In-person services may never operate strictly in-person again

If you don't live alone, it's not actually all that hard to do home haircuts if you just want a basic haircut.

The 1500 hours of training it takes to get a class A barber certificate in Texas (the first state whose requirements I happened to find on the web), which I presume is similar for barbers in other states, covers a whole lot more than just a simple haircut.

A lot of things that can be done reasonably easily, at least in a basic way, at home require a lot more training and preparation when offered as a service to the public. When offering a service to the public you have to deal with a much wider variety of situations, and you have a much higher volume making things like sanitation a lot more important.

(For anyone curious, that 1500 hours is 180 hours of theory, and 1320 hours in instruction and practical work. The theory is 50 hours of anatomy, physiology, and histology of hair, skin, muscles, nerves, cells, circulatory system, digestion, and bones; 35 hours of barber laws and rules; 30 hours of bacteriology, sterilization, and sanitation; 10 hours on disorders of the skin, scalp, and hair; 5 on each of salesmanship, barbershop management, chemistry, shaving, (scalp, hair treatments, and skin); 4 each on sanitary professional techniques, professional ethics, and the scientific fundamentals of barbering; 3 on cosmetic preparations; 2 each on (shampooing and rinsing), (cutting and processing curly and over-curly hair), (haircutting, male and female), and (theory of massage of scalp, face, and neck). 1 hour each on (hygiene and good grooming), barber implements, (honing and stropping), (mustaches and beards), facial treatments, (electricity and light therapy), and history of barbering.

The 1320 practical work is 800 hours of cutting (men's, women's, children's, curly, and razor), 80 hours of shaving, 55 of styling, 40 of shampooing and rinsing, 30 of bleaching and dyeing, 28 or waving, 25 of straightening, 25 of cleansing, 22 of professional ethics (how does this differ from the 4 hours covered in the theory part, I wonder?), 22 of barbershop management, and a bunch more subjects requiring from 8 to 17 hours).

But isn't that what you mainly do in an office? For some that is not life either. Having friends outside of work, a family, a house you enjoy living in may change your perception. Not saying this on and argumentative tone. Just take into account there is more to commuting and sitting in an office all day.

As the parent of a violinist and a violist, I find the role of the teacher for aspects like holding the instrument, to be less like "teaching" and much more like "debugging".

Kids grow, and every person's body is different: even when they've been playing for 10+ years and have reached the most advanced levels, they're still asking their teachers and fellow musicians to "debug" posture - because subtle changes can have outsize impact. This is why master classes exist, for instance.

There are all kinds of tools in this debugging toolkit. Some of them are rather tactile, such as feeling how much force is being transferred from the hand to the tip of the bow, feeling how "soft" the bow-hand is being held, feeling how much the bow arm's elbow is being allowed to sink under its own weight, or how much the shoulder is being tensed - because muscle tension can be a huge issue for string players. Not to mention the huge number of minute adjustments that can be made to various angles and might involve tweaks to shoulder rests, chin rests and so on.

Right now teachers have to debug, without being able to use their hands. A tall order for anyone. Just imagine being asked to debug software without being able to use your hands, or to poke at the system: no attaching a debugger, no inserting print statements - all you can do is give verbal inputs and observe outputs. It's a huge responsibility, when failing to debug, or getting it wrong, can have serious consequences (life-long problems with pain, for example).

Some teachers are much better than others at such "debugging", so yes from that perspective it sure would be nifty to invent some technology that guarantees more consistent results. But is it realistic? Every body is different physically, and the human touch and expertise plays a major role.

So, I can't help but think it would actually be a simpler problem to create an AI that can reliably debug software, vs creating AI that can reliably debug a musician's physical relationship to their instrument.

What are you basing this on, personal anecdotal evidence?

Fair enough. I should've thought about complexities of handling instruments more. My mind just raced to the memories of my piano lessons and the time a friend was teaching me guitar; the part about correct hold/finger placement were essentially pattern-matching, the kind I could see software solving right now (enough cameras + right software). But I understand now that what I've been taught was just the beginning of the beginning.

As for debugging in general, I agree and offer an analogy that might be intimately familiar to everyone here: debugging your parent's/neighbour's/friend's computer over the phone. I can handle it for about two minutes before my head hurts and I start boiling from anger. These days, I flat out refuse helping this way; if it can't wait, I only explain them how to install TeamViewer and what numbers to spell me over the phone.