Since my current writing project involves thinking about how artificial intelligence will soon upend our world, I’ve also been pondering which professions will forever be safe from silicon-based competition. What I currently do for a living is, alas, not on the list, but there’s a good argument to be made that masonry will remain a human specialty for many years to come. The good folks over at Construction Physics recently did an excellent job of laying out why robotic bricklayers fall short, despite many valiant attempts by engineers and coders:
A brick or block isn’t simply set down on a solid surface, but is set on top of a thin layer of mortar, which is a mixture of water, sand, and cementitious material. Mortar has sort of complex physical properties – it’s a non-newtonian fluid, and it’s viscosity increases when it’s moved or shaken. This makes it difficult to apply in a purely mechanical, deterministic way (and also probably makes it difficult for masons to explain what they’re doing – watching them place it you can see lots of complex little motions, and the mortar behaving in sort of strange not-quite-liquid but not-quite-solid ways). And since mortar is a jobsite-mixed material, there will be variation in it’s properties from batch to batch.
Related: Wikipedia’s guide to fictional robots from the 19th century and earlier.
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