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It seems evident to me that once these machines prove their value in both safety and efficiency, the companies that insure trucking firms will compel/persuade t

It seems evident to me that once these machines prove their value in both safety and efficiency, the companies that insure trucking firms will compel/persuade them to switch from human to self-driven vehicles. These machines can safely convoy closely in one lane leaving other lanes free, will obey traffic laws and courtesy rules, and never get sleepy. The disruption of the trucking industry is one that we will have to watch closely for its likely economic and political effects.

spdy 11y ago
Its one step of many imagine we have a fully automated supply chain from Producer -> Consumer without much human interaction. And it will happen in the foreseeable future as this is just cost efficient. Many jobs will disappear without replacement and we have nearly no discussion in the general public on how to solve this problem.
- meric 11y ago
  If the consumers are unemployed, where will they get the cash to buy the products? If they're not buying, from where do the producers find the consumers? EDIT: Fiction ahead: Companies automate to sell to consumers. Consumers are put out of jobs, become unemployed, and no longer purchase as much as they used to. Companies that invested capital to build their automation infrastructure for too little return will go broke. The only automation that is profitable to build is automation the serves other owners of automation. The world's economy will separate into two, one small population, the owners of automation who trade amongst each other, and the automation-less, formerly unemployed labor. The automation economy will require huge inputs of commodities, metal, wood, silicon, and everything, to fuel their own never-ending desires, for ego-building rocket projects, moon colonies, etc. The automation-less labor will take up service jobs to serve each other, as people are wont to do. People in this economy will live with similar technology as today. But in the future they will be considered impoverished and backwards. Same kind of society, except having to compete with the automation economy for commodities. In fact, commodities like gold and silver, and perhaps even more common ones like copper and iron, will be so valuable, and with society constantly near unrest due to wealth inequality, they may be nationalised by government. Labor will be hired to strip the earth of commodities, to be shipped off the automation trillionaires. The income will be distributed as welfare payments to automation-less labor, to purchase services and goods from each other as well as a share of the commodities the automation-less economy are selling, and bits and pieces of technology from automation economy. In effect, land with resources become the last piece of real capital these people own. In the automation economy, people are mostly self-sufficient. In the automation-less economy, people are more dependent than ever on others. It will be a continuation of the present human civilisation's trend - Where originally all humans were more or less equal as hunter gatherers, in the twenty first century, humans were separated into developed, developing and undeveloped economies, where there are entire countries full of the one percent richest. In the end, the automation and automation-less economy becomes the final culmination of this trend. There are several thousand people who control the vast majority of the world's capital, and the rest unwashed masses, backwards and impoverished - the undeveloped, automation-less economy.
  - joe_the_user 11y ago
    Already in California, I see shops catering to middle-income consumers dying and being replaced by shops catering to the very poor or the very wealthy. The challenge to keeping the consumer side of the economy seems to be creating a class of consumers who 100-200K but still spend most or all of it. That doesn't seems to be as hard as one might imagine in a city like San Francisco.
- RyanZAG 11y ago
