By Gavin Boyle
Mike Rowe was thrilled when Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang advocated for the skilled trade industry and how important those workers would be for the AI boom.
“Validating is a good word, but not as good as surreal, right? So, I got up, I make a cup of coffee and as I sit down at my computer and this pops up in my feed. Jensen Huang and Larry Fink, two of the most powerful business people on planet earth saying precisely what me and your dad have been saying talking about for years,” Rowe said, recalling his response to Huang’s comments.
“You’re right, we’ve been beating a drum,” he continued. “We have been suggesting that there are millions of wonderful opportunities that just aren’t getting the attention they deserve. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that AI would be the inciting incident or the proximate cause that would get the c-suite at that level to start paying this kind of attention.”
Related: Everyday Americans Are Changing Lives, and Mike Rowe Thinks ‘You Should Know’ Them
For over a decade, Rowe has been fighting the narrative that college is the best path for every single American. Rather, he has argued that the corporate job market has become bloated while skilled trades become more lucrative every day due to the fact that almost nobody goes to trade school. Rowe believes a time is coming when young Americans will wake up to this fact, and he has been working to bring this to fruition for a long time.
“[We need to] think differently about the way we train the next generation of skilled workers,” the DIRTY JOBS host said in January. “We have to accelerate the way we teach the skills and we have to rethink, I think, virtually everything…into something more meritocratic.”
AI may just provide trade skills the platform they need to be elevated back into the national spotlight. Not only are they not replaceable by the emerging technology, but the infrastructure buildout required to fuel AI will be powered by trade workers.
“The need for skilled trade professionals in critical infrastructure sectors, especially data centers, is growing rapidly,” explained Michael Morris, Chief Development Officer of Aligned Data Centers, a leader in the data center world. “Our partnership with the mikeroweWORKS Foundation is a direct investment in the future workforce that will build, operate, and maintain the complex, high-performance data centers essential for AI, cloud, and enterprise applications. We are proud to support an organization that champions the dignity of hard work and provides tangible pathways to rewarding careers in these important trades.”
While many in the working world are worried about how AI will impact their job security, those working in the trades can rest easy knowing that they will benefit from the AI boom and do not have to worry about their jobs once AI comes to replace many roles currently in the working world.
Read Next: If You Want to Learn a Trade Skill, Mike Rowe Can Help
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