The Carolina Contractor Show
The Carolina Contractor Show
Building Better with Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence might sound like science fiction, but for builders and contractors, it's rapidly becoming an essential tool reshaping how we construct homes and manage projects. In this eye-opening episode, General Contractor Donnie Blanchard and host Eric Smith demystify AI in construction, showing how it's already transforming job sites across America.
From project planning that creates comprehensive schedules in minutes instead of weeks to autonomous equipment that prevents costly errors, we explore the practical applications that make AI valuable rather than threatening. Imagine drones conducting aerial surveys in hours instead of the months traditional methods would require, or design software generating dozens of custom home options based on your specific requirements.
As Donnie explains, "The key word is instantaneous. You can put your information in there and it will see that house from start to finish in less than a minute." We discuss how AI integrates with everything from documentation management to multi-language communication on diverse job sites, all while acknowledging where human expertise remains irreplaceable.
Perhaps most surprisingly, as AI disrupts other industries, construction might benefit from an influx of tech-skilled workers seeking new career paths. "In my world, people crab all the time about not finding good people," Donnie notes, suggesting that displaced tech workers could find fulfilling careers bringing AI expertise to building trades.
Whether you're a contractor looking to stay competitive or a homeowner curious about how your next building project might leverage these technologies, this conversation offers valuable insights without the technical jargon. As one contractor's wife aptly described it, think of AI as "glorified spellcheck" – it takes what we know and just makes it work faster for us.
Check out thecarolinacontractor.com for more resources on incorporating AI into your building projects and to submit your own questions through our Ask The Contractor feature.
Welcome to the Carolina Contractor Show with your host, general Contractor Donnie Blanchard. And welcome to the Carolina Contractor Show. My name is Eric Smith. I do inside sales for Home Builder Supply in Wilson and Greenville. Across from me the lovely, the talented General Contractor Donnie Blanchard, owner of Sure Top Roofing, also owner of Blanchard Building Company.
Speaker 1:So what is the Carolina Contractor Show all about? We kind of gave you a hint there. We'd like to talk about your house and DIY projects in the inside and the outside and things like that. The website's the best place to start thecarolinacontractorcom. We also got links to YouTube. We got some videos up there. We've got our Ask the Contractor or ATC button. If you have a question about your house and you want a general contractor to answer it, donnie's the one that will do it. Just click on that button, ask your question and he'll give you an answer. We once in a while do a show. That's nothing but answers to questions people have sent into the show. Also, donnie is on the new season, season two, of 50-50 Flip that debuted last month on Hulu. It's getting ready to come out on A&E Network. So if you want to catch him, just look for that show 50-50 Flip and that's been a nice break not having to film Correct Donnie, oh my.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was a long seven months last year and I really didn't know what to do with myself when it was over because I actually had some free time, more time with the kids and actually had a personal life for the first time in that many months. But yeah, it was an experience and definitely is paying off. I get calls literally every day about it and people say, hey, man, saw the show, love it. And I think really the reason that it turned out so well is that we got some perfect houses for flipping and we turned a few of those into absolute gold. So when you see what the houses went from and to, I'm pretty proud of myself and the team. We pulled it off and you don't normally see flip houses like that because folks do the bare minimum to make the most money and basically because these were all on TV that went out the window. So hats off to the team. We just made some magic.
Speaker 1:And again, we're not a house flipping show. But one thing you did do on the show that people can check out are some of the small changes. So for a DIY person, there were little things you came up with and did on the show to improve a property inside and out. And people tune into that show 50-50 Flip and you can get some ideas of little updates you can do. What's the actual wording? Donnie, for the you put framing on a wall in a house Accent wall. Those look great. That for the you put framing on a wall in a house Accent wall. Those look great. That's something that when I saw them, I went. Now I understand why they're popular, because they really make a room that is otherwise bland pop.
Speaker 2:It's so cheap too. You basically buy one by fours, and if you have a table saw you can rip the one by fours in half and they make a product called basswood and basswood is probably the slang, but that's what we've always called it. And basswood is very expensive. You can use it for face frames, for cabinets and so forth, but if you're only depending on the accent wall that you're going for, in most cases you can rip a one by four right down the middle, so half of three and a half inches, and normally that makes a really good stock to do an accent wall with. Yeah, it's really cool.