  An interesting point: our whole economy is based around the idea that each person specializes in one thing. Eg, making torches. Then he sells his torches to a farmer in exchange for some food so that the farmer can work after dark to make more food. And he sells his torch to a miner so that the miner can go in deeper tunnels. And so on. Simplified extensively, but at the heart of it, this is what we do. So our whole economy is built around this concept of making one thing others want, and then getting them to give you things you need in exchange. What happens with automation where a single person can use automation to make everything he needs without having to barter his work for the work of others? The entire system - the entire economy - becomes unnecessary. Is it possible that's where we're rapidly heading and maybe there isn't even a problem - just a movement to end 'economy' that we've relied on for a few thousand years?
  - Retric 11y ago
    'Stuff' is a smaller part of our economy than you might think. Software, Entertainment, Healthcare, Lawyers, Land, Prestige, etc. Even then raw materials don't show up by magic. So, automation might get rid of low end restaurants, factory's etc but it's going to take high end AI to really kill 'the economy' as we think of it.
    - afarrell 11y ago
      I think raw materials are actually going to be easier to automate. Australian mines already have self-driving trucks and US farmers have been at the forefront of UAV use.
      - jkaunisv1 11y ago
        You'll have to convince China
      - Retric 11y ago
        Mines are a factory that use raw materials they don't make them. Consider some Ore in ground is raw martial gold is the end product. So, as long as people still value land gold is not going to be free.
- nthot 11y ago
  Insurance premiums are a function of losses. Automated trucks will reduce losses and reduce premium. It's not going to just reduce drivers, it's going to put a dent in the insurance industry. Companies like Geico could lose 40% of premium according to a KPMG report I can't link to because I'm on my cell. This could also affect the amount of capital available to the economy as insurance companies invest their premiums.
- marknutter 11y ago
  > Many jobs will disappear without replacement Citation needed
  - coldtea 11y ago
    Visit most places where a factory or trade died... This sometimes can include whole countries where nothing else came to replace the lost jobs...
- random_upvoter 11y ago
  IMO people forget that a human being, as a general-purpose problem solving automaton, is actually a relatively cheap resource. You can make a human being -- at this moment still the most complex object in the universe -- perform tasks for $10/hour.
revelation 11y ago
The self-driven super safe truck exists, it's called a train. What makes you so confident in the market forces? They're clearly failing.
- chinathrow 11y ago
  Yes, trains exist. What the mentioned platooning achieves though, is rapid re-grouping once a truck joins or leaves the platoon. Imagine that you save 10-20% of fuel within a platoon (as pointed out in the article), then precise scheduling entering the highway at the right time makes suddenly sense. Trains can't do that with the same flexibility.
  - revelation 11y ago
    Fuel consumption is about the last thing you want to bring to the fore when comparing trucks to trains. You could take all the diesel in a truck, burn it in a oil power plant and use the generated electricity to power a train. You would go much further.
    - chinathrow 11y ago
      I only compared the ability of those truck platoons to re-group dynamically to those of trains.
- jpatokal 11y ago
  "Failing"? Can you name a company with profit margins better than Google? Here's one: Union Pacific. http://fortune.com/2015/06/04/union-pacific-railroad/ http://fortune.com/2015/06/04/union-pacific-railroad/ The problem with trains is the last mile: you obviously can't drive them to every store etc that needs a delivery. But the process of loading and unloading containers from ships to trains (and trucks) at ports is getting more and more automated as well.
  - revelation 11y ago
    I mean the market forces are failing us, not that train companies are. Then of course a transportation company with 20% profit margin is very likely the result of market failure...
LoSboccacc 11y ago
It still needs a human lead.
Havoc 11y ago
I don't think insurance is the main motivation here. Getting rid of the human element has a certain appeal to it from a management point of view though.

