ai
My dad & the robots
My job has changed more in the past month than it has in the past 10 years.
My dad always described his work at GM as “a tool maker”. He’d say he made the tools that helped repair the tools that made the cars. I don’t know if I have any of that right since I was a kid when he said it.
My understanding is that the big General Motors plants would have a few guys that were on the “tool maker” team and they would be skilled techs that would make the tools for that plant.
As GM scaled and consolidated their operations, my dads job changed. Instead of making the tools for just one plant, they centralized them all to Grand Blanc. Now my dad would have to travel from Lansing to Grand Blanc
But the bigger change for my dad was that instead of his day to day job being different and variable based on what was going on at that plant.
He now described his job as boring.
He would just wait for a robot to finish making a part.
Then he would take it off.
Then he would load the next part.
Did that just happen to my job?
Because, that’s what I do now.
I don’t make the Google Ads myself anymore. I have robots that make them. I just feed the input material and monitor the output.
Did my job just go through the same transition that my fathers did two decades ago?
Is my job now just managing a robot that does my work and thinking for me?
Is my job is just to tell it what to do, hit “allow” a bunch of times, tell the robot when they made mistake and then wait for the robot to fix it.
But how long will the robot even need me to do that?
The robot will be able to check it’s work better than I can. It will be able to feed it more inputs faster than I can.
I’m generally a Techno Optimist as they call it. I think technology has been amazing for humanity.
But every once in awhile I wake up with a little fear. And today was one of those days…
What are you feeling about AI? Has it impacted your job yet?
You're reading my mail! It's like learning Spanish for 2-3 years and then finding out you can wear glasses that will translate into your ear. More importantly IMO, the amount money being spent to improve this means that today is the worst that the technology is going to be. I keep trying to figure out where the moats are going to be in 6-12 months for tech companies. Great article!
Unless I am missing something, I am assuming robots doing all that work for you makes you more money, not less, unlike the people that do this work for others and not themselves. Positive you can fill your time in other ways that you love.