Can Construction Jobs Be Replaced with AI?

The headlines shout that AI is coming for every job...We’ve been hearing the same siren all year, so we sat down and mapped the real fault line between work that moves data and work that moves atoms. From roofing valleys and LVL cut strategies to drone surveys and one-click renderings, we break down what actually changes on site—and what still needs a skilled human to adapt when the plan meets the weather.

We start with the fear and the flashy predictions, then test them against field reality. Estimating and rendering are already transforming: a window schedule can become a clean order in seconds, and a drone shot plus a smart prompt can show a client a near-final exterior before the roof is sheathed. That’s leverage for builders, not a pink slip. Meanwhile, the trades that live on ladders, in crawlspaces, and under eaves remain stubbornly resistant to automation. A demo bot can lay shingles on a clean patch; it can’t climb, handle a dormer, or fix a tricky valley while checking flashing and safety. Judgment, improvisation, and accountability still belong to people.

We also share practical wins that anyone can copy. Feed your estimating sheet to a smart tool and tighten formulas you’ve trusted for years. Use AI to minimize waste on 48-foot LVLs with real inventory constraints. Pair drones with mapping to compress weeks of surveying into minutes, then walk the land to confirm blind spots under trees. And if you’re early in your career, stack trade certifications with AI fluency—be the person who turns messy inputs into clear decisions. That’s how you stay valuable no matter how fast the software moves.

Want more like this? Subscribe, share the show with a friend in the trades, and leave a quick review so others can find us. Then tell us: what job on your site would you never trust to a bot?

Transcript

Cold Open And Sports Banter

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Carolina Contractor Show with your host, General Contractor Donnie Blanchard. So off the air, Donnie and I were talking about um sports. I know that's a surprise. We're talking about uh Charlotte basketball, they're kicking buttons stuff like that, but it reminded me of um players that said funny things, and Donnie was not familiar with Charles Shackelford, who played Frenzy State in the mid-80s. He said one time, I can shoot with my left hand, I can shoot with my right hand, I'm amphibious. And one of the great lines ever said by an athlete. No doubt.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

I didn't know who said it, but I've definitely heard several people pick on the amphibious joke. And uh, yeah, that's that's a nice play on ampidextrius.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

I like it. And you know what? He went on to play like 10 years in the uh NBA, so he probably was like, Yeah, go ahead and laugh at me. I made real money playing basketball. Even funnier, I wonder how many people didn't know that he didn't say it right. Oh, everybody knew right. Oh, oh, I get what you're saying. Like his teammates high-fived him and said, Yeah, man, you are. Yeah, he's amphibious.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

Man.

Show Intro And Listener Thanks

SPEAKER_00 1:04

Now I'm thinking Tropic Thunder, and we're not going there. We're not gonna do it, Donnie. Not today. We got to get on with the show. We we gotta do the show. All right, we're gonna reset here. Welcome to the Carolina Contractor Show. My name's Eric Smith across from me, General Contractor Donnie Blanchard. And uh the things that never make it on the air, it's probably a good, good thing that they don't. Um go to the website, thecarolinacontractor.com. You'll find out about the show. We got previous ones, actually hundreds of them, uploaded in podcast form. And you can find our links to social media, uh YouTube site. We got stuff up on YouTube and IG. Uh before we do get in the show, Donnie, you and I have to give a super big, giant thank you to everybody who checks out our show because we've been putting up some uh quick videos and stuff. You've put them up so far. I've got some on the back burner. Yeah. You put up two alone that generated over 1.6 million views. And Donnie and I click on our own videos a lot, but that only counts for like a dozen of the views. So we just want to say thank you for people that check us out on Facebook and IG. And I mean, it it blew us away that that many people are now interested in what we just chat about off the cuff sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

Yeah, it's funny the how many people um uh that that take interest in in the walking and talking videos. And what I've been doing is is trying to take notice on a job site when we're doing interesting things because I just have a wealth of content and I really don't take advantage of it as much as I should. And we put videos up of us um and you know, we're talking about subjects that we feel are super important and and timely and all the things, but um, you know, just giving tips and tricks on the job site and uh and moving while you're talking uh seems to be the the ticket. And one thing that I've noticed is our our downloads, our interactions across all platforms, so not just Instagram. Um got thousands more followers on Facebook and um I don't check it as much as I should. And I I hate to say that I don't play the social media game, but I'm just too darn busy and I'm a dad, you know, have a a family that I'm very involved with, but um I've noticed that the people who uh who liked and and viewed and shared all the things also get on the podcast, and so it's cool how all that really ties together and and to echo what you said, thank you very much, everybody.

