I'd think twice about taking a "long nap". You're gonna have to take it eventually, so there's no real need to hurry it. In the meantime you might find something you really like that you would have otherwise missed if you had taken the nap early.

We've seen a real boom-bust over here, on the other side of the pond from you. Part of it has been tied to oil, at least in my neck of the woods.

Yes, plenty of right wingers here too in the trades, but that's par for the course in my province. Not necessarily toxic work environments like they used to be, or what you are describing, but still rough and tumble

I would like to see chatGPT insert a catheter.

I have sterilized equipment in a an operating room. At the hospital I worked at, most instruments got sent to a central processing where there were first given a soak before going into a what was basically a large dish washer. Once the instruments were cleaned, they were sorted by hand and loaded into the appropriate instrument cases before being hand wrapped and taped. Some of the more specialized sets, delicate tools, and scopes were cleaned by myself or another OR aide.

So most surgical tools can definitely be automated but some of the more delicate or specialized tools do require an actual person to clean them.

This was ten years ago so who knows how technology has changed in that time.

the reason is because a strong demand for human labor drives wages up.

the free labor market is regulated by supply and demand, i.e. a high demand for human workforce leads to higher prices for that labor (a.k.a wages)

now, if AI takes the jobs, the overall demand for human labor diminishes, and that's gonna lower the wages even for those jobs who are themselves not affected by AI.

with low wages, people would have to organize and demand Universal Basic Income, but since people in america historically find it difficult to organize and demand something, lots of people are worried that UBI either won't come or will be too little to live well off it.