The Iferia Techcast
00:22:56 · Ezekiel Iferia
[00:22:56] S0: Okay. Alright. So so, you know, you say that robots are coming and you believe in about three to five years, there will be robots working on roof. And, you know, one of the challenges you mentioned, you said the hardest thing to get robots to the roof is getting the roofers to train them. So let's look at things from the perspective of the roofers. Why do you think that's a challenge for them? Do you think they fear robots will want to replace their jobs? So I like to hear your own opinion on this.
00:23:27 · Adam Sand
[00:23:27] S1: Yeah. It it feels like you're standing on a branch, cutting the branch, and then eventually you fall with the branch. Mhmm. Right? Yep. So right now, they... What they do is they take advantage of of disadvantaged economies. Right? So they go to third world countries, and they put cameras on people's heads as they're cleaning or organizing or running a a distribution center. And they they train on this data. And because those people are disadvantaged, right, then they they basically don't get any stake in it. They're basically told do it or you just don't work here and you're gonna have to go find a job somewhere else. And guess what? They're doing it too. I don't like that. That's not very human centric. So then some companies, what they do is they pay you to do it. So right now in America, you can take your phone and strap it to your head. And it goes like this. And then you get paid $20 an hour to do housework. And as long as it can see your hands in the camera, you get paid for that hour. So if it was only... If it caught forty minutes, then you get two thirds of an hour's pay because it could only see your hand for for forty minutes of that hour. And then the third way of doing it is where you give people equity in the training. So you say, okay, we're not gonna pay you hourly. We're not gonna force you to do it because you're not gonna do it. You're gonna smash the equipment. You're gonna tell us you don't like it. Right? And we're not gonna pay you hourly to do it because you're gonna define whether you think that's worth it or not because it's gonna take your job. So the third way to do it is to make it so that everybody who contributes to the training set owns a piece, a share, a stake in that. And so that's one piece of it is that people have to have stakes. They have to see that this benefits them, which is is not a new concept. Companies used to give away pensions all the time. If you work at this company for forty years, you get a pension. If you're in the military, you get a pension. If you work for the government, you get a pension. Why do you believe it when you get a pension from the military or the government? Because you believe that the military or the government will be around for a hundred years and they'll pay. Right? But people don't believe it with companies because they're not so sure they'll be around.
00:25:51 · Adam Sand
So you have to make people believe in that. You have to create smart, intelligent belief systems and have a vision that people believe in. The other part of it is that you have to show people that you're doing it in a human centric way. Because it's not like the robot's going take your job. It's that all of a sudden you like... It used to be that to dig a hole in the ground, you needed 30 people to dig the hole. Now you need two people. You need one guy to spot the hole and the other guy to be in the machine digging the hole. So what did... What have we become? Heavy equipment operators. Heavy equipment operators make more money than 30 dudes with a shovel. So you're moving roofers from being manual laborers that are doing a grunt work job that nobody wants to do, that's unsafe, that drains you of energy, that takes time and energy away from what you could invest into your family and being there for your sons and daughters and coming home with energy. Like roofers go home, bagged, tired, exhausted, hurt. Well, if you go to work and you're operating and assisting a robot crew that's doing 90% of the hard work and you just get to do the craftsman work. The stuff that the robot can't do in the tight spaces, the detail work. Right? If you're setting up the robot crew, if you're tearing down the robot crew, if you're packaging up the robot crew, if you're hooking up the robot crew for the safety equipment. That stuff is where now all of a sudden you have 30 guys on five crews, right? Or six crews. Well now you can have 30 guys which operate on 15 crews. And now the roofing company is more successful. The roofer is paid more money. And they're also going home with a feeling like their job is respected and that then they go home with energy so they can play with their son. They can play with their daughter. They can enjoy time with their wife. So you... You're not just giving them stakes in the future, but you're also creating a better future.
00:27:51 · Ezekiel Iferia
[00:27:51] S0: Absolutely. That was very insightful. So you talk about putting robots on a roof. So what's actually real? What's feasible in the next three to five years, you know, versus what's... What should we see as purely sci fi? And also last, what should a roofing owner or roofer do about it right now?
00:28:11 · Adam Sand
[00:28:11] S1: Yeah. So you you wanna look at what is happening at a scale bigger than you. So everybody kind of heard about Elon Musk as a trillionaire because of all these big mergers where he rolled his companies up. Right? And he's not a trillionaire yet. He has the ability to purchase shares. He has options that will be distributed to him if he accomplishes certain things. One of those things that he has to accomplish is putting a million robots into the market. So a million people or a million companies or companies have to buy a million robots and that unlocks some of his shares. So then he could then sell them and have the money. So he's not the only guy doing it. China is further ahead by volume. And there's like Boston Dynamics and DJI and Figure and so many more. So they're like, you you have to look and say, okay, the world is creating robots, and most of them are creating humanoid robots. The world is mostly built around humans, right? There's a reason why a train is the size of a train. It's because it's about the same width as a horse and buggy was. And then if you look at a car, it's same units of of measurement. Like, why don't we sit three wide in a car or four wide in a car? It makes sense because it's the same size that the train was, the same size the horse and buggy was. It's roughly the same size. So the world, the door handles, the desks, the cupboards, everything in the world is built to work around humans. So the robots that do most of this are probably going to be platforms that you insert training material into. Right? You take a computer or phone and you put an app inside of it. So, you know, you take a Super Nintendo or a PlayStation. You put a cartridge or a disc inside of it. You put the thing in it to turn it in. So as hardware and software become kind of ubiquitous and almost merging, these platforms will be where you put a training set into them. And so that's how you keep it from being sci fi. You you have a bunch of companies racing to make the best, most capable humanoid robots that can just function in a world that exists and was designed for people where everything is like, there's a handle. It's here. It's where your hand is. So largely you'll see humanoid robotics and then you might see efficiencies made for things that might fit the job a little better.
00:30:34 · Adam Sand
Like does the robot's going to be on its knees most of the day when it's a roofer? So do you split the roofing installation portion into a robot that just doesn't need a knee? Right? Like that will probably be a part of it. But then you asked it... So like to determine the difference between sci fi, you just have to think that a humanoid robot is like a PlayStation or a phone or a computer. Like everybody has the same computer, but does vastly different things with it. So everybody can have humanoid robot, but will do vastly different things with it. Some, just like people, you might have a bulkier one, a bigger one, and that's probably going to be the Tesla five C for construction. And then you're going to have a daintier one and a smaller one, a lighter one. And that might be the one that helps you pick out the right shirt at a clothing store or something. Right? So it's gonna be... There's gonna be different models, but more or less similar platforms. Just like you have a MacBook Pro and you have a MacBook Air. Right? You're gonna have a bigger one that is in a lighter one. Now, the second part of your question was what should a roofing company owner do? Well, I understand the resistance to change. I understand if you don't like this future. I myself am very concerned about this future. I wrote a 30 page AI manifesto about how I feel about all this and where I think and what I would just say to anybody is that this future is probably coming whether we like it or not because we have a zero to a billion track record of putting technology back in a bottle. If technology makes life easier and increases the capacity of human beings to do more, it survives. Every single time. Cars were easier than horses. Phones were easier than sending mail on horse and horse carriers. Right? Emails were easier than sending letters. Video calls are better at consuming information than a book. Right? So technology, we don't put technology back in the bottle very well as humans. And that's something that's really hard to wrestle with because chain, this kind, this level of revolution is very uncomfortable. Knowing that we're probably not going to stop it because of our own laziness, self interest, right, and desire for convenience, then we have to say, how can I align myself best to the future?