Aspire High, North Carolina’s first public trade high school, trains the next generation of workers. For local companies, the students can’t graduate soon enough.
“Are We Doomed?” In this University of Chicago course, students learn how humans might meet our collective demise. Nuclear weapons, climate change, artificial intelligence: Experts across fields come as guest speakers who share predictions of the threats that might end us all.
A recent New Yorker story shared how Geoffrey Hinton, a former AI developer and now a harbinger of its risks, attempted to temper the doom in this class earlier this year. Asked how to navigate a changing world, the 76-year-old offered students two pieces of advice. His first tip, a joke: It’s a good time to be an old person. His second tip, more serious: It’s a good time to be a plumber.
AI can do a lot of things, but it can’t work with its hands. ChatGPT can read the entire Internet, but it can’t fix a toilet. It can’t build a deck. Soon, it may be a safer career option to become a plumber or a carpenter than, perhaps (whimper), a writer.
The U.S. faces a shortage of skilled trade workers. Ask anyone who’s needed a tradesperson lately, and they’ll tell you. Ask me! I’ll tell you about the delays on a home project last year due to a lack of local electricians and carpenters. Ask Justin Elliott! He’s president of Precision Plumbing in Matthews, and he’s dealt with workforce shortages for decades.
AI can do a lot of things, but it can’t work with its hands. ChatGPT can read the entire Internet, but it can’t fix a toilet. It can’t build a deck. Soon, it may be a safer career option to become a plumber or a carpenter than, perhaps (whimper), a writer.
“It’s a problem. I’ve been at Precision for 25 years, and (labor shortages) have been a problem as long as I’ve been here,” says. “In the next five years, probably 25% to 50% of my top talent will be retiring. They’ve got a skill set that is just not learned from a book; it’s learned through experience and hands-on learning. As they retire, that knowledge retires with them.”
This sounds like opportunity to the students at Aspire Trade High School in Huntersville. While the students in Chicago ponder how things may go poorly, future plumbers, electricians and welders are here to study under experts and prepare to enter the workforce with an increasingly rare and in-demand skill: making a living by working with their hands.