Speaker 1:So, again, check that out. 50-50 flip with our own, donnie Blanchard. But let's jump into today's show, because it sounds kind of techie, it sounds kind of geeky, not very sexy, but it's actually very interesting. And we're not going to go into the weeds, so to speak. We're going to talk about AI, artificial intelligence. You've heard a lot about it in the past few months, in the past year definitely, and you've heard things like ChatGPT and Genesis, which is Google I think it's called Genesis.
Speaker 1:I've already forgotten Gemini, which is Google's AI, and a lot of people are kind of fearing AI, and so I asked AI to give me up a made up quote, and it came back with you can either use AI as a tool to make your job and life easier or you can fear AI and it will replace you, abraham Lincoln. So AI has a sense of humor in a way. But AI I mentioned Gemini by Google it also can have a built-in bias. We won't go into the details of that, but you can have. The creators of AI still give you I won't say necessarily incorrect information, but information that is slanted, and we think of AI as being neutral. I guess you would probably agree with that.
Speaker 2:It should just give the facts and nothing but the facts. Man, yeah, that's the hope is that it's neutral, but I think that that was a very important thing with Gemini to expose up front, because definitely had some biases. And, you know, ai is just what we're putting into it, so the way it makes decisions is the way that we inputted the data to make those decisions, and I definitely think that that's something that needs to be headed off, and neutral is a must. You know you can't have. We've seen political biases, religious biases, basically take over the world and be so divisive nowadays that, with AI being the next big thing, bias would definitely, definitely be a bad thing.
Speaker 1:You know, donnie, I'm glad you said that, because that goes right into the fact that there are basically three types of AI, and the one we're most familiar with now today is the most basic and it's called narrow AI and that's basically what chat, gpt and those do you type in a question or an idea and it's going to help you either answer the question or kind of summarize your idea, and that works great.
Speaker 1:The next stage is called general AI and that is a machine that has the ability to perform any intellectual tasks that you can do as a human. And then super intelligent AI that would surpass human intelligence in every way. That's like Skynet and Terminator and self-aware, concrete and things like that. But I want to stress, the biggest, techiest, geekiest brains in the business say that general AI and super intelligent AI really aren't something that's around the corner, or the majority don't even think it's possible. They really don't. They think we're kind of at where we are with AI, as in its thinking it's programmed by a human this belief that it can surpass the human. It's only going to collect the information that humans across the globe input into it. Japchat, gpt, for example, every time you put something in, it stores that and then starts to learn from questions, but it still pulls the answers from human input.
Speaker 2:Didn't you tell me that when we were digging up info for this show that you basically started playing around with the program and you were asking it questions about the basic definition. So before we get into the details, that'd probably be good to put out there.
Speaker 1:Yes, this is what I asked AI. I said the official definition of AI is this a field of computer science that focuses on creating intelligent machines that can think and learn like humans. Then I asked AI to describe itself and it said at its core, ai is about creating algorithms and systems that can perform tasks that would normally require human intelligence. This includes things like recognizing speech, understanding natural language, identifying objects and images, making decisions and solving problems. Very unsexy, but that's how AI thinks. It's just. It's bland and technical and it doesn't have to be to use it. And what we want to do today is focus on the uses of AI in the world, specifically in construction and right before you jump into it, it's already all around you and you may not know it. We've got healthcare. Ai is utilized. Finance We've got it in automotive Self-driving cars, tesla that's based on the lowest level of AI. Retail why do you search for a cool-looking Fender Stratocaster and then the rest of the day, ads for it pop up on your phone and on your computer? That's AI working right there.
