Posted on 02/18/2026 10:07:08 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Elon Musk just identified which jobs go first, and it destroys every assumption about who’s safe.
Musk: “AI is going to take over those jobs like lightning. Anything that is digital, which is like just someone at a computer doing something.”
Not factory workers. Office workers. The people who spent decades assuming education and desk jobs meant security are actually first.
Musk: “Anything that’s physically moving atoms… those jobs will exist for a much longer time.”
Output is a file? Vulnerable. Output is physical? Protected. That’s the entire framework.
Musk: “AI is really still digital.”
AI doesn’t need a body. Doesn’t need an office. Just needs access to the same software you use. Executes faster. Never tires. Costs nothing to scale.
But it can’t weld. Can’t wire a building. Can’t fix pipes or work soil.
Musk: “Literally welding, electrical work, plumbing. Those jobs will exist for a much longer time.”
Trades aren’t the vulnerable jobs. They’re the durable ones. Physical presence, real-world adaptation, manual dexterity provide protection no digital credential offers.
Analyst, accountant, paralegal, programmer, anyone producing files and documents, automates first because digital work is exactly what AI does natively.
Person moving atoms has natural defense. Physics, unpredictable environments, material resistance create friction AI can’t scale past.
Person moving bits has nothing. No friction. No physical barrier. Just software AI already operates better than most humans.
The assumption that desk work and degrees represent safety just inverted completely. College graduate producing documents faces faster displacement than the electrician producing installations.
Society spent generations telling people trades were beneath them. Pushed everyone toward offices and screens. Turns out the people who didn’t listen built the most automation-resistant careers.
Most ironic outcome of the AI revolution. The work society treated as inferior turned out to be the work society couldn’t replace. And the work society valued most turned out to be the easiest to eliminate.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgF_hP4GO_Q
“Gentlemen, we’ve got to protect our phony baloney jobs”
Governor John J Lepetimane
Whats the point of even discussing this anyway? Everyone knows that SkyNet is going to take us all out and Neo will be killed by AI controlled Agents. But atleast we’ll be in the Matrix...living out our virtual lives...oblivious.
I do accounting and don’t see how AI can do most of what I do. Not saying that it cannot....but I just don’t see it.
It can help you with the mundane tasks, and improve your productivity, but it can’t replace you.
Even as computer programmers, AI still requires that someone knowledgeable direct the working of AI--If you want to build anything slightly more complex than a "Hello World" program, you need someone who can direct that build and gauge whether or not the output was successful.
AI will only be as smart as the smartest humans, never smarter. It will still require smart humans to curate its actions and judge its outputs, certainly in the near to medium term. We will still need computer scientists to build better AI engines and storage and retrieval systems,
just wait. The high end silicone sex dolls wil be robots at some point, add AI and you have better than Kamtamalata. you can tell it to shut up and go away.
“CNC machinist”
The CAD program could generate CNC programing.
As I said...
......AI will only be as smart as the smartest humans, never smarter.....
No, it will always be dumber than the smartest humans.
But it will be smart enough to accomplish many tasks (e.g., accounting).
AI can handle the “probability” of errors. But currently AI itself is error prone.
Currently the companies invested in AI do not seem concerned about the errors produced by AI.
In the future, will anyone be concerned about the level of errors? Or will we accept a percentage of errors?
Will humans be hired to detect and fix the errors? Or will ghere be levels of SUPER-AI checking he errors of inferior AI ?
What Musk and others are asserting is that AI, while as of this minute still hallucinates and reflects the biases of its programmers, is now in the exponential learning phase which will go very rapidly, and in the near future (inside 2030), AI will be as smart as every accountant on earth. Actually they say smarter, but we shall see.
AI programs will be written to double check the first AI program. Kind of like a supervisory AI.
I think many on FR identified this all much earlier.
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Yup. Got some Smart Practical Thinking people on here.
Not surprised with this. AI can process a radar scan but when the transmitter breaks it’s “Hey Help” from the AI.
Get used to it.
“Can’t wire a building”
Machines could cut cables to proper length, remove the sheathing at the ends and drop them in a box.
Something similar could be done for plumbing.
AI could take a picture of a house and suggest room layouts.
Once a layout is selected, components such as building plans, walls, cables and precut pipe for a house could be prepared after they are paid for.
So... AI Freepers?
Houses will be made differently with wiring and plumbing in the parts that will click together.
Do we even need a congress??
Not impressed with what they call AI now which is anything but AI and more like a fast search engine.
All computer jobs will not go away, not by any means. Human creativity will never be replaced. Copied by AI in the future maybe but AI will never replace human creativity.
Just look at the insanity if the left as a prime example. If AI can come up with that process on it’s own then it’s on a self destructive path at a faster pace then the left.
I asked my doctor a few weeks ago what he was planning on doing when he was replaced by AI. I just got a deer in the headlights look.
wonder what this does to colleges
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