I immediately think of mining. Mining in most countries places little value on miners: it is a dangerous, life shortening occupation very often done by those wi

I immediately think of mining. Mining in most countries places little value on miners: it is a dangerous, life shortening occupation very often done by those without much alternative. It's history is one of random deaths and maimings, quite often of large groups of people at once. It is associated with numerous health problems. Pretty much the only thing that has ever improved conditions for miners anywhere is either collective action or paternalistic, labour-sympathetic government. Mining and jobs like it are among the stereotypical situations where people imagine that education for their children will lead to a better life. All of which is to say, will the most awful jobs actually be automated? Not just awful, either, but poorly paid? Logically it makes more sense to approach knowledge work first: it requires only one kind of investment, namely data centres. There are thousands of niche skills in manual labour that will be awkward to make robots for. I think also of old housing stock that needs to be maintained by plumbers, in particular: legacy stuff built up over decades (or where I live, centuries) Language models seem to have come a lot further because they can use the generalisable capital of computers. Outside of controlled environments (factories, cities with grid systems) I don't imagine robots will represent such a good investment any time soon. Knowledge work is dying, time to learn a trade. Maybe. (It would have been great to have been able to learn and practice a profession for a lifetime. Library churn is awful, I suspect what will follow for most of us here will be worse)