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I am genuinely concerned for the millions of Americans who drive for a living. Autonomous vehicle technology is a clear and present risk to that class of work.

I am genuinely concerned for the millions of Americans who drive for a living. Autonomous vehicle technology is a clear and present risk to that class of work. Like the rust belt of the 80s and 90s as manufacturing moved out of the US, there will be a major shift in where people work and what kind of work they do. Many, if not most, of those affected will go through hell getting their lives sorted out again. There are other affects of autonomous vehicles to consider. Labor is a major cost of shipping or taxiing. Accidents and the resulting repair, liability and insurance costs are expected to come down with autonomous vehicles. So the cost of just about everything we buy will come down, and we'll spend that difference elsewhere. Those 'elsewheres' will then see more employment. What we can expect, at a macroeconomic level, is not massive national unemployment, but a transition period as the work opportunities change. At a micro economic level, it will be very painful for millions as they go through the transition. I don't know if a basic income can make this transition smoother for the country, but it is worth studying.

nopinsight 11y ago
There are a lot of jobs that humans can inherently perform better than robots for the next few decades at least: taking care of the elderly, hospice care, community development, physical therapy, etc. Humans are wired to trust and engage with our own species over any machines that could be developed any time soon. Populations in most countries likely to own robotic technology are aging fast and there will be even more demand for such jobs. In fact, a lot of demand already exists, only that the costs are too high for middle-class elders or patients to afford the services regularly. (See: expansion of nursing care in lower-cost countries like Thailand, but most people would prefer to stay in their own country if they have the choice.) Moreover, aptitudes the tasks required often match with those present in lower-wage workers in the service sectors. We need to retrain them for these higher-valued jobs. As a big plus, the jobs above often feel more meaningful than scanning items at cashier, delivering packages, or waiting table. There is evidence that being unemployed is not good for people's psyche and well-being in the long run. Demand for meaningful, high-valued services still exists and we ought to retrain workers for these jobs instead. Pay for these jobs should be higher and hours reasonable--more redistribution could be utilized to accomplish these. I believe earning one's living through work leads to a more meaningful existence. Demand for human work still exists for several decades to come. We need better social infrastructure to retrain workers at risk from technological unemployment and fully support them (including with good pay) during retraining. Technology has the potential to let us be human, free us from menial jobs, and focus on what we do best--if we develop the socioeconomic system to complement it and help with the transition.
- moonchrome 11y ago
  >There are a lot of jobs that humans can inherently perform better than robots for the next few decades at least: taking care of the elderly, hospice care, community development, physical therapy, etc. Humans are wired to trust and engage with our own species over any machines that could be developed any time soon. While this is true and one of the unintended consequences of guaranteed minimum income would be even harder to obtain elderly care, not everyone is suited for this kind of work - and if you think a large % of people who spent the last 20 years driving cabs and trucks can now go on to be a nurse or some such I don't think it's very realistic. IMO there will soon be a new class of unemployable people - with low social skills and low enough IQ to not be trainable fast enough (one thing that is a requirement in modern economy is fast training and adaptation - no more learn one job and do that for the next 30 years - you stick around for one job for a couple of years and then your position gets automated, the company reduces capacity, relocates operation, shifts focus, etc. etc.) So on one hand there will be vacancies for many jobs (like competent programmers right now) but on the other hand people available will not be able to enter those markets in any reasonable amount of time. I can tell you myself - years of working on a computer over 8 hours a day have left my motor system very very underdeveloped and I have a hard time focusing on menial things, my first job was physical labor after highschool - I took months to get to the point where I could be useful and I was a work hazard during my training - the only reason I got a job there was because the manager knew me from school "internship" and he knew I could code/was a fast learner - he gave me a job before he could get an opening to move me to production planning/management. I needed the money because I was poor. But there was 0 point in hiring a person like me for that kind of work - if I was hired for that job I would be fired way before I got good enough at it to not be a hazard. On the other hand I've seen new people come on out of school that learned much faster and were just better at it. Just like there would be 0 point in hiring anyone that was good at that job to be a programmer.
  - nopinsight 11y ago
    For those with lower social skills, there are plumbing, home improvement (hard/risky for elderly or the ill), security guards, public infrastructure development (welding, checking for leaks), household/public gardening, etc. There are a lot of needs which humans will be more cost-effective than advanced robots in the foreseeable future. If everything is perfect in a country, they can send aid to a foreign land for compassion, goodwill, and diplomatic relations. Always more work is available to do until.. When the whole world becomes like heaven and nowhere is left to improve, which is a long time to come, money would be far less important than it is now.
lossolo 11y ago
300 years ago, humans couldn't even imagine the way the planet (economy, rules etc) would work in 2015. It's natural, that this cycle will repeat itself again and again. Do not worry about drivers, there was a lot of jobs that were eliminated by time/technology and humans survived. Maybe in 2100 people will not need to work at all. This revolution is coming, it's part of evolution, stop fighting it, embrace it and learn how to live in new reality, because you can't stop it.
