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Where are the robotic bricklayers?

constructionphysics.substack.com

131–140 of 564 posts

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have contempt for the skills; I have great respect for the skills. I have contempt for the prices of things. If construction costs are cheaper than ever (are they really?) why can't I buy a box to live in without spending $300,000? Why is the permits process nationally broken? And despite being skilled, that doesn't mean they're informed: why do contractors not know what they're supposed to do? Why do the peo…

In attempt to turn this teachable: the costs that go into housing aren't just labour, whether skilled or unskilled. It's a number of economic goods and services, each of which has its own price dyanmic. The chief cost of housing is land , and that follows the laws of economic rents and assets , in two principle ways: - For goods subject to rents , that is, where supply is nonresponsive to price , any surplus value ac…

None of this is a mystery. There's nothing to teach to me here. It's just a complaint about the market.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#132
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Programming is the conversion of ambiguous human requirements into machine readable instructions. To automate, computers would need to understand ambiguous human requirements. This is AGI. By comparison, brick laying is trivial.

This plays exactly into the OP's comment - but if that is your sincerely held belief there are ~4,000 bricklayers~[1] in America today and you could make a whole boatload of money if you could automate their work. 1. According to the BLS link below it's actually closer to 50,000.

No one is even thinking about trying to completely automate coding.

There's tons of "no code" solutions - but these are all just different versions of coding and programming languages - usually with GUIs and pictures instead of words.

There's more than 60,000 SWEs that work in my company. Amazon, Google, Apple, and MSFT could make >$10Bn/year each if they could automate coding.

The fact that none of them are even trying - when it sort of goes with their core businesses - should give you some indication that this is something unlikely to be automated any time soon.

The reason bricklaying ISN'T automated is probably because there's ONLY 59,000 bricklayers in the US (a $3B market), it's not generalizable, and even if it was - the cost to move a machine, set it up, and maintain it - it's hard to imagine massive cost savings - 50% seems generous.

If there were >1M bricklayers - and/or they made >$400k/year on average, the work was generalizable, and automating would bring huge cost-savings that could be captured - there would be a LOT more effort into automating bricklaying.

But none of these are true. How much of brick laying is generalizable (building a new house) vs custom (repairing some old wall with non-standard bricks)? I have no idea - but I'm guessing not a lot more than 50%. That's a $1.5B market. You'd be luck to cut the costs by 50% - that's maybe $750M.

It could easily cost more than than to automate bricklaying! Why even try?? No one is interested in investing in that risk / reward.

On the contrary - most of Radiology could be automated and most of it is generalizable. Since hospitals are monopolies and healthcare is a mess - you might be able to capture all the cost savings - which would be close to 100%!

Since there's ~35k Radiologists, and they're some of the highest paid workers in the world - there are a lot of efforts to actually automate this (and they're doing quite well).

If you think automating radiology is easier than building a hamburger-cooking robot, you're naive. If you think AGI is easier to achieve than building a tomato-harvesting machine, you're clueless.

There's just simply not hundreds of billions to be made automating cooking hamburgers and harvesting tomatoes more efficiently. And it's not easy to generalize and automate cooking or harvesting EVERYTHING. And even if there was, restaurants and groceries are commodities - not monopolies. You couldn't capture all the savings. A race to the bottom on prices would eventually just pass the savings on to the customer - not juice profits. That's not something you want to spend massive, risky R&D on. That's why we haven't automated cooking hamburgers and harvesting tomatoes. Not because it's harder than protein folding, fusion energy, or true AGI...

From another point of view - we've had machines that mop floors for decades - and there's still a lot of people employed to mop floors. Is this because mopping floors is incredibly complex and creative? No - it's because people who mop floors get paid minimum wage, and they do a lot of other things, too.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#133
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have contempt for the skills; I have great respect for the skills. I have contempt for the prices of things. If construction costs are cheaper than ever (are they really?) why can't I buy a box to live in without spending $300,000? Why is the permits process nationally broken? And despite being skilled, that doesn't mean they're informed: why do contractors not know what they're supposed to do? Why do the peo…

As far as renovations, I think the simple reality is that renovating requires a lot of very skilled labor, and skilled labor is not cheap. Good contractors where I live are booked months and months out. The weird thing is if you look the salary data, these jobs don't even pay very well. Electricians and plumbers both have average salaries of $56k, compared to ~$100k for software engineers according to BLS data. If th…

Sorry, that's just not true. Electricians in Phoenix can break $100k, and they openly tell me about it all the time. The electrician who did my house went from making $40k in his first year to $250k float month-to-month. It makes working in software look like being a peasant out here.

