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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 17, 2026

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That's going to be the thing that really changes life for the majority of us, not dreams of "ASI will mean eventually we all have our own robot factories on the moon" style forecasts. And it will be a big hurdle to get over, because if you're going to challenge the construction trades on replacing union labour, you are going to have the unions fighting you. This is more likely to be the AI economy of the near future: first the white collar jobs lost the junior grades because one senior guy with AI can do the work himself, now the blue collar jobs are having bites taken out of them piece by piece. Now maybe it still will be worthwhile to be a plumber, but to be one with his own business, because now they don't take on apprentices anymore, Plumbing Bot is doing the jobs of installation with the boss overseeing work being carried out on several locations at once.