- digi_owl 11y ago
  In previous times most people farmed for survival. Now most people work for someone else for survival.
  - gwright 11y ago
    Why do you view 'working' as having asymmetric value? If I'm a plumber working for myself and I fix pipes all day so that I can put food on the table and a roof over my head, am I not working for my own survival? If I'm a plumber working for a plumbing company has something changed about the value proposition? If I'm a plumber who quits the plumbing company to work for myself am I working for my own survival? If I'm a plumber working for myself who decides I don't want to deal with marketing, accounting, risk management, and so on and so I start working for a plumbing company, am I working for my own survival?
    - digi_owl 11y ago
      Grow carrots in the yard, and you can eat those carrots to survive. You can't eat fixed pipes.
      - gwright 11y ago
        So what? You can purchase carrots with the money you made fixing pipes. Suddenly that isn't about your own survival but is about someone else survival? Even if you don't want to bring 'money' into the conversation and shift to an entirely barter based mechanism you are still going to take the fruits of your labor and convert them into the fruits of someone else's labor via trade. In the absence of coercion both parties benefit from the trade.
ZenoArrow 11y ago
> "Those 'elsewheres' will then see more employment." Not necessarily. If a company can capitalise on those new opportunities without employing the levels of workers that are made redundant by the shift in the market, then this mechanism you're describing will not work. A classic example is Walmart vs Amazon. Putting aside their side businesses, their core business is broadly the same. In the US, Walmart employs approximately 1.4 million people. Amazon.com employs approximately 230,800 people. Walmart is still larger than Amazon in terms of sales, but consider this... http://time.com/4040160/amazon-walmart/ http://time.com/4040160/amazon-walmart/ "Today, Walmart’s revenue is still much larger–although only 5 times larger now–and Amazon’s revenue per employee ($623,000) is nearly three times that of Walmart." Why would Amazon seek to employ Walmart-levels of people when their business model allows each employee to earn 3x greater revenue (on average)? That gap will get even bigger with automation.
- swimfar 11y ago
  Maybe I'm missing something, but it sounds like Walmart has 5x as much revenue as Amazon with 6x as many employees. Then you say that Amazon has 3x the revenue per employee as Walmart. Shouldn't that be 1.2x the revenue per employee?
  - Animats 11y ago
    Good point. The Time article does say that, but the numbers don't.
    - ZenoArrow 11y ago
      You're both partially right, the numbers from the Time article appear to be off, but other sources still indicate that the difference in revenue per employee is greater than x1.2. Here's a simple but imperfect comparison, let's look at Amazon 2014 vs Walmart 2015 (I'm using those years because they were the easiest stats to find, if you can source similar stats for Amazon 2015 or Walmart 2014 feel free to link to them)... Amazon 2014: http://www.statista.com/statistics/234488/number-of-amazon-employees/ http://www.statista.com/statistics/234488/number-of-amazon-e... Revenue: $89 billion. Number of employees: 154,100. Revenue per employee: $577,547. Walmart 2015: http://corporate.walmart.com/_news_/walmart-facts/corporate-financial-fact-sheet http://corporate.walmart.com/_news_/walmart-facts/corporate-... Revenue: $482.2 billion (not clear if just in US or globally). Number of employees: 1.4 million US (2.2 million globally). Revenue per employee: $344,428 if revenue is US only, $219,182 if revenue is worldwide. Difference in revenue per employee: X1.68 (if Walmart revenue is US only), or x2.68 (if Walmart revenue is worldwide).
sklogic 11y ago
> I am genuinely concerned for the millions of Americans who drive for a living. You'd better be concerned about thousands of people they kill every year. It's far more important that an income of a bunch of lorry drivers. Even if some of them die as a result of losing their jobs (and it's quite an unlikely scenario), thousands of the lives spared would offset this by a huge margin.
- TaylorAlexander 11y ago
  Could you imagine that we could be concerned for both?
  - sklogic 11y ago
    These are the mutually exclusive concerns. And the lives are outweighing the jobs. Always.
    - TaylorAlexander 11y ago
      I don't follow. I agree 100% that lives outweigh jobs and am 100% for self driving vehicles. But you can have concern for the unemployed drivers without thinking that we need to put them back on the roads killing people. That concern could manifest itself in the desire to see public training programs for out of work drivers so they can find new jobs, or all manner of things that don't conflict with a desire to see fewer people killed by trucks. I know I'm certainly concerned about how these unemployed people will survive, despite also wanting self-driving vehicles to get to market quickly to reduce fatalities.
      - sklogic 11y ago
        Oh, sorry, I misinterpreted your concerns as a suggestion to slow down the self-driving adoption and make sure all such training programmes and relocation efforts are comprehensive enough.
        11y ago
bufordtwain 11y ago
Won't we still need drivers in case the autonomous technology fails? We still have airline pilots... The drivers will need to do less actual driving, but I guess will still be needed.
- superuser2 11y ago
  No one would waste a cent on developing autonomous driving technology if that were the case. They're not doing it because it's exciting, they're doing it because it'll be cheaper in the long run. If something goes wrong in a plane you need to land it, which is a pretty delicate operation. If something goes wrong in a car, all you have to do is get off the roadway and stop.
- TaylorAlexander 11y ago
  Google tried that. It doesn't work. Driver's don't pay enough attention to be able to resume control in the event of a problem, so the decision was that cars need to be fully autonomous. I believe Astro Teller mentioned this in his youtube talk about moonshots, if you're curious for the source. As for airplanes - there's a lot more time to deal with issues than there is in a car.

