but it doesn’t change the fact. |
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My kid uses Claude to do all of what Op describes for his biz. It’s mind blowing, actually. |
You should move to the right lane, where the rule of vehicle and traffic law still exists. You will not survive here. You are not a wolf, and the left lane is the land of wolves now.
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Originally Posted By Bigdawg90: We already have it on one of our excavators. More of a gimmick for most things but for trenches it’s amazing. Originally Posted By Bigdawg90: Originally Posted By FistPeso: AI will be driving your machines before too long. We already have it on one of our excavators. More of a gimmick for most things but for trenches it’s amazing. What exactly is AI doing in the excavator? Are you sure you’re not confusing it with gps and the automatics? |
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The motor buggy will never replace my horse. AI is a tool like any tool it comes down to how you use it. Most people use the crap AI on Google that is on their web page and it is bad full of mistakes. AI does make mistakes even the paid for upper tier versions. But as a tool in the tool box it can be awesome as long as you dont treat it as infallible. I use it as a sounding board not as a decision maker. I check its work while using it to check mine back and forth till what I am trying to accomplish works. Huge time saver stuff that would take me weeks before now takes me hours. Garbage in garbage out is still the norm. YMMV
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1Andy2: it's just a question of if we decide to stop throwing coal in the furnace and lean on the brakes or if we're going to blow the boiler up getting to Full Retard'sville.
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I love AI (paid) for the more mindless tasks but I still think you need to carefully review the outputs with a human for more serious tasks. There a lot of people who aren't doing that, trust the output, and send it then look like fools because their AI messed it up. Technology has been replacing jobs and multiplying output per person for a long time. Just look at phones. We used to have rooms full of people that did nothing but manually connect one line to another. Then that got more automated with analog machines. Now it's all digital. A lot of people have busy work jobs where a computer can do it better and faster. No different than replacing telephone operators with machines and then computers. People have always had to evolve and find new ways to make themselves useful. Some people really struggle with that and get left behind. |
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Originally Posted By HeckThomas: I wanted to add the trades were really destroyed by socialists and Roosevelt bringing in the New Deal Architecture, Imagine being a master craftsman in the 1930's. Also makes me think of the Industrial Revolution, factory automation, etc. It's rather interesting to wonder how this will all pan out. No one likes change. That's the social Achilles Heel of capitalism...Creative Destruction reallocates resources to where they are most effectively applied. For better or for worse, humans are one of those resources. |
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Originally Posted By kno3sc3h40: Here is all I have to say. People start companies to make money to spend. They do this so they have moneys to spend. They hire people, because people want moneys to spend. So get rid of peoples moneys and they have nothing to spend for things that people that start companies make. So then no one has moneys. Also what is stopping the large company from using AI and putting you out of buisness. It matters not that you have all kinds of products or services if no one can purchase them. 
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Originally Posted By flcroc: And a side thought.... What happens when everyone uses AI to process bids, and someone drops their price b/c you now have substantially less overhead? That's when the real nut-cutting will start and then contractors will be bitching that they don't the price they used to. Or when you solicit RFQs and RFPs that have requirements for AI cost save proposals on x interval and missing an AI deliverable has penalties. If you want the $20M contract vendors will make it work. |
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Originally Posted By sprtpilot: The mistakes it will make will hurt you, hard. And it won't care or refrain from making the same and new mistakes the next time. This. I’m involved as a domain expert with an AI training project and deal with this multiple times a day. |
"I see dumb people... they're everywhere. They walk around like everyone else. They don't even know that they're dumb."
