4 ms·

At any one time, what percentage of the total truck drivers would you imagine are currently on the road vs maneuvering the last mile. The last mile might be a s

• pfortuny 10y ago
  You are not taking into account the risk of trouble (non-negligible)... Driving includes solving problems like lack of oil, crashes, etc...
  • toyg 10y ago
    Robberies should be question #1.
    • scarmig 10y ago
      Obviously the solution is to teach AIs how to use guns. (Do military drones already have this? Could trucking companies legally send in armed security drones when they detect a robbery in process?)
      • toyg 10y ago
        I doubt armed security can legally do anything beyond defending themselves as it is, let alone sending drones. I guess they'll just wire the truck to alert police and turn on lots of cameras. Police might respond quickly... at least until the number of false alarms (truck hits a hole a bit too heavy, alarm goes "ROBBERY!!!11!") stays low enough.
      • wstrange 10y ago
        New NRA tagline: The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good AI with a gun
    • mikeash 10y ago
      Seems like an autonomous truck should be harder to rob than a normal one. If you want to hijack a normal truck you just wave a gun at the driver, kick him out, and take the wheel. An autonomous truck won't feel threatened by a gun and may not even have any human-operable controls.
      • toyg 10y ago
        But you can crash it without worrying about adding a capital offence to your criminal record.
    • true_religion 10y ago
      An autonomous vehicle can be designed not to be hijacked. Simply remove all user controls, or lock them unless an authorized user is sitting in the seat. If the vehicle stops for an 'emergency' reason, notify someone in central command immediately. At that point they can monitor the situation. If the vehicle is stopped under an emergency, and notices that its door panels are being broken into, then it can notify central command so they can call the police. All the while, it's recording from every angle possible. ---- On the other hand, regular trucks have a driver who has to leave the vehicle to take care of human business and can be kidnapped or threatened into any number of actions that'd help a robber complete their work.
      • vonmoltke 10y ago
        Except for "remove all user controls", those are all things that can be done on a non-autonomous truck.
    • univalent 10y ago
      Careful dude, Michael Bay might hear you.
  • jhall1468 10y ago
    Crashes don't matter very much, since a human vs a machine isn't going to change anything in that regard. Let's assume lack of oil implies mechanical issues (since... you know, fill it with oil before it leaves). In that case it's vastly cheaper to dispatch a mechanic when a problem arises then it is to have a fleet of drivers sitting in a vehicle.
    • pfortuny 10y ago
      Crashes in the sense of having to deal with the other driver, insurance, police, moving the vehicle away from the road... Those things that are easy for a human to do.
• nashashmi 10y ago
  I frown when we look at a technology negatively for the impact on the JOBS out there. Instead, let's take a look at the tech for the benefits it provides the person doing the job, how much it will improve the quality of life and the quality of work, and how much more a worker can accomplish. Few people realize there is a caveat here too: Driver efficiency goes up and that means drivers can get paid more. The cost of driving goes down and that means more goods can be shipped.
  • arrrg 10y ago
    I view this as a key task for societies: Insuring that quick changes due to technological progress (or any other quick changes that are hard for anyone and especially individuals to foresee and plan for, like natural disasters) don’t leave people behind, in destitution or poverty or without any perspective. If the World’s societies were up to that task more frequently less talk about jobs would be necessary. Natural disasters are obviously a quite different story (but one where some societies are at least marginally better at supporting people, mostly because everyone accepts that people are just blameless and that makes it somehow easier to help), but technological progress usually benefits some people immensely and frequently has a positive (on average) on society as a whole. (But even that rising tide can leave people behind and leave people behind until they eventually just die of old age. So not a pleasant situation and those people have to be taken care of.) Because of this it should be no problem to temporarily support those who are left behind. If current assumptions hold that support might even just have to be quite temporary (since beyond a certain point people will just stop wanting to do certain jobs because it’s obvious those have no future), so it’s not like we have that obligation forever. Obviously, if current assumptions don’t hold (and large segments of the population will be permanently out of a job with no way to really change that, even across longer timeframes) we have to look for alternate solutions, like basic income, but that doesn’t seem too difficult, either. We just have to want it.
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  • delecti 10y ago
• maxerickson 10y ago
  I kind of wonder if the first thing that will be deskilled is the last 1000 feet. A lot of shipments do go to places that get infrequent deliveries, but any place that is receiving trucks all day every day might decide it makes sense to program the maneuvers once and not let humans fool around with each truck anymore. I'm assuming that the automation system will have equal or better fine grained control over the vehicle-trailer system, so you only need a driver when decisions are complex. For the last 1000 feet, the decisions are easy (go/don't go) but accurate control is important. Ford shipped a backup system on their trucks last year, so I don't think I'm way out on a limb.
  • awesomerobot 10y ago
    For the last 1000 feet you can just have an employee on-site.