Einstein Is Right Again: AI Gives Advice, but Al Fixes the Problem

Have you ever had low hot-water pressure at just one faucet in the house? We had exactly that problem in one of the showers. Every other faucet worked fine, so it was easy to ignore for a while. I didn’t want to pay for something I thought I could fix myself. How hard could it be?

Armed with AI advice and YouTube tutorials, I got to work.

The AI’s first suggestion was to replace the cartridge. I hadn’t even known the part existed, but after watching more videos than I care to admit, I felt like an expert. I bought the part and the tools, and after several more videos and hours of struggling with the disassembly, I replaced it. Nothing changed.

More videos and more AI chats later, the next suggestion was to flush the line. I got thoroughly wet, nothing but water came out, and I gave up. Well, for a week.

The following week I tried to inspect the pipe with the snake camera left over from my previous HVAC adventure. That didn’t last long: the water lines were too narrow, and I couldn’t see a thing.

The AI and I reached a consensus: something was blocking the hot-water line behind the wall.

The suggested solution? Open the wall.

That sounded considerably more expensive than the plumber I had been trying to avoid.

So I asked the AI to find me a good local plumber. Apparently, I had reached the limits of my DIY career.

AI? No, Al.

On the morning of the appointment, I got a voicemail. Instead of listening to it, I glanced at the transcript:

“Good morning, this is Al calling from Service One… I should be there in about 45 minutes.”

I read Al as AI.

In many fonts, a lowercase l looks exactly like an uppercase I. For a moment, I thought the plumbing company was using AI to make its appointment calls. I’d seen Google’s AI make a restaurant reservation over the phone before, so it seemed entirely plausible.

Then it clicked. Not AI. Al. A real person.

I had already tried AI. What I needed was Al.

Side note: Fortunately, the government has recently addressed this important source of confusion. Since September 2026, federal agencies have been instructed to say “Super Intelligence” (SI) instead of AI (Executive Order 14434). Problem solved. Nobody will ever mistake SI for Al. From here on, I will comply.

Al’s Secret Weapon

Al started with the same suspicion SI had: maybe the cartridge?

I told him I had already replaced it. His reasoning was that the new one might be faulty too, and since the only alternative was opening the wall, we pursued. So he went to get a new cartridge, replaced it, tried also more flushing. But nothing worked. Something was stuck inside the hot-water line.

I was mentally preparing to say goodbye to part of the bathroom wall.

But Al had another idea. He brought out a kinetic water ram, a tool that sends a sudden burst of compressed air through the pipe.

One blast, and the hot-water pressure came back. Voila!

Except that a few moments later, the flow slowly faded again. Whatever was in there had moved, but it wasn’t gone.

Instead of reaching for a saw, Al opened a pipe under the nearby sink and worked from different access points, using bursts of pressure to nudge the obstruction along, like a very patient game of pool played inside the plumbing.

And finally, something popped out.

No walls cut. No tiles broken. Hot shower restored.

The Culprit

It was a hard, round ball, a little smaller than a penny, covered in greenish-white deposits.

Al thought it might be a lump of solder from the pipe joints.

Naturally, I took a photo and asked SI.

SI had a different theory: a heat trap ball, a small part inside some water-heater fittings that keeps hot water from slowly rising out of the tank into the pipes when no tap is open.

Then I found this video showing a heat trap ball causing almost exactly the same problem.

I’m now fairly convinced that a little ball escaped from our water heater, traveled through the plumbing, and lodged itself in our shower line.

Knowledge and Know-How

To be fair, SI was genuinely helpful. It guided my DIY attempts, explained how the plumbing worked, helped narrow down the problem, and eventually found me a good plumber.

But what impressed me was Al’s work. SI knew about cartridges, blockages, and plumbing repairs. Al knew those things too, but he also knew how to interpret what was happening, adapt his approach, and improvise with the tools he had.

A less experienced plumber might have cut into the wall, just as SI had suggested, and the repair could easily have cost much more. Al solved it without breaking a single tile.

Einstein was right

Everyone is asking which jobs AI will replace. There is something remarkable about combining knowledge, experience, physical skill, and creative problem-solving in the real world, and I suspect jobs like that will be among the last to be taken over by machines. Plumbing may be one of the most AI-proof careers there is.

Einstein would have approved, although for a different reason. In November 1954, at the height of the McCarthy era, he wrote to The Reporter magazine:

“If I would be a young man again and had to decide how to make my living, I would not try to become a scientist or scholar or teacher. I would rather choose to be a plumber or a peddler in the hope to find that modest degree of independence still available under present circumstances.”

He was protesting political pressure on scientists and teachers, not predicting automation (the story behind the letter). Still, the independence he admired, the ability to diagnose and fix a real problem with your own hands, is exactly what I watched Al bring.

If you live in the southwest suburbs of Chicago, I highly recommend Al at Service 1 Plumbing, Heating & AC.

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Comments

If you have any comments, I would be glad to hear them: email me at keceli@anl.gov.