13 ms·

As Tech Evaporates Jobs, “The Tipping Point Will Be Driverless Trucks”

119 points by zt 10y ago

anoplus 10y ago
Lack of social safety nets creates unhealthy bias toward preserving jobs that could be automated completely. UBI (universal basic income) actually gives everyone motivation to further automate - the key to freedom. I expect to see more titles about automation and UBI, as I think it is highly crucial.
- jMyles 10y ago
  I had a thought while driving the other day that an interesting experiment might be to have a government whose only program is UBI.
  - legulere 10y ago
    No police, courts, legal system? Where does the money come from when there are no taxes?
    - jMyles 10y ago
      Yeah, it's a hard thing to think through. (I shudder to suggest, but posit for theoretical consideration), a currency whose blockchain has UBI built-in?
      - hsod 10y ago
        not quite what you're talking about since it's centrally managed, but check out the Gresham Dollar: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11441696 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11441696
      - godzillabrennus 10y ago
        A block chain where all participants get a minimal income of coinage simply by existing in the mix? That's an interesting idea but a far cry from a government that exists solely to issue currency without all the other important functions that make it a government.
      - slavik81 10y ago
        How do you ensure each person has exactly one identity on the block chain?
        jMyles 10y ago
        Obviously this is a hugely tough question. Some kind of reputation / web of trust? I bet the Etherium / Counterparty guys have an idea.
        johncolanduoni 10y ago
        Well since you're still positing a government (which to make this work would likely also need to have some manner of projecting will so that people are forced to use this monetary system instead of a competing one) the valid identities on the block chain could be handed out and verified by a central system (a la social security numbers).
        politician 10y ago
        Don't be naive; duplicate SSNs exist.
        johncolanduoni 10y ago
        I'm not being naive; I never said social security numbers compared in quality to signed cryptographic credentials. The point it is the same basic idea (hand out an officially accepted identity). Duplication isn't even the biggest disadvantage of the current system. I really wish we had an identity with real non-repudiation with our current government structure.
        lmm 10y ago
        Right, but at that point you need people who register births and a fair chunk of the infrastructure of a conventional government.
    - j-pb 10y ago
      You let the government simply print more of it. This replaced taxation with inflation, having the positive side effect that it pushes people to favour investment over capital hoarding, but incentivizes dept at the same time.
      - vertex-four 10y ago
        I think you'll find that most people in favour of UBI are not in favour of incentivizing people to go into debt.
        j-pb 10y ago
        Yeah, that should have been disincentivizing dept. Autocorrect screwed me over there and I just realised. The effect is actually as follows. It disincentivizes dept because there is no reason for lending (as interest is eaten up by inflation), and at the same time it's actually alleviating crippling dept because the relative worth of the dept (what you could actually buy with that money) diminishes with inflation.
    - te_chris 10y ago
      Capital/wealth taxes
      - eru 10y ago
        Tax land instead. Supply is fixed, so no economic deadweight loss. (But this is all orthogonal to the original question.)
  - nefitty 10y ago
    That would be a conservative's dream government. The reason UBI is supported on both sides of the aisle is because it touches on the priorities of the left and right. As far as I can tell, some conservatives advocate for UBI and removing all other social safety nets. I don't think this is exactly what everyone has in mind when they consider the program.
    - jMyles 10y ago
      Yeah it's not hard to imagine it becoming a really dystopian scenario. It's more difficult, but not impossible, to imagine it being great.
      - eru 10y ago
        What's dystopian about it?
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - sokoloff 10y ago
      That's the way to get bi/multi-partisan support. I support UBI iff we dismantle all (or almost all, like > 95%) of existing government give-money-away programs. I can't imagine that I'm remotely unique in this point of view. If you're asking for it to be meaningful in amount, universal, and additive atop the existing programs, I think you'll find very little support from the working people who will bear the costs.
      - eru 10y ago
        The best version has welfare and tax systems fuse. Why have two government bureaucracies assess your wealth / income, if one suffices? Right now, lots of poor people face extremely high effective marginal tax rates because they are in a region of income where benefits are phased out gradually. A fused UBI/tax system could be more rational here.