Speaker 1:Manufacturing, making the ability to manufacture a product go much faster or smoother, or the commercialization and moving of it. Amazon they're known for their warehouses. They're very super efficient, but a lot of people might not realize that AI is in the construction business, so today, what we wanted to talk about was with people like Donnie who are general contractors and build who's using it, who can benefit from using it, and there might even be builders and contractors and workers that are either scared of it for whatever reason or just going to blow it off, and we both think that that could be a mistake. One key application in this, though we'll start off with Donnie, with AI is project planning and scheduling. When you get ready to do a project, to build a house, there's a lot of stuff you have to do. A lot of it is based on your experience of doing it, but I'm sure there's lots of things that AI could take care of for you almost instantaneously before you start building.
Speaker 2:Yeah the key word being instantaneous, because you can put your information in there and the start date and just a few other factors that it would need, and it will see that house from start to finish. It's pretty amazing. What used to take me weeks in college when I was learning how to use a project management software takes chat, gbt or the program that you're using less than a minute to come up with a whole construction schedule. It actually takes historical data of weather patterns and so many things that come into play during a construction phase and it incorporates those into the timeline. So definitely going to be advantageous for someone like myself. Being a custom builder, we just kind of go with the flow, we watch the weather from week to week, but if you're talking about somebody who has multiple multifamily units going and the investors are barking at the builder and they really have to keep things reported to everybody up to chain and keep everything on a timeline, I mean that's a whole job in itself.
Speaker 1:So basically it's taking another person's job and simplifying it to the nth degree when you get out of the office, so to speak, and you have the plans and the permits and AI helps you remember you need a permit for this and that you're on the job site. That's where I'm kind of lost of. The benefits of AI Are a little easier to AI, but where it's being incorporated on the job site.
Speaker 2:The most that I'm seeing and this has been in play for years, it just keeps getting better every year is autonomous equipment operation. So meaning if you have a backhoe out there on the boom of the backhoe you have a robotic control. And I'll use my dad's business as an example. When he goes out to dig a footing for a house, he's the first guy on the site besides the surveyor when he does his excavation. Someone who would be inexperienced would dig a hole that would be way too deep. Or if they over dig nobody thinks through this unless you've been in a contractor trade and a footing guy but he could cost that contractor and homeowner because the cost gets passed on, could cost them hundreds, if not thousands of dollars by over digging and things. And so they make something that goes on the boom of a backhoe that you control part of it. But when you're pulling that back and taking the scoop of dirt out, it will not let you go, but so low.
Speaker 2:And I've seen things all over social media as far as remote controlled skid steers and things like that. So it's coming and, that being said, I really feel like there's always going to be a variable that you need a human being to take care of, because you know a machine maybe has 100 different potential outcomes and it can think through something the best it can, but man, there's just no substitute for the human element. So I don't know that that will take over completely, but I think that other ways that it's advantageous are incorporating into drones aerial surveys. Drones can monitor progress and basically detect potential hazards on a job site. If you have a drone fly over on a multifamily job site, for instance, there might be things that you would catch from the air that you might not see from the ground.
Speaker 1:Speaking of drones, when I first met you with what are we going on five years now you talked about using a drone to fly over a house and get an idea of a roof. So maybe I'm wrong here, but it seems to me you could take that drone and, with AI and the cameras and stuff, be able to fly it over a roof and it would be able to measure the roof accurately, give you an idea of what you need and stuff like that. So can drones use AI to make your job easier, say, in replacing a roof?
Speaker 2:Well, they could, and I think that that was pretty primitive technology for a drone and now the satellite technology has far surpassed that. So they have services, and most people are familiar with Eagle View. But they have services that tap into satellite views and instead of going job site by job site and flying a drone over, that satellite will tell you every square inch of the house. I can have siding measurements, roof measurements, perimeter measurements, anything that I might need to do an estimate, and I don't even have to step foot on the job, which I'm more of personable kind of guy, and I think that if you're gonna work for somebody, that job site meeting is a must. So but I do think in terms of a quick estimate for siding roofing, it just makes things a lot easier.
Speaker 2:Where AI does incorporate into the drone world is in surveys.
Speaker 2:So Jay Lowe that we had on, I don't know, a year or so ago, he bought a drone that was somewhere to the tune of $90,000 or $100,000.
