# Robots may do little plumbing for the next 20 years

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/robots-may-do-little-plumbing-for-the-next-20-years/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Reed Hastings](https://realalpha.app/people/reed-hastings/) · Reed Hastings is cofounder and former CEO of Netflix. · Co-founded Netflix and led it as CEO, then became majority owner and chair of Powder Mountain.
- Host: [Reid Hoffman](https://realalpha.app/people/reid-hoffman/) · Co-founder, Manas AI · Co-founded LinkedIn; one of OpenAI's first investors; Greylock partner.
- Show: Possible
- Episode: [Reed Hastings: From Building Netflix to What Comes Next](https://realalpha.app/v/2qoGbd9d2yA/), Apr 22, 2026
- Moment: 53:30 to 56:09 of the episode (3 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/robots-may-do-little-plumbing-for-the-next-20-years/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/2qoGbd9d2yA/?t=3210

## Quote

> “think of it as in 20 years robots will do maybe **one percent of the plumbing** at most”
> — [Reed Hastings](https://realalpha.app/people/reed-hastings/) at [55:35](https://realalpha.app/v/2qoGbd9d2yA/?t=3335) · Possible

## Takeaways

1. Robot deployment takes much longer than early demonstrations suggest.
2. Self-driving cars still cover less than 1% of global miles.
3. Hastings expects robots to do at most 1% of plumbing in 20 years.

## About this segment

Reed Hastings compares robotics with the slow rollout of self-driving cars. He predicts robots will handle at most 1% of plumbing in 20 years.

From “Reed Hastings: From Building Netflix to What Comes Next”, Apr 22, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/2qoGbd9d2yA/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[53:34](https://realalpha.app/v/2qoGbd9d2yA/?t=3214) Have you had any thoughts, because you're a systems thinker, on the wages effects, what countries, companies, industries, but specifically also individuals should be doing in kind of navigating what will be happening within wages? Well, let's see. You describe as some jobs as valuable, but like teachers are very valuable and not paid very much. So I don't think pay follows value very much. It follows shortages in demand and supply.

[54:01](https://realalpha.app/v/2qoGbd9d2yA/?t=3241) So the question is, for wages, what jobs will be in shortage? And I think it's all those jobs that are emotional that computers are not very good at because we'll have a lot of need in those. And the jobs that are more administrative, you know, those are going to have lower wages because you're competing with a computer who could do that job. So, again, it's really where AI does a job well, its cost done by a human or its pay will be less.

[54:33](https://realalpha.app/v/2qoGbd9d2yA/?t=3273) And where it's super hard for the AI to do, it'll be, you know, continued high wages. I feel like a lot of people are telling people that the solution to that is trades. everyone's like oh become a plumber HVAC electrician because those are in shortage right now obviously like the big question there is like how soon robots will catch up like what do you like it matters if that's going to be five years or 20 years or 40 years in terms of people getting wage premiums from the trades like what would you tell people in that respect Okay, so let's look at electric cars. So 2007, we had self-driving, sorry, I should say self-driving cars. 2007 was the DARPA challenge, and it was like it actually did work, self-driving cars in a limited lab. And now 20 years from now, it pretty much works, okay? But the percentage of

[55:21](https://realalpha.app/v/2qoGbd9d2yA/?t=3321) miles driven, self-driving by the machines, by high-end Teslas and by Waymos, it's got to be less than one percent of global miles easy that's after 20 years so we're not even to the stage of that DARPA challenge that is we don't have a demonstration in the home okay that can do all these things so think of it as in 20 years robots will do maybe one percent of the plumbing at most right okay so it just takes a super long time to build deploy and then to get them to be lower cost higher safety than others but i think over 50 years it will happen so that's still going to be a great field for the next 20 years uh if we're talking plumbing specifically thanks so now rapid