The entire point of androids being designed is simple: to replace plumbers. Yeah, I know that sounds like a punchline, but hear me out. People love to say, “Androids will never replace skilled trades—too much finesse, too unpredictable!” But honestly? That’s exactly what people said about a hundred other jobs that eventually got automated. If a robot can drive a car through downtown traffic, you really think it can’t figure out your janky water heater?
Now, I’m not suggesting we’re about to see a shiny “PlumberBot 3000” rolling into Home Depot tomorrow. We’re not there yet. But give it twenty years, and I’d wager the android industry will be a trillion-dollar beast. The early models might not be glamorous—they’ll be crawling under sinks, fiddling with ancient pipes, and shrugging at you in that way only plumbers (or plumbers programmed by engineers) can. And honestly? That’s probably how androids really go mainstream: not by dazzling us with philosophy, but by fixing the leaky faucet you’ve been ignoring since last spring.
But plumbers are just the opening act. The real destination—the dream (or the nightmare, depending on your perspective)—is Replicants. Yes, Blade Runner-style androids. Machines that don’t just work like us, but look like us, talk like us, and maybe even make us forget where the human ends and the tool begins. That’s the long game, and it’s closer than people think.
So yeah, laugh now if you want, but the robot plumbers are coming. And once they’ve mastered toilets, it’s a pretty short hop to everything else. When the day comes that a perfectly polite android in coveralls fixes your pipes and then asks if you’d like your drain unclogged or a brief existential conversation about mortality—well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