Speaker 2:Very expensive, and what that drone would do is topography maps. So what used to take Jay? I think he said in the field on the show that he could survey out 50 foot by 50 foot squares and if he had to do a whole golf course or a topo map for a larger plot of land. It would take him two weeks and he said what used to take him two weeks takes him about 10 minutes with this drone. So I think he mentioned he could survey or he could fly over and record an entire golf course in about an hour and for a surveyor that was a several months long job. You have to plot everything, record everything, go back to the office, actually put it into a computer, for the computer to put it on paper to relay to the client and all that's changed. Only a handful of surveyors in our area have the drone with the AI capability for topography maps but it has definitely changed the game for those guys.
Speaker 1:How would AI maybe assist in the design phase on the property?
Speaker 2:Oh, that's a good question In terms of the design phase, that is, still it's being developed. I've seen a few apps that have taken their stab, and then I watched the basically the demo video and saw that a lot of these things they're still kind of slow to operate and I think that that is going to be a really, really big deal in the next few years. But right now, kind of the primitive part of the AI. But if you're one of these folks who want to see your house in 10 different designs and you can send a picture through an AI app and usually those are paid apps, by the way so if you don't do this for a living, I don't think it would be a great investment to have a monthly subscription to something, unless that is what you're into.
Speaker 2:As far as remodeling or getting new ideas for your house, where I do think it's cool is if you can pull that off and get an AI generated recommendation for a design on a remodel for your house or even on a new construction, for colors and so forth. It gives you so many options. If you hire a designer, that designer is going to give you maybe two options, three options, and if you don't like any of them, then you've already been through the whole process, and the cool thing about the AI is that it'll crank out 10 designs if that's what you ask it to do, and some may be far out, but some may be dialed in to exactly what you want. So I like the part about more options.
Speaker 1:I guess then you could take multiple design ideas and literally not literally, figuratively into AI, place them on the property and then you would have 360s that the homeowner could go and see what would the house look like from all angles and I guess also, as a builder, could see all the angles and views you would have from a potential house. A dozen plans and take care of it in an afternoon Right.
Speaker 2:I think I may have sent you the post on Instagram and it was about construction being a big part of AI, or AI being a big part of construction, rather. And then, when you click to the next slide over, it showed a barcode on the permit box at the job site and the barcode was linked to the set of plans. And I can't tell you how many times a subcontractor will be on the job and they take your structural engineered, stamped plans and they throw them in their truck and take them home with them on accident because they're just looking at the plans. But then you've got an inspection the next day and the inspector's like, dude, where are your plans at? Or the sub that follows in behind them hey, we don't have any plans on the job. And if you're in the middle of something you kind of have to stop what you're doing because they're at a standstill until they have those plans. But I think it's a really neat thing and a very simple thing to have that barcode.
Speaker 1:And I did want to follow along. Everybody listening the Carolina Contractor is on IG and social media and we put up those links for each other and you're free to stalk us and find it out. But that little QR code that you would scan for the construction site was very amazing, because the guy was moving his phone and he could see where future structure pieces would be sitting, and then he'd move it backwards so he could see almost half the building constructed right above him before he's even put up an LVL or a truss or anything he's like. Oh, I know where that's going to go. That was a pretty amazing thing that they're starting to do. What challenges does IA face, though? In a construction industry, every new technology has some sort of issue.
Speaker 2:If I had to say, I would guess implementation and basically establishing a data standard. So you know, from state to state they're going to be different codes. And you know construction guys. No secret, they're not the most computer savvy, and rightly so. You know that's a job for somebody else, but you know getting somebody who's used to swinging a hammer or doing things with a pencil and paper and they're setting their ways. I think that getting those folks to be on board with the implementation of all these AI products or AI driven products is going to be the biggest deal of all. Eventually and I think you mentioned this earlier eventually you're either going to have to get on board or get left behind. And getting on board doesn't just mean the contractor. He's got to get the investors. If there are investors involved, he's got to get the inspectors, the homeowners. But investors, inspectors, homeowners, contractor all being on the same page is a big deal. So I believe that getting everybody on that same page before the project gets kicked off is probably the best plan to have in place.
