AI and why billionaires want your kids to become plumbers
Recently, one of the American tech multi-billionaires suggested that young people learn trades such as electrical or plumbing rather than go to university.
He said it’s the best way to prepare for the brave new world we’re rushing headlong into, a world ruled by the equally cheered and equally feared Artificial Intelligence.
It is mighty decent of the billionaire to care about the young in the scary world he’s helping to foist upon us. Many are quite taken by his advice.
But such advice is actually not very surprising. A licensed tradesperson can earn a pretty decent living in the developed West. However, context matters. The trades pay well there because there’s a chronic shortage of people who ply those trades.
For decades, young people in Malaysia preferred to enter university and then find salaried jobs in tech or finance or healthcare or even the government.
Unclogging toilets or rewiring old houses is hard, dirty, dangerous and certainly not very popular – with…