nopinsight 11y ago

There are a lot of jobs that humans can inherently perform better than robots for the next few decades at least: taking care of the elderly, hospice care, community development, physical therapy, etc. Humans are wired to trust and engage with our own species over any machines that could be developed any time soon. Populations in most countries likely to own robotic technology are aging fast and there will be even more demand for such jobs. In fact, a lot of demand already exists, only that the costs are too high for middle-class elders or patients to afford the services regularly. (See: expansion of nursing care in lower-cost countries like Thailand, but most people would prefer to stay in their own country if they have the choice.) Moreover, aptitudes the tasks required often match with those present in lower-wage workers in the service sectors. We need to retrain them for these higher-valued jobs. As a big plus, the jobs above often feel more meaningful than scanning items at cashier, delivering packages, or waiting table. There is evidence that being unemployed is not good for people's psyche and well-being in the long run. Demand for meaningful, high-valued services still exists and we ought to retrain workers for these jobs instead. Pay for these jobs should be higher and hours reasonable--more redistribution could be utilized to accomplish these. I believe earning one's living through work leads to a more meaningful existence. Demand for human work still exists for several decades to come. We need better social infrastructure to retrain workers at risk from technological unemployment and fully support them (including with good pay) during retraining. Technology has the potential to let us be human, free us from menial jobs, and focus on what we do best--if we develop the socioeconomic system to complement it and help with the transition.

