Glad I’m in a profession that can’t be replaced by AI, says welder while required by employer to be wearing camera on forehead

[Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction and does not present itself as the truth. Learn to take a joke; you’ll live longer.]

KARACHI: Local welder and certified GTAW specialist Hamza Siddiqui spent the better part of the last two years reassuring increasingly anxious white-collar friends that he had deliberately chosen a profession that could never be replaced by artificial intelligence, moments before beginning another shift wearing an employer-issued camera strapped to his forehead.

"I'm not saying university was a waste," Siddiqui clarified over coffee after finishing a twelve-hour shift at a Korangi fabrication workshop. "But while everyone was becoming marketing strategists, product managers and innovation consultants, I learned to TIG weld stainless steel."

Siddiqui, who completed a DAE in Mechanical Technology (Welding) from the Pak-Swiss Training Centre in Karachi, explained that his fluency in English, ability to read technical manuals, and willingness to fill out inspection reports had made him unusually valuable in an industry where skilled tradesmen remain in short supply.

Siddiqui, who completed a diploma in welding technology after A-levels, explained that his fluency in English, ability to read technical manuals, and willingness to fill out inspection reports had made him unusually valuable in an industry where skilled tradesmen remain in short supply.

"I'm earning more than my brother, who's an accountant," he said. "He spends all day worrying about ChatGPT while I literally melt metal together. Good luck asking AI to do that."

Friends confirmed that Siddiqui had become increasingly insufferable over the past year, frequently responding to discussions about layoffs with remarks such as, "Can your large language model hold a torch at exactly fifteen degrees?"

However, colleagues noted that Siddiqui's confidence had remained remarkably intact despite his employer recently requiring welders to wear lightweight cameras mounted above their safety visors throughout every shift.

"The company says it's for quality assurance, safety compliance and preserving institutional knowledge," Siddiqui explained. "Apparently management wants to make sure best practices aren't lost."

Asked why the company also requested welders verbally explain every movement, identify every tool being used, describe why they rejected certain techniques, and occasionally repeat particularly neat welds "a little slower this time," Siddiqui said he assumed management had simply become more committed to continuous improvement.

"They're really investing in us," he said. "The engineers even stop by sometimes just to ask why I positioned my body a certain way before making a difficult weld. They're genuinely curious."

His brother Bilal, meanwhile, said he had stopped trying to explain what a training dataset was.

"I told him that no company spends millions collecting perfectly labelled first-person footage because they're worried about losing craftsmanship," Bilal said. "He replied, 'Exactly. They know craftsmanship can't be automated.'"

Sources within the company confirmed that the camera programme had generated thousands of hours of footage capturing expert welders navigating awkward angles, adjusting torch speed, interpreting changing weld pools and instinctively compensating for imperfections in raw materials.

"The beauty is that they narrate everything voluntarily," said one engineer while reviewing footage titled Hamza_Final_Final_V7_REAL.mp4. "Initially we had to ask questions, but now they naturally explain their reasoning because they think it's helping improve the training programme."

At press time, Siddiqui was reportedly telling a visibly concerned electrical engineer that "people who work with their hands have absolutely nothing to fear from AI," before carefully repositioning his head so the camera had an unobstructed view of a particularly difficult weld "in case the trainees need to learn this technique later."