Viral Stud Marking Video Backstory

SPEAKER_00 3:18

Yeah, it it again, I can't say it any better than it just blows you away when you find people, I mean, hundreds of comments and shares and follows, and we really never did this trying to do that. We just kind of did it. It was your idea, it was your show, basically, is an informational show, and then we just kind of started shooting the breeze and overnight sensation five or six years later. But uh Yeah, check out all this go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 3:43

Did you see where um so so the video that Eric's talking about recently, we got almost 800,000 views in about five days, so that that's big time. Um what we basically did is went through a house and before the drywall was hung, we marked all the studs, we marked all the electrical outlets, and we marked all the plumbing with all different colors, so everything's color-coded, and and we didn't skip a stud. We did the whole house. It doesn't take a lot longer to just do everything. A lot of people just do it on 16-inch centers down one wall, but we went all out and I put the video up, and and some guy, tough critic, he says, Well, that's useless, man, because when the painter comes in there, he's gonna overspray all your marks, ha ha ha. And I had to politely correct it. I didn't correct him, but I politely commented back. And I sat on it for a day because I thought, I don't want to be a smart aleck, but I couldn't help myself because I've been hanging around you too long. Anyway, so I said, with all due respect, bud, those stud markings are for the drywall contractor and the trim carpenter who comes after the drywall contractor. So by the time the painter gets there, he doesn't need to know where the studs are. So it they serve their purpose well before your paint guy. But thank you. But thank you for taking the time to interact.

Headlines And The AI Job Panic

SPEAKER_00 4:53

Yeah, we all know when you when you frame a house, you uh like to paint inside the the studs and the headers and stuff and then put drywall over and paint it again. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And and outlets, don't you spray paint the inside of the outlets before you cover them up? If we've got a quirky homeowner, we'll do anything they need. If you want to do it and you want to write a check, we'll paint anything you want to. Um I want to go over some headlines uh real quick, Donnie, because it seems like it's invading everybody's uh safe space. Uh here are some headlines I'm I'm just randomly grabbing here. How long until AI takes your job? More jobs being taken by AI. Meet the people that are taking over jobs with AI. America isn't ready for what AI will do for jobs. I'm sure you've heard that a lot too.

SPEAKER_01 5:45

Not so much in my world, but but it's coming. You know, every when I look up construction articles, um, that that's definitely a part of every every news outlet out there. Is that it's it's not fear-mongering necessarily, but I don't think it'll hit construction as fast as it hits other things, but but legitimate concern.

Musk Predictions And Reality Check

SPEAKER_00 6:02

People are worried about AI taking their jobs. And so today we'll talk about like how you can AI proof your career or your job. Um, it all started with Elon Musk. Back in October, he was on the Joe Rogan experience, who, by the way, Joe, uh, why are you not calling us beyond the show? Um but he said that AI was targeting desk jobs at an extreme speed. He said it's gonna be like lightning or a supersonic tsunami where any job at a computer, coding reports, data, data, tomato, tomato, uh they face rapid replacement from AI. And you hear all these reports, so people are getting scared, and even people like in your business and construction um are worried about it. What are they gonna have robots doing my job and everything? And I think people need to take a step back. Yeah, some jobs can be automated, but I'm sorry, Amazon's been using automated lifts and and automation galore and AI for years. Now they have made recent cuts. I I can't remember the number, it was a pretty significant number of job cuts are gonna move due to um AI. But before we get into the the meat of the show, remember Elon has big optimism when it comes to his timelines, but he doesn't have a good track record of it. Examples, he said there'll be full self-driving unsupervised cars by 2018. Okay, they're out there, but the amount he wanted probably will be after 2030. He said there'd be one million robo taxis by 2020. There's a thousand of them today. He said humans on Mars by 2026. Well, now he doesn't even have a date for that. He said, let's aim for the moon instead. Um he said$25,000 Teslas this year, not happening. And the Optimus production, which are the robots that will do made work and all that stuff. Uh he said 2026 you'd have them, and now he doesn't even have anything up the pipe for those. So AI will definitely affect desk jobs, but it's not gonna happen tomorrow.