Ask me what HVAC companies make in the hottest city in the nation.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#134
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as renovations, I think the simple reality is that renovating requires a lot of very skilled labor, and skilled labor is not cheap. Good contractors where I live are booked months and months out. The weird thing is if you look the salary data, these jobs don't even pay very well. Electricians and plumbers both have average salaries of $56k, compared to ~$100k for software engineers according to BLS data. If th…

Sorry, that's just not true. Electricians in Phoenix can break $100k, and they openly tell me about it all the time. The electrician who did my house went from making $40k in his first year to $250k float month-to-month. It makes working in software look like being a peasant out here. Ask me what HVAC companies make in the hottest city in the nation.

Take it up with the Bureau of Labor Statistics. These are nationwide averages.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#135
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Programming is the conversion of ambiguous human requirements into machine readable instructions. To automate, computers would need to understand ambiguous human requirements. This is AGI. By comparison, brick laying is trivial.

This plays exactly into the OP's comment - but if that is your sincerely held belief there are ~4,000 bricklayers~[1] in America today and you could make a whole boatload of money if you could automate their work. 1. According to the BLS link below it's actually closer to 50,000.

> there are 4,000 bricklayers in America today

There are over 50,000 bricklayers in the US according to the BLS[1].

[1] https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes472021.htm

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#136

The question I would have around automated building construction is "why use bricks?". Bricks are great for humans to build with, they are just the right size and weight for the human hand to manipulate and place. They are not optimised for machine manipulation. I would guess that if you wanted to automate construction you would start by making things like walls on an automated production line, then ship the largest…

Bricks are easy to maintain and remodel and repair. It's a modular system.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#137

The question I would have around automated building construction is "why use bricks?". Bricks are great for humans to build with, they are just the right size and weight for the human hand to manipulate and place. They are not optimised for machine manipulation. I would guess that if you wanted to automate construction you would start by making things like walls on an automated production line, then ship the largest…

>The problem seems to be people have a emotional idea of what a dream house is, an idea that is firmly stuck in the red brick house of 1970's sitcoms.

Your fully automated house-extrusion company isn't going to have many customers, especially after you explain to people why their ideal dream home is obsolete and that they should pay you for a plascrete tube to live in instead because the profit margins are better.

Those "emotional ideas" are what drive market incentives, you can't simply ignore them.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#138
post #28

The great contempt that computer people have for the skills that every human brings to the jobs that the do is always on display here. We haven't automated driving; we haven't automated picking tomatoes; we haven't automated bricklaying; we can't automate cooking a fucking hamburger. But they are completely convinced that it's just around the corner, because they are full of contempt for the skill and intelligence of…

I don't have contempt for the skills; I have great respect for the skills. I have contempt for the prices of things. If construction costs are cheaper than ever (are they really?) why can't I buy a box to live in without spending $300,000? Why is the permits process nationally broken? And despite being skilled, that doesn't mean they're informed: why do contractors not know what they're supposed to do? Why do the peo…

Why renovate someone's bathroom when real estate investors will pay you more and will throw years of work at you?

Also, housing isn't expensive because of labor costs. In many places, the land itself is worth more than the improvements made to it.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#139
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not destroying your body lifting heavy weights for 50 years seems like something people might like. We automated looking after the house after it's been built, no need for people scrubbing floors and clothes any more, freed up 40% of the workforce. My partially automated vacuum cleaner, clothes washer, dish washer, food cooker, water heater, all work well.

Most construction relies on fit young men to do the "heavy lifting". It would be interesting to see how the dynamics changesd if technology moved the needle on the brawn->brain scale, so that the core value prop of a construction worker was not their fitness. I'm not convinced it would be for the better. Also just want to add that working in a physical job for 50 years is much better for your body than sitting at a d…

> physical job for 50 years

I think you’re envisioning jobs with high skill requirements or low demand, or a mix of both. Like landscaper for the town, or garbage truck operator.

Otherwise you’ll generally be met with a combination of RSI, hazardous product ingestion (dust, paint fumes, exhaust…), allergies, injuries, or sheer overwork.

Working a low wage low level physical job is more often than not closer to Amazon warehouse worker than artisans healthily exercising their bodies.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#140
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have contempt for the skills; I have great respect for the skills. I have contempt for the prices of things. If construction costs are cheaper than ever (are they really?) why can't I buy a box to live in without spending $300,000? Why is the permits process nationally broken? And despite being skilled, that doesn't mean they're informed: why do contractors not know what they're supposed to do? Why do the peo…

The price consumers pay for something has nothing to do with the cost of producing it. Not counting the cost of the land itself, an identical house built in the city costs the same in hours and materials as one in the country. Price is determined by one thing, and one thing only: how much other people are willing to pay for it (i.e. the market sets the prices). The costs vs sale price are relevant to the builder in m…

Do you understand what market competition is?
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