    - chillacy 10y ago
ecubed 10y ago
Otto (http://ot.to http://ot.to) provides a solution for converting existing trucks into semi-self-driving trucks. I'd be very interested to hear a truck drivers take on using a device like this. In my (not a truck driver) opinion, it seems like in the short term it'll be hugely beneficial to the drivers, since the government will still be mandating that drivers be in the vehicles, but in the long term will completely kill the job.
- slapshot 10y ago
  I've seen their giant demo truck parked in San Francisco. I was wondering why a huge truck had what looked like parking cameras and radar domes on top. And who in the world was driving a full size semi into SoMa just to park it on the street. Thanks for solving a mystery!
chris_va 10y ago
... Until we get driverless RVs, and hordes of retirees roaming the country reinvigorating those rest stops.
- alttab 10y ago
  They won't have to stop for the same reasons.
  - forthefuture 10y ago
    Even with a robot driving you're going to need gas / electricity and food every 4 hours.
    - refriedbeans3 10y ago
      Carry your own food and enough batteries to last to the destination. Or have a hot swap battery bot like a military jet re-fueler. No stopping at all! In all seriousness, I'm not saying there won't be stop offs and rest stops (because really, who wants to be in a moving box for 3 days), but in terms of feasibility I can definitely theorize a situation where stopping is no longer necessary. I just finished a road trip and man, would an auto-RV have been amazing. Instead of only catching ~50% of the view because I was the driver, I could take it all in and interact with my lady at the same time vs focused on driving. Growing up I thought RVs were crazy awful - but now I look forward to my auto-RV at age 75 driving my old ass around the country.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - bertil 10y ago
    Well… re-fueling (although that could be electric soon), eating and pissing every four hours. Sounds fairly similar to me. What differences did you have in mind? More scenic routes and less Pirelli calendar? More batteries for hearing-aids, and less not-necessarily legal ‘pick-me up’?
PhilWright 10y ago
I think the panic over automation of cars and trucks is a little premature. At the moment you cannot buy a car or truck that will auto drive. I mean auto drive in the sense of not needing a driver at all. Until you can completely remove the driver then there is no danger to the taxi/trucking industry, it will be only a driver aid in the same way cruise control is a driver aid. There is a huge gap between Google testing a driverless car, with a person in it for emergencies, and actually seeing hordes of driverless taxis of trucks on our streets. I can imagine a new trend with bored teenagers. Jump in front of the driverless car or truck and watch it emergency stop. Then run away. Or wait for the news report where all the driverless cars in the city have gone to the same car park because a hacker thought it would be hilarious. Just one truck accident that wipes out a few children and the trucks will be taken off the road. After all, if one truck has the bug then they all do. When a person makes a mistake we don't stop all trucks because we blame the person, when a software version crashes then they all could crash.
- PhasmaFelis 10y ago
  I imagine that we'll get automated convoy AI, with a single driver in the lead truck, well before truly autonomous trucks. That will put a lot of truckers out of work by itself.
  - abootstrapper 10y ago
    We should build dedicated roads for these automated convoys.
    - tonyedgecombe 10y ago
      Yes, you could give them rails to make them more efficient.
      - imtringued 10y ago
        And how exactly does that solve the last mile problem?
rch 10y ago
Brings to mind this graphic: http://apps.npr.org/dailygraphics/graphics/hist-job-map-90/child.html?initialWidth=800 http://apps.npr.org/dailygraphics/graphics/hist-job-map-90/c... Truck driver is an extremely common occupation across much of the country.
- refurb 10y ago
  How many of those are long-haul truck drivers and how many are UPS or other short-haul delivery? You'd still need people to bring packages from the truck to the business/home.