Speaker 1:It's kind of like Android and Apple. They're both great products, but there's proprietary things there, that down to the charging cords except I think now in Europe they're changing that where they don't speak to each other. And AI would be pretty useless if you have 10 different things in the contracting or building process that it could do but they won't talk to each other and you have to use all 10. I guess, like apps, they got to make money somehow and they're going to not share that proprietary information. At first, agreed for sure. I thought of something else, donnie. We've talked, we've done shows on it before 3D printing. So with AI and 3D printing I guess you could be at a job site and you have some part break, some piece that's missing I'm not talking a major piece like an LVL, but a piece of equipment even malfunctions LVL, but a piece of equipment even malfunctions and instead of losing a whole day, you could have AI and a 3D printer print your replacement part on the job you nailed it and that's exactly how it would be used.
Speaker 2:I just think that the 3D printing thing already had a pretty good foothold, depending on the area you live in. But using it in more practical approaches like that you know small parts, or if you have a fixture and you pull it out of the box and it's got a broken part and you can just manufacture that on site, I think that it'll be super useful. So that was a great way to spin that, because I definitely think that's realistic.
Speaker 1:Now, if you had a magic wand, aside from proprietary issues with AI, can you think of anything you would love to see AI be able to take over that would make your life easier in building a house? Or have I put you on the spot?
Speaker 2:No, if I had to say and I love my architect, great guy, love the engineer, I work with great guy but I do think that if AI were going to be utilized for something that really contributed to the end game, it would be whole house design and they may have this out there and I just don't know it yet but I think whole house design for a family, say, of three. If you can go in there and give AI exactly what you want hey, we want a four bedroom house, you know. We want bonus room, we want a kitchen with an island in the middle and you can be that specific. Part of the magic of learning how to use AI is learning how to ask the question, or rather tell it what you want, and the first few days I toyed around with it, learning how to word things, but it is so intuitive. You basically can say hey, I would like for you to design a house for a family of three and we'd like an extra bedroom with a large closet. We want granite countertops in our kitchen, we would like no second story. So that's going to contribute to the footprint size and you basically can say hey, I want to aim this at a family where the dad is 30 and the mom's 28. Or if it's handicap accessibility as something that you were looking for, you could say, design this for an elderly couple, and it's so smart that it will do exactly that, and I think for the end game, that made my life specifically easier.
Speaker 2:A custom designed house having your own fingerprint of a floor plan is a special thing, and you don't have to sit down for months with an architect to achieve that, and I'm sure they're going to get there if they don't already have that, but that's definitely the coolest thing to me.
Speaker 1:And I'm not saying architects are lazy, but they have a certain style. So when you go in to submit ideas to an architect, he's going to kind of pull from a few basic designs and maybe you bring in something you saw and he pulls a little from there and a little from here. But AI, when it comes to those designs, is going to pull from thousands, tens of thousands of ideas. And I guess the other advantage is an architect in the traditional manner has to do all the math and the calculations to determine if the client wants this. We're going to have to determine trusses and LVLs and structure and foundation. Where AI, like you said, give me a four bedroom house with a bonus room, a garage and overlooking the lake that the property's on, give me 20 designs, it will figure out all the engineering to make it possible. Where humans might have said either A, it's not possible or that's going to just take too much of my time, I'm going to give them this more cookie cutter design.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree with that, and I think that where the human element may still hold precedence over the AIs, that you're always going to need that engineer stamp. That being said, you know there's several things that I run into where maybe I don't need to worry the engineer with a dumb question, and I do think that it's almost like having an engineer at your fingertips. It's kind of like Jarvis from Iron man. You know you could ask anything and it was detailed analysis and you've got that now at your fingertips. So instead of making the call and waiting for that engineer to give you a quick answer on what should be a quick answer, you may have to wait several days for that and just kind of get in line. And I think that if you have a question that doesn't necessarily need a stamp for the inspections department, that that'll be definitely advantageous for somebody that does what I do.
