Your most important services are one surprise failure away from disruption. Consider how physical AI could solve the crisis

It’s an exciting time for workers – and really everyone who uses infrastructure. If the last winter’s network tensions have taught us anything, it’s that essential systems have less room for failure than most people realize. And we still maintain them with reactive, manual methods, sending crews when something breaks, rather than preventing the failure.

For all the energy spent on whether AI will eliminate white-collar jobs, I think business leaders are missing a much bigger story: AI isn’t replacing skilled occupations—it’s requiring more of them, and more importantly, enhancing them.

It’s not nice to have. It is necessary because the professional workforce is aging, retirement is accelerating and there are fewer new employees. I’m a founder with decades of experience in so-called « physical AI » and I strongly believe that AI should be used to support workers, not replace them. As workforce restrictions tighten and downtime costs rise, the fastest way to sustainability is not automating people, but raising their level: constant visibility for frontline teams and decision-making support where the work actually happens.

In boardrooms and on earnings calls, executives are fixated on which white-collar roles will disappear first, even as they race to deploy tools that promise to write faster, analyze faster and shrink desk work even further. Almost every AI discussion focuses on increasing the productivity of desk-based knowledge workers, but this discussion ignores where the real labor pressures lie and where AI can have its most significant economic impact.

Here’s the reality:The AI ​​boom is physical.

Civilization does not run solely on structures. It works with maintenance: keeping the electricity on, the water flowing, the equipment safe and the premises functioning daily. Data centers, power grids, battery plants, electric vehicle infrastructure, water systems, and industrial facilities all depend on the continuous work of electricians, maintenance personnel, HVAC technicians, construction workers, and field maintenance workers.

A big problem is the decay of the physical systems that keep society functioning. A big opportunity is to use physical AI to prevent and reverse it. Over 45% of US infrastructure is rated in poor or mediocre condition, and while most of the economy is digitized, we largely maintain our infrastructure using Roman-era methods. We deploy field workers « blindly » and send them into the field to perform manual, reactive and infrequent inspections, resulting in either wasted time with no problems or missing major problems that go undetected for years. This leads to costly breakdowns that add pressure to an already strained workforce and often require repeated visits to different tools or parts. In many industries, more than half of the truck rolls are unnecessary. This would all be preventable in the world of physical AI.

In other words, AI is not just a software story. It’s the story of working life – and it depends heavily on the skilled trades. This is the workforce that can reap the greatest productivity benefits from AI.

A real labor crisis

America already has a critical shortage of skilled tradespeople. A large proportion of the workforce is approaching retirement: around 40% of professional workers are aged 45+ (and almost half of this group is 55+). At the same time, the income pipeline is thin, and less than 9% of the workforce is between 19 and 24 years old. Simply put, more people age out of these jobs than step into them – and decades of hard-earned field knowledge walks with them.

This is not only ineffective. It is dangerous, demoralizing and unsustainable. These missions require navigating dangerous, physically demanding environments – from extreme temperatures to confined spaces. Because the tasks are highly repetitive and often hampered by inefficient processes, the work can feel unfulfilling. Not surprisingly, burnout is common and young people aren’t stepping into these roles.

Physical AI is the solution to these problems. Real-time understanding of infrastructure status eliminates the cost and frustration of rolling unnecessary trucks and provides predictive information that helps field teams solve real problems before critical failures occur. Guidance and contextual awareness of construction sites help new jobseekers to rise faster and more safely and close the workforce gap. Most importantly, for all of us, we can create many new jobs while ensuring that the essential services we all rely on are delivered at the quality the world needs.

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