SPEAKER_01 8:16

Yeah, I agree with that. I think it's gonna be a long time and and there's certain things that they're already taken over with, but um I do feel like that's limited, you know, certain, especially in my world with the construction um gig, that there's so many things that require the human experience. You've got to be able to uh adapt and make decisions on the fly. And I know that computers can analyze more data in 15 seconds than we can in 15 years, but at the same time, how how useful is that? And how, you know, if you apply that or try to put them in a in a critical thinking position, then you know how how reliable is that decision gonna be. So um I'm not I'm not um I you know, uh in my world every day it's something. It's always something. We joke around and um my future father-in-law Jerry and I, we we we joke around about the Don the Don and Jerry experience of the day. And uh we're not piggybacking on the cartoon, but you know, it's a real thing, and and we take on some some doozies, and when we think we have it all dialed in and nailed down, there's just so many factors that can go awry, you know, from your material being delivered wrong to your subcontractor being delayed by a day to um just just lack of uh communication with just one little detail can throw the whole thing for a loop, and and I just don't see AI being able to think through those uh curveballs.

Why Physical Trades Stay Safe

SPEAKER_00 9:34

Well, the one thing Elon said that I really appreciated was he said jobs that physically move atoms. I love that. Physically move atoms, jobs like plumbing, HVAC, roofing, construction, electrical, welding, cooking, farming, they require real-world manipulation. And robots and robotics in general lag way behind AI software. So the software is where AI is gonna have a function. But these physical jobs, they can't do it. Now, AI can help you uh use your tools better, better. You kind of pointed out diagnostics, um, estimates, um, but you aren't you're not gonna get a robot on top of a roof or under a sink anytime soon. Um I use this phrase and I'm I've copyrighted it. AI is a hammer, you can hit nails with it, or you can be the nail. So if you're in a job like data input, I would be looking for something else to do. But if you quote, move the electrons and the protons and you physically move atoms, man, it's a great time. And we've always preached about those jobs that were always looked at as a the redheaded stepchild, the blue-collar jobs, the physical jobs, are very safe and they pay very well. And you can go to a community college and get certified in a lot of stuff. And I assume, Donnie, if someone came out of a a uh community college and they had taken X amount of courses on construction and building or welding and had some certificates, you'd be like, man, this is somebody I can train. I want them on my team.