Speaker 2:Another thing I was thinking about for the radio show. I started doing my homework on how can we use it to help with the radio show and I was amazed. I mean, I guess the first thing and I think we talked about this last week off the air that you can create an avatar that looks and sounds exactly like you. It will actually mimic your voice and your facial expressions, your hand gestures, and I mean that's kind of scary. But now that we've taken the Carolina Contractor Show to video, you know what, if we were sick one day or you know, I sounded like terrible in December when I had a cold, you know I listened to that show again and thinking, gosh, we shouldn't have even aired that. But you're not feeling up to up to the challenge of recording that day. You know it's kind of cool that you can have an avatar do it for you.
Speaker 2:The other thing that really blew me away is that we can translate our shows into Spanish and it will actually make our mouths move to the Spanish words and I just think that's way far out and so cool, because a lot of Spanish speaking people who happen to be bilingual listen to our show and I think that's pretty cool that if you're not bilingual, it's a way that we can get the show out there to a lot more people. That's a really neat thing. And I can't tell you that we have a lot of Hispanic workers and basically those people are family and I would love to be able to speak to them in their native tongue and it's one of those things where I just think it would improve communication all the way around on the job site.
Speaker 1:And I don't think it's a bad thing if you're dealing with a complex building or mathematics or something where it's almost required for the build to go along as planned that you need to communicate quickly and clearly, and AI can do that for you. That's also a safety thing. I mean AI can be at a job site we talked about drones or satellites and it would be able to you kind of alluded to this earlier look at a property and say, hey, you've got a river on this side of it, but you need to consider a floodplain. That you might not necessarily get or thought about when you're building, but just general safety. And oh, I guess let's go back to COVID era, donnie. The inability to get supplies was massive. Now we've kind of recovered, but could you see AI assisting you at keeping tabs on inventory and finding who's selling shingles for less that week or OSB, or, if you're running low, making sure the job doesn't stop because you can't get material?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, resource allocation has been a big part of my world and COVID, or say, a hailstorm, hits especially on the sure-top roofing side of things. Inventory is a real issue. So we don't like it when we like the work that comes when a hailstorm hits, but it brings people in from all over the country. You know the Midwest, texas, florida. Everybody comes to work that hailstorm and then get out of town but they put a pinch on our supply and you know that that's everything. I don't. I don't know how that's going to work and I know that I have some inside sales folks who are just wonderful and I can call them and say, hey, you know, I need a green or a red roof, and can you find me those shingles? And I think that that process is only going to be streamlined and be that much easier for the inside sales folks.
Speaker 1:You also talked about at the beginning of the show that AI can help you do some of the paperwork and access permits and things like that. What other ways can AI's docu-management help a builder?
Speaker 2:I just think that they will. They'll help the builder by probably lessening the need for an office staff, because it's going to do the job of two or three people and it's going to keep a schedule. It's going to keep timeline projections better than a person would. But, all that being said, I don't know if I ever will buy into that all the way, because you have to have a person to input that data, so you've got to give it that data to process and you know it's going to cut that person's roll down significantly. So you're basically asking taking somebody from full-time to part-time is what I'm trying to say, and it still requires a person to give it the facts. So I don't know that that'll ever completely take over, but it's definitely going to make things easier, all right.
Speaker 1:Last thing on this, when we talk about AI and construction is the CEO's been issued, the job's done, pulled off the site, everybody's happy because they got an AI-assisted build house and it went well. You'd want to look back. We sometimes think the phrase performance review is a bad thing, but a good boss will do a performance review to help improve process, find out from his people on the ground what works well, what doesn't, where they can make changes. Do you see any way AI can improve that interaction you have one-on-one or with a crew in general, when the job's done, to say, hey, what can we do to do this better?
Speaker 2:I think if it improves communication along the way, that's going to make for a better end result. And I do think that allowing a homeowner or the contractor or maybe a subcontractor, to keep tabs on that schedule, keep tabs on that schedule, keep tabs on the projection I think when you set expectations and set those realistically, I think that's the big deal with AIs it's going to keep your project on schedule better, but it's also going to keep everybody in the loop. So there may be days when I have something to tell a homeowner and I'm exhausted. At the end of the day, I've got 17 calls to return it's 530 already and maybe I didn't tell that homeowner what we did that day.
