In an obscure post, a Mozilla MLE announced a ClawBot ripoff specifically targeted at at tradespeople (electricians, plumbers, roofers, handymen) for help with administrative tasks like scheduling, explaining invoices, etc.
What is their project, ClawBolt? According to their website, it’s a compilation of
- A flaky AI agent you run on your computer
- A Telegram chatbot to remotely control it
- A connection to OpenAI to parse all of it
This sounds like a dangerous project to target at tradesmen, doesn’t it? AI marketing tells people that AI is smart and safe and powerful when it is anything but. If Facebook’s top AI safety genius nearly destroyed her own email inbox, how will a plumber fare?
One of the features of ClawBolt is “memory,” something that will store and possibly corrupt questions and answers like “What’s Mrs. Johnson’s address?” and “My hourly rate is $95”.
But it gets worse: ClawBolt documentation says it can scan images to “get help identifying fixtures”
Remember the memes making fun of AI’s inability to make wiring diagrams?
I can only imagine how bad this could make things for tradespeople - in addition to violating customer privacy, getting gaslit by a non-deterministic “memory” machine, and potentially breaking their work computers.
If an actual electrician AI existed (and not this administrative task AI) it might be dangerous for normal people to use it. But if an actual authorized electrician uses an AI to do unsafe work they are a terrible electrician and shouldn’t be an electrician in the first place.
Why is everyone assuming tradespeople are terrible at their jobs and apparently unable to spot unsafe instructions about their own profession?
But you said:
If they don’t know/realize the AI is wrong why would they double check? That’s the problem with these systems.
I mean it’s accounting and admin stuff. So it’s not dangerous. Worst case scenario is that they loose money or I guess it’s theoretically possible that they “accidentally” commit tax fraud or something but that is obviously their own fault and it’s not really dangerous.
Look up “deskilling.”
Do you seriously think any tradespeople will just forget how to do their job just because of some stupid accounting and admin task AI?
I sure do. And engineers. And doctors.
How will they get worse at the part of their job the actually matters if they got an AI that helps them with invoices?
Oh piss off with this “its just administrative tasks bro, it’s just meant to replace secretaries bro.” Nobody believes that garbage.
You think “accounting and admin stuff is not dangerous?” That those tasks don’t “actually matter?” Please tell the IRS that excuse when it files your taxes wrong, and let me know what they say.