spdy 11y ago

Its one step of many imagine we have a fully automated supply chain from Producer -> Consumer without much human interaction. And it will happen in the foreseeable future as this is just cost efficient. Many jobs will disappear without replacement and we have nearly no discussion in the general public on how to solve this problem.

meric 11y ago
If the consumers are unemployed, where will they get the cash to buy the products? If they're not buying, from where do the producers find the consumers? EDIT: Fiction ahead: Companies automate to sell to consumers. Consumers are put out of jobs, become unemployed, and no longer purchase as much as they used to. Companies that invested capital to build their automation infrastructure for too little return will go broke. The only automation that is profitable to build is automation the serves other owners of automation. The world's economy will separate into two, one small population, the owners of automation who trade amongst each other, and the automation-less, formerly unemployed labor. The automation economy will require huge inputs of commodities, metal, wood, silicon, and everything, to fuel their own never-ending desires, for ego-building rocket projects, moon colonies, etc. The automation-less labor will take up service jobs to serve each other, as people are wont to do. People in this economy will live with similar technology as today. But in the future they will be considered impoverished and backwards. Same kind of society, except having to compete with the automation economy for commodities. In fact, commodities like gold and silver, and perhaps even more common ones like copper and iron, will be so valuable, and with society constantly near unrest due to wealth inequality, they may be nationalised by government. Labor will be hired to strip the earth of commodities, to be shipped off the automation trillionaires. The income will be distributed as welfare payments to automation-less labor, to purchase services and goods from each other as well as a share of the commodities the automation-less economy are selling, and bits and pieces of technology from automation economy. In effect, land with resources become the last piece of real capital these people own. In the automation economy, people are mostly self-sufficient. In the automation-less economy, people are more dependent than ever on others. It will be a continuation of the present human civilisation's trend - Where originally all humans were more or less equal as hunter gatherers, in the twenty first century, humans were separated into developed, developing and undeveloped economies, where there are entire countries full of the one percent richest. In the end, the automation and automation-less economy becomes the final culmination of this trend. There are several thousand people who control the vast majority of the world's capital, and the rest unwashed masses, backwards and impoverished - the undeveloped, automation-less economy.
- joe_the_user 11y ago
  Already in California, I see shops catering to middle-income consumers dying and being replaced by shops catering to the very poor or the very wealthy. The challenge to keeping the consumer side of the economy seems to be creating a class of consumers who 100-200K but still spend most or all of it. That doesn't seems to be as hard as one might imagine in a city like San Francisco.
RyanZAG 11y ago
An interesting point: our whole economy is based around the idea that each person specializes in one thing. Eg, making torches. Then he sells his torches to a farmer in exchange for some food so that the farmer can work after dark to make more food. And he sells his torch to a miner so that the miner can go in deeper tunnels. And so on. Simplified extensively, but at the heart of it, this is what we do. So our whole economy is built around this concept of making one thing others want, and then getting them to give you things you need in exchange. What happens with automation where a single person can use automation to make everything he needs without having to barter his work for the work of others? The entire system - the entire economy - becomes unnecessary. Is it possible that's where we're rapidly heading and maybe there isn't even a problem - just a movement to end 'economy' that we've relied on for a few thousand years?
- Retric 11y ago
  'Stuff' is a smaller part of our economy than you might think. Software, Entertainment, Healthcare, Lawyers, Land, Prestige, etc. Even then raw materials don't show up by magic. So, automation might get rid of low end restaurants, factory's etc but it's going to take high end AI to really kill 'the economy' as we think of it.
  - afarrell 11y ago
    I think raw materials are actually going to be easier to automate. Australian mines already have self-driving trucks and US farmers have been at the forefront of UAV use.
    - jkaunisv1 11y ago
      You'll have to convince China
    - Retric 11y ago
      Mines are a factory that use raw materials they don't make them. Consider some Ore in ground is raw martial gold is the end product. So, as long as people still value land gold is not going to be free.
nthot 11y ago
Insurance premiums are a function of losses. Automated trucks will reduce losses and reduce premium. It's not going to just reduce drivers, it's going to put a dent in the insurance industry. Companies like Geico could lose 40% of premium according to a KPMG report I can't link to because I'm on my cell. This could also affect the amount of capital available to the economy as insurance companies invest their premiums.
marknutter 11y ago
> Many jobs will disappear without replacement Citation needed
- coldtea 11y ago
  Visit most places where a factory or trade died... This sometimes can include whole countries where nothing else came to replace the lost jobs...
random_upvoter 11y ago
IMO people forget that a human being, as a general-purpose problem solving automaton, is actually a relatively cheap resource. You can make a human being -- at this moment still the most complex object in the universe -- perform tasks for $10/hour.

revelation 11y ago

The self-driven super safe truck exists, it's called a train. What makes you so confident in the market forces? They're clearly failing.

chinathrow 11y ago
Yes, trains exist. What the mentioned platooning achieves though, is rapid re-grouping once a truck joins or leaves the platoon. Imagine that you save 10-20% of fuel within a platoon (as pointed out in the article), then precise scheduling entering the highway at the right time makes suddenly sense. Trains can't do that with the same flexibility.
- revelation 11y ago
  Fuel consumption is about the last thing you want to bring to the fore when comparing trucks to trains. You could take all the diesel in a truck, burn it in a oil power plant and use the generated electricity to power a train. You would go much further.
  - chinathrow 11y ago
    I only compared the ability of those truck platoons to re-group dynamically to those of trains.
jpatokal 11y ago
"Failing"? Can you name a company with profit margins better than Google? Here's one: Union Pacific. http://fortune.com/2015/06/04/union-pacific-railroad/ http://fortune.com/2015/06/04/union-pacific-railroad/ The problem with trains is the last mile: you obviously can't drive them to every store etc that needs a delivery. But the process of loading and unloading containers from ships to trains (and trucks) at ports is getting more and more automated as well.
- revelation 11y ago
  I mean the market forces are failing us, not that train companies are. Then of course a transportation company with 20% profit margin is very likely the result of market failure...

LoSboccacc 11y ago

It still needs a human lead.

Havoc 11y ago

I don't think insurance is the main motivation here. Getting rid of the human element has a certain appeal to it from a management point of view though.