I build software for contractors (plumbers, electricians, HVAC repair, etc) and they're some of the fastest adopters of these systems. I believe YC has even invested in a few.
Regarding the AI receptionists, from the calls I've listened to, there's still a bit of the uncanny valley/overlapping speech issues that I'm unsure are ever fixable just due to latency.
But for low margin businesses like contracting and (I imagine) auto repair where labor is your most expensive cost, these owners are doing anything they can to reduce their overhead.
I recently fired a plumber I was trying to contract for a five figure remodel job because his AI receptionist couldn't understand my address and therefore could not schedule the appointment. After that experience, I will not use a contractor that I cannot personally get in touch with until these systems improve demonstrably.
I think the opposite is true. Sure, it's technically impressive, but users have been trained for decades at this point to understand how a basic marketing page should look and this isn't it. These kinds of sites are best left as portfolio pages for designers to show off their skills, not for B2B SaaS landing pages.
I have a deep love of A* because it was the first complex algorithm I fully understood. In my first data structures and algorithms in college (early 2000's), we had to pick an algorithm to study, code, and write a paper on and I picked A*.
I spent hours painstakingly drawing similar grids that the author of this article made and manually doing the calculations [0]. I still have these notes somewhere, even though they're over 20 years old at this point, because I was so proud of the work I put into it.
At any rate, thanks for this article and the trip down memory lane.
