Skilled trades workers are emerging as unexpected leaders in the practical use of artificial intelligence, leveraging the technology not as a replacement for labor but as a tool to expand human capability, according to Alok Chanani, co-founder and CEO of BuildOps.
In a recent opinion piece, Chanani argued that the most impactful AI applications are not being developed in tech hubs, but rather on construction jobsites, where workers are using the technology out of necessity to solve real-world problems.
“The most interesting thing happening in artificial intelligence right now isn’t in Silicon Valley,” Chanani wrote. “It’s in a mechanical room in Dallas where a second-year tech just diagnosed a chiller issue in minutes using context that used to live exclusively in a 20-year veteran’s head.”
Chanani highlighted a fundamental divide in how industries perceive AI. While some leaders fear job displacement and others focus on efficiency gains, he argued both perspectives miss a larger shift already underway.
“It’s not that AI shrinks what exists. It expands what’s possible,” Chanani wrote. “The real question isn’t how to do the same work with fewer people. It’s what becomes possible when every person on your team has capabilities that didn’t exist a year ago.”
In construction, where work is inherently physical, the idea of AI replacing workers has gained little traction. Instead, tradespeople have focused on how the technology can enhance their ability to perform tasks more effectively — from diagnosing equipment issues to accessing institutional knowledge in real time.
Chanani emphasized that this mindset has given the trades a unique advantage in adopting AI quickly and effectively.
Survey data cited in the piece underscores this shift. According to Chanani, 78% of commercial contractors believe AI can improve how they work, 80% say it will be essential to remain competitive within three years, and 81% feel confident in their ability to adopt the technology.
“These aren’t people bracing for a layoff wave,” Chanani wrote. “They’re gearing up to do more.”
He pointed to a growing trend of smaller, focused teams achieving results that were previously out of reach, driven not by workforce expansion but by enhanced individual capability through AI tools.
The construction sector, in particular, is seeing this transformation play out clearly on jobsites, where workers are applying AI to streamline decision-making and improve productivity.
Chanani cautioned that companies focusing solely on AI as a cost-reduction tool risk missing its broader potential. While automation can deliver incremental efficiencies, he argued that the real value lies in rethinking how work is structured.
“The easy way to use AI is as a cost-cutting lever,” Chanani wrote. “The harder and more important move is to treat it as a capability shift.”
He warned that organizations prioritizing workforce reductions may achieve short-term gains but could lose ground to competitors that use AI to enhance team performance and expand operational capacity.
“If you walk into this moment asking ‘How many people can I cut?’ you’ll get a smaller company,” Chanani wrote. “If you walk in asking ‘What can my people do now that they couldn’t do before?’ that’s a different trajectory entirely.”
Ultimately, Chanani argued that the construction trades have arrived at this conclusion ahead of many industries because their work cannot be automated away. Instead, they have focused on integrating AI in ways that directly improve job performance.
“Stop measuring AI by what it removes. Start measuring it by what it unlocks,” he wrote.
Originally reported by Alok Chanani in Construction Dive.
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