moonchrome 11y ago
>There are a lot of jobs that humans can inherently perform better than robots for the next few decades at least: taking care of the elderly, hospice care, community development, physical therapy, etc. Humans are wired to trust and engage with our own species over any machines that could be developed any time soon. While this is true and one of the unintended consequences of guaranteed minimum income would be even harder to obtain elderly care, not everyone is suited for this kind of work - and if you think a large % of people who spent the last 20 years driving cabs and trucks can now go on to be a nurse or some such I don't think it's very realistic. IMO there will soon be a new class of unemployable people - with low social skills and low enough IQ to not be trainable fast enough (one thing that is a requirement in modern economy is fast training and adaptation - no more learn one job and do that for the next 30 years - you stick around for one job for a couple of years and then your position gets automated, the company reduces capacity, relocates operation, shifts focus, etc. etc.) So on one hand there will be vacancies for many jobs (like competent programmers right now) but on the other hand people available will not be able to enter those markets in any reasonable amount of time. I can tell you myself - years of working on a computer over 8 hours a day have left my motor system very very underdeveloped and I have a hard time focusing on menial things, my first job was physical labor after highschool - I took months to get to the point where I could be useful and I was a work hazard during my training - the only reason I got a job there was because the manager knew me from school "internship" and he knew I could code/was a fast learner - he gave me a job before he could get an opening to move me to production planning/management. I needed the money because I was poor. But there was 0 point in hiring a person like me for that kind of work - if I was hired for that job I would be fired way before I got good enough at it to not be a hazard. On the other hand I've seen new people come on out of school that learned much faster and were just better at it. Just like there would be 0 point in hiring anyone that was good at that job to be a programmer.
- nopinsight 11y ago
  For those with lower social skills, there are plumbing, home improvement (hard/risky for elderly or the ill), security guards, public infrastructure development (welding, checking for leaks), household/public gardening, etc. There are a lot of needs which humans will be more cost-effective than advanced robots in the foreseeable future. If everything is perfect in a country, they can send aid to a foreign land for compassion, goodwill, and diplomatic relations. Always more work is available to do until.. When the whole world becomes like heaven and nowhere is left to improve, which is a long time to come, money would be far less important than it is now.

lossolo 11y ago

300 years ago, humans couldn't even imagine the way the planet (economy, rules etc) would work in 2015. It's natural, that this cycle will repeat itself again and again. Do not worry about drivers, there was a lot of jobs that were eliminated by time/technology and humans survived. Maybe in 2100 people will not need to work at all. This revolution is coming, it's part of evolution, stop fighting it, embrace it and learn how to live in new reality, because you can't stop it.

digi_owl 11y ago
In previous times most people farmed for survival. Now most people work for someone else for survival.
- gwright 11y ago
  Why do you view 'working' as having asymmetric value? If I'm a plumber working for myself and I fix pipes all day so that I can put food on the table and a roof over my head, am I not working for my own survival? If I'm a plumber working for a plumbing company has something changed about the value proposition? If I'm a plumber who quits the plumbing company to work for myself am I working for my own survival? If I'm a plumber working for myself who decides I don't want to deal with marketing, accounting, risk management, and so on and so I start working for a plumbing company, am I working for my own survival?
  - digi_owl 11y ago
    Grow carrots in the yard, and you can eat those carrots to survive. You can't eat fixed pipes.
    - gwright 11y ago
      So what? You can purchase carrots with the money you made fixing pipes. Suddenly that isn't about your own survival but is about someone else survival? Even if you don't want to bring 'money' into the conversation and shift to an entirely barter based mechanism you are still going to take the fruits of your labor and convert them into the fruits of someone else's labor via trade. In the absence of coercion both parties benefit from the trade.

