Chatting to Michael (a friend-of-a-friend)  in my local South London pub, we discussed the rapid changing landscape of Soho.  Michael is a recently out-of-work film-maker, struggling because of the rise of AI.  His skills are no longer needed, replaced by Midjourney, Leonardo, Google's Flow  (and the long list of AI-powered tools). 

Michael is not alone it seems, as news broke that the once-famous behemoth Special FX house  The Mill was shutting shop in Soho.  Its need similarly evaporated by AI prompts.

This loss of jobs in Soho reminded me of a similar vast loss of jobs & change that happened in Soho 20 years back.  The loss back then was of the Bicycle Courier.

Back in the late 90's and early 2000's when I first started working in the area, Soho was buzzing with armies of fixie-riding couriers, delivering manuscripts, reels, tapes and hard drives from office to office. 

The courier formed a core part of the Soho information super highway - delivering (by hand and on wheels) information from one office to another.  The courier was also a core part of Soho culture, propping up bars in pubs (the Coach & Horses on Greek Street was a favourite) along with strip clubs and brothels that were ubiquitous at the time.

Broadband internet drove this mass cull of jobs.  At the click of a button you could send a film manuscript, in the same way 20 years later a click can now not only send a manuscript but also write the manuscript in the first place.

And just like the army of couriers 20 years ago, Michael and his cohort are forced to make a career change with many now considering life in the 'Trades'.

Film-makers like couriers are generally quite practical people, so a move into becoming an electrician or plumber is a logical move for many. 

Importantly, Blue Collar manual jobs can't easily be decimated by AI, and in fact are in a position to thrive in an AI era, thanks to tools like SuperPower.Engineer.

At SuperPower.Engineer we see ourselves as champions of the Trades, using AI to help protect & scale jobs in the Blue Collar space, helping up-skill & empower workers using the power of AI - especially in the space of Technical Services & service engineers (like electricians, plumbers, HVAC, fire & security, Facility Managers).

One of the biggest challenges faced by all Technical Service Engineers isn't the threat of AI on their jobs, but the rising complexity of technologies and the breadth of technologies engineers are expected to deal with & fix.

Put simply, technology has got infinitely more complex but engineers haven't got infinitely smarter.

That's where AI can help.

Imagine a world where the engineer visiting your house to fix your boiler, doesn't have to spend 30 minutes on the phone to  the Equipment Manufacturer's Tech Support line to understand what a certain Error Code is & how to fix it - as it's a piece of equipment he's unfamiliar with.

Instead, the engineer pops on his AR glasses.  The camera on the glasses identifies what the specific piece of equipment is and with the help of AI then identifies what the error code means, locates the specific page in the equipment manual to give full context and then suggests a step-by-step way to fix the problem - with instructions being to the engineer via an earpiece & also via a head-up-display on the glasses (if required).

Problem fixed.  Customer happy.  Engineer happy.

Welcome to the future of AI-empowered Service Engineers, a world where AI adds huge value & skills to workers rather than replacing them.

Welcome to our mission at SuperPower.Engineer ;-)