Estimators, Engineers, Architects And AI

SPEAKER_01 11:15

Yeah. Absolutely. And uh to back up and comment on what you said a second ago, the the estimators, I could definitely see those folks um being obsolete within the next decade. Uh that being said, it goes back to what I mentioned earlier about all the variables. So I mean, can uh can it think through the variables? I think probably yes, and they'll probably spell out the variables to the side and say, hey, this is how it should be in an ideal situation. You want to allow for weather, you want to adjust this, this, and this. So I do think estimators are are probably on the chopping block sometime soon. Um another and and these are all upfront jobs, these are a lot of the things that have to happen uh on the administrative side before you ever break ground. And um, I'm building a house for a structural engineer right now, and it came up on the job side the other day. What about AI for structural engineering? And he has to juke and jive, and and nothing is nothing is black and white in his world. He has to look at the situation, look at the age of the building, look at the materials that were used back then versus what's available nowadays, and he's got to put all that together. And I'm not saying AI can't do that, but I think if you unplug the human element from engineering, I I I just don't see that being successful. Not now, anyways. Right. And um and then an engineer is is the guy who puts the stamp on the plans that the architect draws. So from an architecture standpoint, I don't know that an architect will be fully replaced. I think that that architect could learn how to feed the appropriate information to get the desired result to AI, and I think that's where the architecture jobs will go. Instead of sitting there on AutoCAD for three days at a time and pulling lines, pulling dimensions and everything, I think that you can feed it a limited amount of information and just give it your big picture idea, and I think it'll fill in the blanks. Uh the one thing that I I know is going to go away, and probably sooner than later, are the um the rendering folks. So I uh got snowed in, I don't know, 20 years ago, and there's a program called SketchUp, so it's SketchUp with a S on the front, and it's it's uh a Google product, and I I don't know that it's obsolete now, but you know, not a lot of people use it anymore. But it's a great 3D rendering program, so I could feed it a 2D drawing from AutoCAD, and then I could extrude all those lines up, down, sideways, or however. But it took me a couple weeks to learn how to use it, and then when I learned how to use it, it would take me, you know, four hours one night, four hours the next night, maybe another four hours the third night to crank out a 3D rendering. And I was so proud of that thing. I mean, it wouldn't be great because I was self-taught, but at the same time, it was it was super helpful in terms of relaying uh ideas, color schemes, and that sort of thing to a homeowner. Well, now I can take a picture, and for instance, I did this, I didn't share it on our social media, but I took a picture for the structural engineer and his wife, and uh, we weren't even done framing the house. We had everything up except for the plywood on the roof, but I took a drone shot and I told it what to do. I told it, you know, use this roof type, use this roof color, make the brick look like this, you know, landscape the front, um, make the trees in the yard look like midsummer, brighten everything up, make the sky look this way, and um and several other details. So I basically showed them uh something really darn close to what the finished product of their house will look like, and I and AI did that in about a minute or less. And so the people who spend all this time on these uh color renderings and everything, I I just I'm not I I hate it for you guys, but if I were in their shoes, I'd probably be looking looking to uh expand on on my uh skill set.

SPEAKER_00 14:44

You know what? The horse and buggy, you know, uh you can't you it's we don't need the buggies as much. We can't cry over the jobs, things change. Uh speaking of getting ideas of what something will look like, a lot of people still don't realize you can find some of these AI, the chat GPT, which by the way, I was always calling it GTP because I think cars, GT. Um uh grok and those. Take a picture of your room. We did this in our playroom. We took a picture of the room with the couch and the blanket and a pillow and something on the floor. We want to see what it would look like if we got rid of the carpet and put in laminate. All right. So, or luxury vinyl, sorry, that was not laminate. And when it first came up, it looked good, and then I said clean it up. And it got rid of the the clutter. It actually changed a couple things. Then I said change the paint color, and all of a sudden you can see what your room would look like just using your phone. So you're right, you don't need someone to say, well, we'll come back tomorrow or we'll send you some ideas. You can do it yourself just sitting on the couch. Uh, you can move furniture around, see what a different couch will look like, as you said, in seconds. It's great. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:55

So that that leads me to to say that interior designers are probably right behind the rendering folks on the chopping block because um, you know, there's some interior designers out there that um are wonderful, and there's some out there that just pretend they know what they're talking about and charge you a lot of money. Care to name any for a bunch of BS. No, but I've had some great experiences and I've had some horrendous experiences. One, I can't I can't call him by name, but he uh pretty much showed up hammered on the job one time, and um yeah, that was his last day working for the homeowner. But um, you know, those guys are interesting characters, and um yeah, I don't I don't know that if you can if some people don't know what they want, and I think a good interior designer can tell you what looks good and show you what you want, but if you have a good idea, my sweetheart is a genius when it comes to this, and I I'm I'm basically putting she's not in, she doesn't even know she's in training, but she is. And so I I feed her certain situations, say, sweetheart, you know, tell me what you think would be best in this room, and she runs with it. She is she is very gifted in that area. Her mother uh is the same way, and um, and she definitely gets it from her, but they're you know, we're we're working on that, and and I think that it could be really beneficial to have somebody like her in-house uh for my future builds because she just knows what looks good, she gets along with people, and um, you know, like I mentioned before, you you gotta know what to tell it. So if if if you don't know what to tell AI, if you don't know what you want, then I don't know where you go from there. But um having someone who knows what looks good and how to tell it, how to use AI uh from for where it is right now, I think is the key.