  - rch 10y ago
    Those people may not need a commercial driver's license any longer, making it a lower skilled job.
jMyles 10y ago
I find the obsession with "jobs" to be one of the most sour elements of the corportocratic dialogue of the political and economic systems. Many people, including most professional drivers, will be happy not to have to do the chore anymore. They don't want or need jobs, they want and need fulfillment of their wants and needs. Stood next to the monumental task of actually automating the matter around us to please us (which, if our purpose in doing so is good, is a mitzvah), the creation of a system which fulfills these wants and needs without regard to any connection to a "job" seems straightforward and doable.
- Udik 10y ago
  Right, let's stop talking about jobs. Who's gonna give to today's truck drivers the money to pay the mortgage they have to keep paying for the next 20 years?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - jMyles 10y ago
    I'm not saying we need to "stop talking" about the current economic configuration, including asking the very well-put and timely question in your second sentence. But the constant drone of "create jobs" at every political debate? The yardsticking of every public policy measure against how many "jobs" it will "create" or "destroy"? A central bank with a mandate not to simply implement fair and simple currency regulations, but to actually manipulate the money supply so as to "create jobs"? This is not just a discussion; it's an obsession. And I posit that it's as much about a moralistic work ethic (and a bunch of other things) as it is about any sound economic theory. We need to move on to new ideas about automation, economics, and sustainability.
    - hamilyon2 10y ago
      That may be question of national security i.e. ability to defend against adversary. Let's imagine 30 years from now. World is not yet united and peaceful place. Nation focusing on social nenefits, leisure time, innovation and freedom could be as economically and technically advanced as other nation focusing solely on full employment. But they will be substantially different when facing difficult realities of war: those benefits as well may be cut and those people should go to factories, computers, fields, whatever occupation current war needs. How do you explain a whole generation of people that their allowance will not be paid? How do you tell them that their occupation will be unpleasant? How do you train millions of people discipline, relevant skills, command-and-control? No major nation wants to lose next war, so we are locked in full employment race. (sorry for bad english)
chx 10y ago
From a technical standpoint, this was crystal clear for years now: the first point where automation will happen is long distance trucking on highways. A human drives a truck out of town where (s)he gets out -- and perhaps into a truck just arrived -- and the robot drives it to the destination city. Many hard technical and regulatory problems in automated driving do not even appear in this scenario. There are no pedestrians to hit, traffic lights to navigate etc. Just drive. And this will be quick to be accepted, everyone knows the dangers of truck drives dozing off. The robot never dozes off. And yes, a real large amount of jobs will disappear within the next 15 years if not the next ten due to this.
lukaslalinsky 10y ago
We do not even have driverless cargo trains. The only automated trains I know of are local metro trains. I'm quite sure we will need a person sitting in a truck for a very long time. Sure, that person might not be actually driving the truck, but the job will be still there.
- andyjdavis 10y ago
  >We do not even have driverless cargo trains. These are definitely on the way, if they have not already arrived. Someone I know was a train driver for a mining company here in Australia. A lot of their trains are already essentially automated with a driver being present largely just in case. Bear in mind that this was several years ago and I doubt automation has halted since then as that specific kind of train driver are exceptionally expensive to have on the payroll. Even a few years back the drivers were either simply supervising the computer system or the human was driving however the computer system would alarm at the driver any time the human driver did something that it disagreed with. In particular, going too fast and being unsafe or going too slow and extending the trip time. The computer was supervising the human just as much as the human was supervising the computer. From memory, the system could even raise alarms with supervisors about what is happening with the train in some circumstances. Going from human only > human supervising computer > computer supervising human > computer only seems like a sensible progression and trains are a long way through it.
Qantourisc 10y ago
One thing I just wondered about: If you automate away a job, you have to pay this persons UBI, as such you need to tax more. (Lets assume 100% at the point where you automated.) Where is the profit for the company now ? It will now have to pay both the automation and the UBI. The only thing we gained (and that's a good thing) is a human with a lot of spare time. That should be enough motivation, but not for this €€€ obsessed world.
- acgourley 10y ago
  In this specific idealized scenario the driver has something else he would rather do (another production of value - care for children, writing a novel, playing video games) or else he would offer to drive the truck for less money than the automaton costs. So that driver's alternative production + the value from the automaton is the net positive.
