Artificial intelligence is coming for millions of jobs, but it still can’t turn a wrench. That’s the reality Alan Boyer, owner of Clarks Auto in Salt Lake City, sees every day from his shop floor. While AI is rewriting the future of white-collar work, the world still runs on people who know how to fix things, build things, and solve problems with their hands.
“I don’t see AI replacing the guy turning a wrench anytime soon,” Alan says. “It can’t hear a noise, feel a vibration, or smell a gas leak. Those are the intuitive things that make great technicians.”
For decades, trade jobs were seen as a fallback for people who didn’t go to college. Parents pushed their kids toward four-year degrees, schools cut shop classes, and society decided that sitting behind a screen was the pinnacle of success. But now, as AI outpaces humans in knowledge and automation creeps into cubicles, those same trades are emerging as some of the most future-proof careers around.
Alan has already seen the shift firsthand. A few years ago, a CNC programmer, the person writing the code that tells machining equipment how to shape metal, could earn a high salary. But today, AI can write that code in seconds. “I asked AI how to program a part for one of our machines,” he says. “It gave me the code immediately. I copied it to a thumb drive, plugged it into the machine, and it went to work. We just stood there stunned.”
The people who actually run the machines, load the parts, and inspect the work? Their jobs aren’t going anywhere. They might even make more than the programmers they used to answer to.
The same story is playing out in auto repair. Diagnostic tools powered by AI can help identify problems faster than ever, but they can’t crawl under a car, loosen a rusted bolt, or sense when something doesn’t sound right. Those jobs, and the deep, hard-earned intuition that comes with them, still belong to humans.
And yet, Boyer is quick to point out that rejecting AI is the wrong move. “The quickest way to make ourselves obsolete is to not use it,” he says. “We’ve embraced it. We use AI to help write standard operating procedures, to analyze data, even to help troubleshoot tricky repairs. It’s another tool, like fuel injection was in the ’80s or online manuals in the ’90s.”
That mindset, adapting rather than resisting, is one Alan wishes more people would apply to work and education. The problem, he argues, isn’t that AI is taking jobs. It’s that our culture has forgotten how to value the jobs AI can’t take.
Mike Rowe, host of Dirty Jobs and one of the nation’s most vocal advocates for trades, made this point before Congress years ago. America has millions of open positions in skilled trades, yet many go unfilled because of stigma. Politicians promised “shovel-ready jobs,” but few people wanted to pick up a shovel.
Alan believes the way to change that begins long before kids enter the workforce. It starts with chores, with building work ethic at home, and with schools bringing back the hands-on classes that used to teach kids how to use tools, work with metal, and build things. “It starts with taking the trash out. Mowing the lawn. Doing the little things,” he says. “By the time I was in diesel school, instructors were telling us how to prepare for long, hot days working outside. That’s where you learn the value of hard work.”
He sees a paradox in how kids are raised today. “People out here will get up at five in the morning to hike the Wasatch or climb rock faces,” Alan says. “But they won’t work all day on a truck or plumb a house. It’s the same physical effort, just pointed at something else.”
Screens, he argues, are part of the problem. Children today spend countless hours scrolling social media, developing gnat-like attention spans and little patience for physical work. Since the rise of social media, depression among teenage girls has surged by 90 percent. “The screen should be a tool,” Alan says. “It can’t be your world.”
That shift has far-reaching consequences. If kids grow up without curiosity, the instinct to take things apart, understand how they work, and try to build something new, they’re unlikely to pursue the trades that keep society running. “Curiosity is everything,” Alan says. “It’s what makes someone a great technician. It’s how I learned, taking apart bikes, figuring out how to cross rivers on motorcycles, building snorkels out of plumbing parts. You can’t learn that from a screen.”
At Clarks Auto, Alan tries to pass that spirit on to the next generation. He takes his son to land speed racing events on the Bonneville Salt Flats, where teams push cars beyond 400 mph. Most of these teams don’t have engineers or corporate backing, just passion, skill, and a deep desire to solve complex problems. “These old-timers out there would grab my son by the shoulders and say, ‘We need you. We need kids like you in mechanics and racing.’”
He’s convinced that planting those seeds early, letting kids get dirty, use tools, and work with their hands, is how we solve the skilled labor shortage. And the solution is about more than just jobs. It’s about preserving something essential to human identity. “We evolved to break rocks and build things,” Alan says. “We’ve got to tap into that again.”
Even with all the talk about robotics and automation, Boyer isn’t worried about mechanics being replaced anytime soon. Robots still struggle with tasks requiring fine motor skills. Pouring a cup of coffee is a challenge, let alone rebuilding an engine. And while remote surgeries and drone piloting show what’s possible with human-controlled machines, the key word there is still human.
Alan’s message is simple but urgent: the future belongs to those who adapt to technology without abandoning the skills AI can’t replicate. And those skills, curiosity, intuition, craftsmanship, problem-solving, are forged not on screens, but in garages, gardens, and workshops.
“AI is powerful,” he says. “But it can’t feel, it can’t fix, and it can’t build. That’s still up to us.”