| Ai is good at information it’s learned on but keeping up with new knowledge like inputs can go floppy. Like the knowledge it digested allows it to pass bar exams and medical boards, coding, but keeping track of employee count and day of the week could go wonky. |
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Originally Posted By Rat_Patrol: I use AI to build custom software. Works wonderfully. Of course I have to be there, give the logic, have the ideas, etc., but the pace at which I can create deployable software is insane compared to done manually with a team of engineers. This! I'll give you an example: I've been pushing for technical proposal automation at work for this entire year - it's been a standard in this industry for well over a decade, but we were still stuck in word/excel hell. The dev teams would only give vague answers: maybe next year, maybe as part of a CRM update at some point, etc. Clearly not really on their road map. I finally got angry enough to take a crack at it with Cursor: after a weekend, we had a workable CPQ (configure, price, quote) tool. After a couple more days of on-and-off work, we now have a completely automated CPQ system that will generate detailed, accurate, customized 5-10 page technical proposals in under 10 mins. It's preloaded with our entire product line (plus all options and several vendor lines), performance specs, graphics, discount structures, etc. It can even generate flow diagrams, basic layout drawings, and financial projections, then drop them right into the proposal. The tool itself doesn't use any AI (unless you use the copilot assistance feature to help write an exec summary) - it's all just local databases and scripts wrapped into a single executable. I have maybe 25-30hrs of work into it, and it probably saved that many manhours in its first week of real usage. I've found that unless someone has experienced it, they can't really grasp what these agentic systems can do - I know I'm just scratching the surface, and I'm still blown away by it. There's simply no comparison between a free chatgpt / copilot / grok conversation and something like Opus 5 when it's slamming out code. |
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Originally Posted By Bigdawg90: My wife and I started integrating AI into our construction business last year. We pay about $500/month for the high end professional level bundles. I don’t think people realize how transformative AI is for the trades. I eliminated our office manager, book keeper, social media marketing, quoter/estimator, and most of our lawyer billable. It’s saved me over $300k in overhead just this year. By the time I leave a quote, it’s already developed the bid for me with scope of work. Last night we received an invitation to bid on a large commercial site prep. By the time I woke up this morning it had prepared a $4 million bid with a perfect earthwork takeoff. I just woke up, reviewed it, made some basic changes to the formatting and sent it off. What used to take 40 hours of office work took it less than 4 hours and it did it while I slept and without input from me. I don’t doubt AI adoption is slow because people just don’t know how to use it for its higher level functions or they just refuse to use it because of the media. It took me about a week to train the agent on the commercial bidding process, but it’s probably saved me 3 months worth of work this year alone. I went from doing stupid menial tasks at the office to hiring 3 more guys and now run another crew myself. Everything from scheduling, to quoting to ordering supplies online is done through our AI agents. I didn’t just pocket the difference in profit. We were able to add 5 positions between the dump truck driver, 3 more laborers and another foreman. I’m making more money than we’ve ever made. I don’t want AI to slow down. I want this thing to basically be able to run the entire business in a year. I’d love to just wake up and work with my hands. I hate office work. It’s so f***** boring. For all you old guys in the trades, say goodbye to the high paying project manager jobs. I’d suggest brushing up on dozer and excavator work. ''Women and children hurt first.'' Office staff is mostly a money loss part of a business. Making or building your widgets is the money earning side. Businesses don't seem to understand that very well. [besides, it's hard to terminate you office buddy who golfs with you on fridays so you both can get hammered.] Sales.........gotta have it but production needs to follow sales closely and the gap is usually F'ed up due to low laborer numbers. Sell it but can't build it in the specified time frame and you become hated very quickly. |
Liberals are a curious mix of communism and fascism, they want to destroy you but want to use your own money to do it.
I'm getting down to the last box, the others have all been destroyed...
I'm getting down to the last box, the others have all been destroyed...
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Originally Posted By Foxxz: It'll be real fun when it finally screws you. I got screwed by an AI after months of working with it on a computer project which was intricately planned and in which it had the opportunity to course correct at least 10 times over. In the end, it conflated documentation for the stable and developer branches of a piece of software and lead me down the path right until the bitter end when a core tenant of the project finally didn't work and it said "oppsie! i messed up! this won't work!". Literally months of work down the drain. And that was with intense planning, clarification of goals, technical requirements, and so on. It provided me with links to supporting documentation to prove interoperability. Too bad those documents were for software that didn't exist yet or for which there was only partial support for what I was trying to accomplish. @foxxz What model and how long ago? I'm genuinely curious to hear more details about this. |
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Originally Posted By tabraha: Not OP but my Claude moved from Sonnet 5 to Opus 5.5 this week. That's a Pro subscription for Cowork. Originally Posted By tabraha: Originally Posted By boolzi: Op when you say you use Claude, is it opus 5.5 or fable? Or sonnet? Just curious about the pricing package you're at and usage. So pro gives you plenty of usage. There is a huge difference between sonnet 5 and opus 5.5 which just showed up on my app thus morning. I think I read opus 5.5 is much more efficient that opus 5, might be why you skipped opus 5. |
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Originally Posted By Rebel31: I love AI (paid) for the more mindless tasks but I still think you need to carefully review the outputs with a human for more serious tasks. There a lot of people who aren't doing that, trust the output, and send it then look like fools because their AI messed it up. Technology has been replacing jobs and multiplying output per person for a long time. Just look at phones. We used to have rooms full of people that did nothing but manually connect one line to another. Then that got more automated with analog machines. Now it's all digital. A lot of people have busy work jobs where a computer can do it better and faster. No different than replacing telephone operators with machines and then computers. People have always had to evolve and find new ways to make themselves useful. Some people really struggle with that and get left behind. This. The $87 quadrillion question is whether we're approaching the point where technology can do anything a human can. Anyone who thinks physical labor is safe are in for a rough awakening. The AI companies simply went for the lowest hanging fruit first. |
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Originally Posted By Bigdawg90: We already have it on one of our excavators. More of a gimmick for most things but for trenches it’s amazing. Originally Posted By Bigdawg90: Originally Posted By FistPeso: AI will be driving your machines before too long. We already have it on one of our excavators. More of a gimmick for most things but for trenches it’s amazing. Does it find gas lines, fiber, electric, water, telephone and sewer lines as well as a human?