Renderings In Seconds And Design Shifts

SPEAKER_00 17:28

So we did a um uh seminar yesterday at work and it was talking about open joists. Do you know what those are, right? Oh yeah. So and for people don't know, joists that you use for your flooring or support, and they've got these new open joists, and and you can run um HVAC, I think it's 10 inch tubes can go through it, and you're electrical, and and they're pretty awesome. But what they do is they have a uh a design to them that was engineered, and I'm not saying AI did it because these things have been out for a while, but the guy was talking about how much physical labor is required to manufacture, test them, get them to the site, get them in place, bolt them down, and install everything, but AI was only affecting a teeny little part of the whole process. They still need the men and women there to build these things and to get them out to the job site. And uh we talked about roofing. You can't get I saw a video, some guy actually made a robot that could put down shingles didn't show how he didn't show how he got it on the roof, and it could do one section pretty quickly. I mean, fast same speed as like your guys could do, but it never showed it. Well, how's it move over? How does it get onto the other peak? How does it what does it do with dormers? You know, it wouldn't fit near a dormer, it couldn't. How does it get to the edge? Does it put up the starter strip? It was like a colossal waste of here's what robots can do. Right. They can't do anything practical. Uh think of your job site. How many times do you need that opposable digit to problem solve or to move something or to wedge something in? It's not just the physical ability you have that AI can't do, it's the way the human mind works to solve that problem because look at the old timers who can do construction hacks that AI will never figure out how to do. I'm not gonna name a particular one, but we all have little hacks. AI is gonna say this is the best way, the only way, and when it gets stuck, it's stuck on it, can't do anything.

SPEAKER_01 19:35

Yeah, I agree. And they're always gonna need a person, even if those robots um continue to advance over the years. I mean, they're gonna be heavy, you're gonna have to set them up, you're gonna have to have somebody to move them around, and unless they go full-blown Terminator, you know, sentinel robot mode, and uh they've got robots to move the robots or that kind of thing, then I just I just don't see stuff like that taking off. That roofing thing that you mentioned was a huge waste of time for somebody. It looks cool. It was great for a video. I hope they got a lot of likes and shares, but um, you know, uh when like you mentioned, when they get to a dormer, who's gonna fix that valley the proper way and who's gonna check behind them. And um, I still think in in everything that's hands-on, the human element will never go away.

DIY Room Visuals And Interior Design

SPEAKER_00 20:16

We had a gentleman whose name I forget, uh, you'll have to remind me, who was a surveyor. And he talked about drones, how great they are, that he would fly them over land that needs to be surveyed, and they could vary super accurate reads of the terrain, inclines and declines, and how um the land is rolling, and it basically graphs it out, and then he would bring that drone back and he could put it to a computer and a software program, which in a way is AI, would map it and analyze it. But he still had to get out there and he still had to run it. Now you could in theory say, I'll just send it out there and map the area and bring it back to the HQ. But even though it could read to a degree, he said through the foliage and limbs and stuff, he said I still had to walk that property because there's things that still blocked it that kept it from giving an accurate read. But he said it's an immense help once he gets all that data loaded onto it and gets it in the computer. What was his name?

SPEAKER_01 21:19

Uh Jay Lo. Jay Lo's good friend, good surveyor. I'm sorry, great friend, great surveyor. And uh Jay, Jay is just such a sharp guy, man of faith, and he really walks it. So a lot of respect for him. But I think before that drone technology was available, they had to map out things for topography maps in 50 foot by 50 foot sections. So what used to take him about three weeks now takes him about 30 minutes and you know, no ticks. So bonus it all the way around.

