🔧 I Called for a Pressure Wash. AI Answered. Last week, I needed a pressure washing company in Johnson City, TN. Simple task, right? I dialed a number. A woman answered. Polite. Said the company name. Then casually mentioned she was an AI assistant and would take my information. I paused. But kept going—gave her my contact info. She asked about the job location. Then asked for clarification. Promised someone would follow up. It wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t bad either. Honestly, it took me a minute to realize it wasn’t a real person. Just a reminder: This is as bad as it will ever be. Then I saw this Wall Street Journal piece about a startup called Netic. They’re building AI that works for plumbers, HVAC techs, electricians—the trades. They just raised $20M from Greylock and Founders Fund. Their pitch? Don’t replace the humans. Just stop wasting them. Netic’s AI: – Answers calls and messages – Predicts when you’ll need service (like before your A/C dies mid-July) – Prioritizes jobs based on urgency, weather, and even competitor quotes – Integrates with trade CRMs to dispatch techs smarter One HVAC company is using it to help manage hundreds of techs and match capacity to demand. That’s not a chatbot. That’s business infrastructure. And guess who’s fueling this shift? Private equity. They’re buying home-service firms and shoving AI into ops to squeeze out returns. It’s not hype. It’s deployment. We always talk about AI disrupting white-collar work. But maybe the real transformation happens where the work is physical—just powered by smarter systems. Anyone else starting to run into this stuff in the wild? Drop a comment if you’ve heard the robots picking up the phone https://lnkd.in/eYmdDQJD