Comment by beachy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by beachy | Hacker News Reader

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The most recent electrician jobs we've had done were:

- fitting a timer into the switchboard to control the hot water cylinder. A simple job, but the sparky also had to talk to me (the client) to get us both on the same page.

- fitting an EV fast charger in the garage. Not much science, but a lot of cable running and clipping down, then the garage switchboard needed to be swapped out for a larger one that could take the required RCD. And convincing me which brand charger to go for. 2 guys working together for a couople of hours.

- fixing the range hood light (always on due to a broken switch). He spent quite some time trying to extract the broken switch, with the range hood balanced on his shoulder and wires everywhere.

In every case there was no real complexity to the job, not the sort of thing that an AI could have been helpful at at all. Just a lot of common sense, knowledge of the regulations and much skilled manual work.

I don't think AI is coming for electricians any time soon.

But in all of those cases presumably someone needed to figure out what needed doing? (In your case maybe you're savvy enough that you knew what the issue was and just needed a certified person to do the work, but most clients won't be).

My argument is that it is the 'figuring out' that drives electricians wages, not really the doing part. Because while clipping down cables and extracting switches is fiddly work, I'd argue it isn't a skill with enough barrier to entry to maintain high wages (as compared to brick laying or plastering, for example, which you simply can't do to a professional level without years of practice).

So most of the value delivered by an experienced electrician is in talking to clients and identifying the correct technical solution, and is therefore pretty much analogous to the value delivered by software developers.

Therefore if we accept the logic that software developers will no longer be required (or that their value will be greatly diminished) it's hard to see how that wouldn't apply to electricians too (in the sense of being a well-paid trade over and above your average manual job).

(Btw - I DON'T think either will happen, but I just think electrician is a weird choice of example for those that do think that)

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