SPEAKER_00 21:45

So that's what's called stacking trades. Um or or hybrid skills. If you're working in that field, you say, Hey, a drone could take over my job, or I learn to work to the drone, I learn how To improve it, I learn how to become more accurate. My job and my position as a human becomes valuable. No different than you could take AI and incorporate it to a build. You know, you talked about diagnostics. It could run over an architect's plan and say, hey, we think you might want to look at what the architect said do here. We don't think it's going to work on this property or suggest changes, estimating, because that's, I'm sure, a time killer for you is estimating, say, a roofing job, whereas AI can very accurately probably give you a material list that's right on, but you wouldn't trust it and just say, well, the AI program said I need 85 bundles of this and three rolls of starter strip, and then you look down and say, why does it tell me I need 21 rolls of felt for a standard residential house? Do you want that all delivered and dropped off and find out after the fact? Oh, it screwed up. It misread something.

Robots On Roofs And Real-World Limits

SPEAKER_01 22:58

Um one thing that I did that that I've I've used personally on several jobs already is that um I fed my spreadsheet that I use for estimating to AI and told it to make it better. And I already had the the I was pretty slick on Microsoft Excel in college. And actually the guy who wrote the book was my teacher. He was amazing. Um bad breath, and he would get right up on you, but he was a really smart guy. And um anyway, uh I figured out this spreadsheet hack where I could enter in, so about half of your spreadsheet and estimating is all based on square footage. So I could enter the heated square footage at the top of the spreadsheet in a particular cell, and it would transfer that cell across my whole uh estimate. So there was about half of my estimate that would be populated automatically by that. I fed that same thing to AI, and man, it dressed my spreadsheet up, it filled in a few blanks, and you know, when I thought I had it dialed in, you know, it just really, really upgraded the the quality of my estimate, and I basically made my own estimating software using that. And uh another cool thing I'll mention is my uh window guy, you know, really sharp guy, and uh uh if you get a big house, got 30, 40 windows, and they're high-end windows, and there's just I mean, you know this from a building supply standpoint, but um he told me, he said, Donnie, I can feed it the window schedule from uh from a PDF on a plan. And he said, What used to take me four hours, sometimes all day, takes about 30 seconds for it to crank out a list of windows from the window schedule. So, you know, if you learn, like you mentioned, he's he's uh not the nail, he's the hammer. So he's he's using it like a hammer, and um, it's making his job exponentially easier, and not just that, it's probably a lot more accurate.

SPEAKER_00 24:39

So we uh we sell LVLs, and of course you use LVLs and you'll want them at certain lengths. And we get them in one length, 48 feet, and then we have degrees that we cut them down to 32s, 24s, and so one of the things you do is if someone says, hey man, I need um five nines at 20 feet, this at 24, six at 32, and four at twelve, you know, and you have to write down on a piece of paper and try to maximize or minimize the waste and maximize the usage. Okay, if I took this, well, I dumped it into AI, and it would say, grab five 48 foot LVLs, first one, cut to these lengths. Oh, and I have to have a minimum leftover of we don't have waste. So we couldn't go, I think it's 12 feet for those, nothing smaller than a 12. And I inputted that and it said, take this many LVLs, cut them this, this, and this. Here's your leftover that is goes into stock that is still sellable, and it does it in a matter of you know 30 seconds, whereas before you'd be scratching your head, working with a calculus, counting on your toes, trying to figure out, okay, how can I maximize the LVL cuts? AI, guess what? Hammer, and it solves the problem much faster.

Drones, Surveying, And Hybrid Skills

SPEAKER_01 25:55

I agreed, man. It's it's the options are unlimited. Did you see the the last post I put up on Instagram uh and Facebook, I guess, because it goes to both when I put it out there? But we're building a batting cage for a local high school, and um when the uh the cool story, the the coach's uncle actually drew the plans and donated that to the school, which is all fine and good, but the dude was from Wilmington, so he designed this baby to withstand a category five hurricane. And uh it looks really good, but it's total overkill on so many levels, and um the posts were uh eight by eight, so you know they had to be uh about six feet in the ground or five feet in the ground with four and a half feet of concrete around the post, and uh so 20 footer is what it called for because the eve height was around 14 feet. So uh when all those went up, it just looks so cool and so massive, like a Noah's Ark type feel. But um, I fed that to AI and I showed two pictures of just the post there, and they asked me, hey, can you give us an idea of what the finished product will look like? And dude, the first post, the first picture had all the bracing, diagonal bracing. I mean, it it's just full of two by fours, and you can tell the treated wood is uh different than the regular two by fours, but I told it to put a roof on it, what kind of roof, what kind of siding to put on the gable ends, you know, remove all the temporary bracing and then install a screen. And I didn't know what to expect. I thought I was gonna have to take a few whacks at it, but dude, it came back on the very first try, and it looks almost exactly like the finished product will be.