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Liberals are a curious mix of communism and fascism, they want to destroy you but want to use your own money to do it.
I'm getting down to the last box, the others have all been destroyed...
I'm getting down to the last box, the others have all been destroyed...
| AI can replace you, the owner, as well, OP. Be careful what you strive for. |
To anger a conservative, tell him a lie; to anger a liberal, tell him the truth.
Women and Only Fans: When one door closes, their legs can open - SideCharger
DEI stands for “Discrimination, Exclusion, and Intolerance.” and "Didn't Earn It."
Women and Only Fans: When one door closes, their legs can open - SideCharger
DEI stands for “Discrimination, Exclusion, and Intolerance.” and "Didn't Earn It."
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Originally Posted By opnblstr: AI can already answer phones and carry on a conversation. How long until AI replaces OP? No one is above AI replacement at this point and as soon as AI realizes the planet no longer needs humans on it we won't need those roads either. How long do plumbers, mechanics, hvac installers, construction workers etc have? I’m in technical trades actually using my hands and sweating just curious how long before I’m realistically not needed. I’m 52 plan to retire about 60 so am I safe for 8 more years ? |
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Originally Posted By lefty-weaver-g19: How long do plumbers, mechanics, hvac installers, construction workers etc have? I’m in technical trades actually using my hands and sweating just curious how long before I’m realistically not needed. I’m 52 plan to retire about 60 so am I safe for 8 more years ? Originally Posted By lefty-weaver-g19: Originally Posted By opnblstr: AI can already answer phones and carry on a conversation. How long until AI replaces OP? No one is above AI replacement at this point and as soon as AI realizes the planet no longer needs humans on it we won't need those roads either. How long do plumbers, mechanics, hvac installers, construction workers etc have? I’m in technical trades actually using my hands and sweating just curious how long before I’m realistically not needed. I’m 52 plan to retire about 60 so am I safe for 8 more years ? Its not your job getting replaced, its your customers losing theirs. Unless your main clientele is upper/high class, hands on trades will be effected. Lost discretionary income of the middle-middle/lower-middle class would be the bigger worry (and is today). Commercial's not always a safe haven either since now theres a surplus of tradesman which will devalue those jobs and decrease compensation. |
When the going gets tough, the tough go cyclic.
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Originally Posted By Federov: This. The first major fuck up it'll do will really leave a bad impression on people. There's some realtors down south that used AI to create listings, with a song and nobody bothered to review it. The song turned out to be "My Corgi doesn't like n____". A realtor AI program just threw it in and nobody bothered to review the entire listing video and published it. This happened to multiple realtors, and put their names in people's heads for all the wrong reasons. |
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Originally Posted By FistPeso: AI will be driving your machines before too long. A neighbor of mine is a retired heavy equipment operator for a state highway and large commercial builder. He retired and the company paid him a large amount of money to do a computer analysis of him operating several pieces of equipment over 6 weeks or so. He said there were sensors and cameras everywhere recording. This was about 3 years ago. He didn't know who was doing the study. It's coming. |
“Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure” Robert LeFevere
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Originally Posted By Squeefoo: A neighbor of mine is a retired heavy equipment operator for a state highway and large commercial builder. He retired and the company paid him a large amount of money to do a computer analysis of him operating several pieces of equipment over 6 weeks or so. He said there were sensors and cameras everywhere recording. This was about 3 years ago. He didn't know who was doing the study. It's coming. |
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Originally Posted By 0311SKI: Its not your job getting replaced, its your customers losing theirs. Unless your main clientele is upper/high class, hands on trades will be effected. Lost discretionary income of the middle-middle/lower-middle class would be the bigger worry (and is today). Commercial's not always a safe haven either since now theres a surplus of tradesman which will devalue those jobs and decrease compensation. There isn’t a surplus of tradesmen where I’m at there is a shortage so that must be a regional thing. Unless you mean long term surplus because currently trades people are retiring faster than they can be replaced in my area. |