Speaker 2:So you know, we've been very proactive about utilizing smartphones and just the technology we have now just to shoot them a picture. Hey, this is what happened today. Hey, this inspection went great today, just so you know. And this is what's next next week. So not having to worry about any of that anymore would be a dream. But, like I mentioned on the last point, I don't know how you get there without some sort of human element to input that data.
Speaker 1:I would agree with that. I think if you could send me a text or a note, and even if AI automated it, that said, hey, we finished up this part of the house today or tomorrow we're planning on doing this. Or I'd like to meet with you sometime this week to talk about the color of the exterior door that you want to see, or if you want it to be a six panel or whatever. I can definitely see how you can integrate it, as long as it's not something you depend on 100% to do all your communication with your clients, because I know it through the sales side of it, you know it from the building side. When people can see the other human being, they're much more comfortable in that relationship. Maybe in the future some people wouldn't care if all they got was stuff on a phone. They might be fine with that. But I don't think we're close to that and AI is not going to be a replacement. Again, an assistant, right, yeah.
Speaker 2:I think the end game that will probably affect us in the immediate is that a lot of computer folks are going to lose their jobs to AI and it's so sad, but they got to find a place to go and of course we've done whole shows on this. But We've done whole shows on this, but we in my world people crab all the time about. We can't find good people, we can't find somebody with a legit license, we can't find people that want to come to work every day. And if a lot of those computer folks are smart and really want a big change because they just got burned by AI, it's going to push them to construction. You can get into construction at any age.
Speaker 1:And it would be a nice thing to see to have a lot more competent folks in the labor force. And for all that talk about hard to find help these days, to just go away, we talked off the air. The CEO of NVIDIA, which has made a gazillion dollars with AI, recently said that computer programmers are not the job of the future. He said it's people that take AI and use it out in the real world. So what you just said makes perfect sense.
Speaker 1:If you know AI, if you're well-versed in it, learn a little bit about construction, learn how you can implement that with a construction degree or even just certifications, and if you can give the owner of a company an incentive to say you hire me, I'm going to improve your building process, it's going to go faster, be safer, it'll cost less for everybody involved and in the end, your company is just going to grow. You've moved out of working in front of a computer in an office and you're out in the sunshine and you're using this new tool to make everybody's life easier. Again, you can fear it and it's going to take over. Or you can say thanks for the hammer, thanks for the saw, I'm going to go do something with this now, and we shouldn't really fear AI. Science fiction makes it scary, but what you and I have crammed, we've taken crash courses in the past few weeks on AI. We've learned a lot and it's a wonderful thing.
Speaker 2:Agreed All the way around. Very well said.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, we hope you enjoyed today's show on AI. We'll put some of this stuff up on the website. There is so much about it that can be beneficial. Again, I'm not scared of AI. I'm scared about that self-healing cement we've talked about for years. But the Terminator Skynet thing really isn't something to sit around and worry about. Look at AI as a tool, as my wife said. Look at it as spellcheck. It's glorified spellcheck. It took what we put into it and just made it work faster for us.
Speaker 2:That was a great analogy. Shout out to Kim. She is the smarter half by far. She great analogy. Shout out to Kim she is the smarter half by far. She's also a hell of a cook.
Speaker 1:I'm glad you admitted it on the radio. Again. We'll put the information up on the website, thecarolinacontractorcom. You check out our other social media IG, facebook. We got stuff on YouTube. More of these shows are going to be popping up with the videos so you can watch it. And you can just download it and listen to podcasts if you'd rather do that. Please stay in touch by going to the website or contacting us through that social media, also because we love hearing from you and give us some ideas, and this show was not done completely by AI, but it did assist us and you wouldn't have known. Donnie's not real. As he said, he's just a figment of AI's imagination. So again, hit the website and we hope to have you. Tune in next week on the Carolina Contractor Show. Have a great day everybody. Tune in next week on the Carolina Contractor Show. Have a great day everybody. Thanks for listening to the Carolina Contractor Show. Learn more at thecarolinacontractorcom.