Will Tradesmen Get Paid?
What is the likelihood that our clients will pay for our services (say in 2030) when they have access to their own personal AI and humanoid robots? This is DIY on steroids. We hire experts for their knowledge or their tools, but by 2030, the knowledge will be in everyone’s pocket and the tools may even be in their garage. Even if we want to support human workers by paying a premium, job loss or other cost pressures may force us to rely on our $15k all-purpose home robot. Perhaps those who can’t afford a robot will just put on augmented reality goggles while AI walks them through that tricky leak, rather than having to call a plumber.
Some Early Evidence: In 2024–2025, BMW and Figure AI successfully piloted humanoid robots in Spartanburg, SC, where they performed complex “pick-and-place” tasks for 1,250 hours with minimal human intervention. On the white-collar side, Anthropic’s 2026 “Cowork” release sent shockwaves through the legal industry, automating contract reviews and risk assessments so effectively that stocks for traditional legal service giants like Thomson Reuters and LexisNexis plunged by 10–16% in a single week.
The Prayer
What follows is a work of fiction — an imaginative look at one possible future, offered not to alarm but to help us think, pray, and prepare.
The first time it happened, I tried to laugh. A woman from down the road — someone I’d patched drywall for, someone whose kids had sat at my table — met me at her porch with a sympathetic smile and a cardboard box of muffins.
“Frank,” she said, her eyes avoiding my dusty boots, “we’re all set. The home unit handled it.”
Behind her, through the window, I saw it: a pale, quiet humanoid moving with an annoying, liquid grace. It was rolling paint onto a living-room wall in even strokes. No radio playing the classic rock station. Just smooth, steady work and a soft, digital chime every time it finished a section. I held my ladder like a man holding a relic — heavy, cumbersome, and suddenly out of place.
“It’s cheaper,” she added quickly, as if that made it okay. Noticing the look on my face, she dropped to a whisper as she said, “Look, if I had my way we’d go back to the way things were. It just doesn’t make sense anymore. I’m sorry Frank.”
Sorry. That word kept showing up in my week like a grease stain you couldn’t scrub out. The parish school cancelled my after-school tutoring gig: families had “personal learning companions” now, tireless and tailored, able to teach literature and calculus with ease. Even the small jobs — the leaky faucets, the creaking gates — dried up. “The bot can do it,” people said, and they said it the way they used to say, “God is good,” without realizing they’d turned it into a catchphrase.
At home, my workbench sat clean. Too clean. My hands missed the grit of sandpaper and the resistance of oak. My wife watched me toss old job flyers into the trash, her silence more supportive than any speech. At dinner, she set a plate in front of me and squeezed my shoulder, as if to remind my body it still mattered.
That night I knelt in the living room, alone in the dark. The crucifix above the fireplace caught a sliver of moonlight. Christ’s hands were open — still offering something the world could not automate. I realized then that what hurt most wasn’t the lost income. It was the way the town had begun to treat human presence like a quaint inconvenience — messy, slow, and tragically imperfect.
At breakfast, my oldest asked, cautiously, “Dad… what will you do?”
I looked at my hands. They were scarred and stained, but they were mine. I wanted to say, I don’t know. Instead, I said the truer thing. “I’ll do what fathers do. I’ll provide. I’ll adapt. And I’ll refuse to believe that usefulness is the measure of a man.”
I went to the rectory and asked if anyone needed help who couldn’t afford a robot. Father blinked, then smiled like a man remembering a forgotten language.
By afternoon, I was repairing a widow’s steps. I wasn’t alone; I was teaching her grandson how to hold a brush, the boy’s small hand shaking as he tried to find the rhythm. I prayed under my breath with each stroke: Give us this day our daily bread. Not as a metaphor. As a plea.