ZenoArrow 11y ago

> "Those 'elsewheres' will then see more employment." Not necessarily. If a company can capitalise on those new opportunities without employing the levels of workers that are made redundant by the shift in the market, then this mechanism you're describing will not work. A classic example is Walmart vs Amazon. Putting aside their side businesses, their core business is broadly the same. In the US, Walmart employs approximately 1.4 million people. Amazon.com employs approximately 230,800 people. Walmart is still larger than Amazon in terms of sales, but consider this... http://time.com/4040160/amazon-walmart/ http://time.com/4040160/amazon-walmart/ "Today, Walmart’s revenue is still much larger–although only 5 times larger now–and Amazon’s revenue per employee ($623,000) is nearly three times that of Walmart." Why would Amazon seek to employ Walmart-levels of people when their business model allows each employee to earn 3x greater revenue (on average)? That gap will get even bigger with automation.

swimfar 11y ago
Maybe I'm missing something, but it sounds like Walmart has 5x as much revenue as Amazon with 6x as many employees. Then you say that Amazon has 3x the revenue per employee as Walmart. Shouldn't that be 1.2x the revenue per employee?
- Animats 11y ago
  Good point. The Time article does say that, but the numbers don't.
  - ZenoArrow 11y ago
    You're both partially right, the numbers from the Time article appear to be off, but other sources still indicate that the difference in revenue per employee is greater than x1.2. Here's a simple but imperfect comparison, let's look at Amazon 2014 vs Walmart 2015 (I'm using those years because they were the easiest stats to find, if you can source similar stats for Amazon 2015 or Walmart 2014 feel free to link to them)... Amazon 2014: http://www.statista.com/statistics/234488/number-of-amazon-employees/ http://www.statista.com/statistics/234488/number-of-amazon-e... Revenue: $89 billion. Number of employees: 154,100. Revenue per employee: $577,547. Walmart 2015: http://corporate.walmart.com/_news_/walmart-facts/corporate-financial-fact-sheet http://corporate.walmart.com/_news_/walmart-facts/corporate-... Revenue: $482.2 billion (not clear if just in US or globally). Number of employees: 1.4 million US (2.2 million globally). Revenue per employee: $344,428 if revenue is US only, $219,182 if revenue is worldwide. Difference in revenue per employee: X1.68 (if Walmart revenue is US only), or x2.68 (if Walmart revenue is worldwide).

sklogic 11y ago

> I am genuinely concerned for the millions of Americans who drive for a living. You'd better be concerned about thousands of people they kill every year. It's far more important that an income of a bunch of lorry drivers. Even if some of them die as a result of losing their jobs (and it's quite an unlikely scenario), thousands of the lives spared would offset this by a huge margin.

TaylorAlexander 11y ago
Could you imagine that we could be concerned for both?
- sklogic 11y ago
  These are the mutually exclusive concerns. And the lives are outweighing the jobs. Always.
  - TaylorAlexander 11y ago
    I don't follow. I agree 100% that lives outweigh jobs and am 100% for self driving vehicles. But you can have concern for the unemployed drivers without thinking that we need to put them back on the roads killing people. That concern could manifest itself in the desire to see public training programs for out of work drivers so they can find new jobs, or all manner of things that don't conflict with a desire to see fewer people killed by trucks. I know I'm certainly concerned about how these unemployed people will survive, despite also wanting self-driving vehicles to get to market quickly to reduce fatalities.
    - sklogic 11y ago
      Oh, sorry, I misinterpreted your concerns as a suggestion to slow down the self-driving adoption and make sure all such training programmes and relocation efforts are comprehensive enough.
      - 11y ago

bufordtwain 11y ago

Won't we still need drivers in case the autonomous technology fails? We still have airline pilots... The drivers will need to do less actual driving, but I guess will still be needed.

superuser2 11y ago
No one would waste a cent on developing autonomous driving technology if that were the case. They're not doing it because it's exciting, they're doing it because it'll be cheaper in the long run. If something goes wrong in a plane you need to land it, which is a pretty delicate operation. If something goes wrong in a car, all you have to do is get off the roadway and stop.
TaylorAlexander 11y ago
Google tried that. It doesn't work. Driver's don't pay enough attention to be able to resume control in the event of a problem, so the decision was that cars need to be fully autonomous. I believe Astro Teller mentioned this in his youtube talk about moonshots, if you're curious for the source. As for airplanes - there's a lot more time to deal with issues than there is in a car.