SPEAKER_00 27:23

It's fantastic. Again, being the hammer and and using the AI to do something more efficiently. Um my son's in college and uh he's doing environmental biology, and we were talking about AI, and he's like, Dad, if I'm out in the field where I'm gonna be maybe in hip waiters or counting tadpoles or doing soil samples, AI can't do it. But he said, Man, it's gonna make it a lot easier for me to diagnose, or it'll probably give me ideas of the environment of what we can do to correct and or make it more efficient. And I said, Exactly. So he's actually looking forward to the idea of working with AI to make it something better. We've always talked about not to go against four-year colleges. We've always talked about community colleges and tech schools, and we mentioned a little bit earlier. But they're cheap as in price, it's quick. You can do night courses, you so you can keep your current job, you can find a job a lot faster, but on-the-job training is what will pay you to learn. Um, take a class on AI integration and design and find a builder who says, Hey man, I need a gopher if you want, and I'm talking to younger people. Start as a gopher, take those courses at your community college and learn the AI, show your boss how you can incorporate it, make it more efficient. You're gonna be a rock star and people that again we we're using over and over, but if you use it as a hammer and you show it to an employer, they're gonna be like, man, this guy's making us do better work and and be more efficient. Um, don't fear it. And there's a lot of jobs that I I personally think plumbing and HVAC and roofing and stuff, it's it's never gonna get touched by robots because there's just it can't do it. I'm I'm fine with computer and software, but that's where I'm seeing AI. I'm not seeing it physically out there in the field doing anything remarkable. Maybe your deliveries will come on a truck that'll be uh driverless, but aside from that, they're not getting up on the roof or climbing into a foundation.

Using AI For Cuts, Lists, And Waste

SPEAKER_01 29:29

Yeah, agreed. I think Masons, plumbers, electricians, HVAC techs, roofing folks, framers, all those people are gonna be safe for a long time to come. I don't know if they'll ever get replaced. And speaking of that, trade school, I have um really interesting gentleman who listens to the show, Mr. Pennington, and we uh we talked at an awards banquet last week, and he's a big time advocate for trade schools. My word, he has some really, really good information, and um I think we're gonna bring him in sometime soon on a show. That engineer that I spoke of, uh he's got a lot of good stuff to talk about. We're gonna have him on, and I believe next week uh we have the spray foam insulation guy, Rich Brown, back again with some really new uh interesting developments in spray foam. So um stay tuned, everybody, because we're gonna have some some good uh good content, good informational stuff ahead in the next few weeks.

SPEAKER_00 30:17

And I'll have to remind myself to ask every guest from now on, you know, have they integrated AI somehow into their uh business model and see how that works. Again, from the beginning of the show, we talked about this. Thank you so much for checking out our social media. We're just blown away by it, putting up posts that are getting hundreds of thousands of views and likes, and and we're just uh we're stunned by it. We're we're glad, but it was it's been quite a uh, like I said, an overnight success story that took five, six years to do. But uh hit the website, thecarolinacontractor.com. You can find all the links to our social media and our IG and Facebook and YouTube and stuff. And don't fear AI. It's a hammer. You can be the hammer or you can get nailed by the AI hammer, but I don't think you have to fear it. And maybe this will get more people outdoors jobs that require you to leave the house and not sit in front of a computer click clack and all that. No doubt. I think great advice. All right, uh, we appreciate you tuning in. And uh this show is gonna be uploaded ironically by AI. Uh but but I don't fear it. But we do thank you for tuning in, and we we hope to uh talk to you and hear from you next week on the Carolina Contractor Show.

SPEAKER_01 31:29

Thanks, everybody.