- roel_v 10y ago
  So then I come in and I start a new company, who has never had any employees. How much do I pay? Or are you essentially just proposing to raise corporate taxes?
protobot 10y ago
If driverless trucks were to be such a transformer of economies, we'd have seen that many more trains and railroads appear, decades ago. This is all just more puff about the massive campaign pushing for autonomous vehicles. Any publicity is good publicity. But let's not pretend we're being given a choice about this driverless car thing.
- awjr 10y ago
  With the number of deaths caused by human controlled cars, I do not think we humans deserve a choice when it comes to driverless cars. It is going to become very easy to revoke somebody's licence for dangerous driving given that this does not affect their ability to drive from A to B.
- pkaye 10y ago
  It will probably follow the Gartner Hype Cycle. After the initial peak of excitement for autonomous vehicles, there will be a trough of disillusionment where we realize everyone was too optimistic. But eventually the bugs and limitations will be worked out over decades of engineering of the vehicles and our road infrastructure before meaningful replacement of workers.
- bertil 10y ago
  > This is all just more puff about the massive campaign pushing for autonomous vehicles. Any publicity is good publicity. Certainly cynical, but not necessarily a wrong interpretation. > But let's not pretend we're being given a choice about this driverless car thing. We will not have a choice on whether automation cost are much cheaper than human driving, indeed — but we have two choices: - should we tax automation? if yes, should it be so that humans remain cheaper (probably a terrible idea) or enough to have enough to help recently out-of-work workers to re-train? - what should do with recently out-of-work workers? In the case of drivers, that is less essential than it would seem, as many are ageing and retirement is a possible option. (Hence my intuition that Unions are not that worried, and this could be puff for automation.) However, there are two generations who have been trained for a labor-intensive world that will need re-training. What and how we handle that is important, and it is our choice.
Razengan 10y ago
A century ago there were people [1] whose job was to manually light street lamps. How did they transition into the advent of electricity? There's been countless other jobs where previously-essential human participation was rendered unnecessary by technology, sometimes with entire social classes finding themselves unemployed; why should this time be any different? How can it be different? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamplighter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamplighter Also interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link-boy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link-boy
- Udik 10y ago
  Because the current technological quest is, by definition, to build machines that cover any residual advantage human beings had on machines. In essence, the goal is to produce human beings - at least as far as working abilities are concerned - extremely cheap and infinitely available.
  - riffraff 10y ago
    But this has always been the quest, agriculture went from 80% of the workforce to 4% as productivity increased EDIT: sorry sent too early ...what changes is the "residual advantage". Until some time ago we assumed machines would only replace people in simple tasks (e.g. mill). Than only repetitive, "mechanic" tasks (i.e. assembly line). Now we realize they can replace in tasks which require some intelligence (i.e. self driving cars) but still assume they won't replace us in some "smarter" jobs. It looks to me like each step is just incremental, I don't see the "tipping" point.
    - majewsky 10y ago
      I always say that we're lucky as developers since our job is likely one of the last to be automated away.
      - eru 10y ago
        We are automating quite a lot of it away (eg think compilers), but yes, there's probably lots of stuff left for humans to do until very late.
partycoder 10y ago
I wonder how the tire replacement mechanism works on a driverless truck.
- grondilu 10y ago
  The machine stops on the side of the road and calls a human.
  - partycoder 10y ago
    What if people start sabotaging the robots just to have more jobs? e.g: perforating tires
    - MagnumOpus 10y ago
      Sabotaging a target that has dozens of cameras pointed at you is a pretty dumb move. (And the same thing could happen today, on less-well monitored cars; I haven't heard much of mass tyre vandalism.)
    - stale2002 10y ago
      The security issue is overblown. Right now, if you wanted to, you could buy a gun, go out into the country side, block the street, and shoot the next driver that comes along. Having trucks be automated just means that those trucks now have a dozen cameras pointed at you.
stretchwithme 10y ago
Automation of human labor is the single biggest cause of prosperity. Its not a new process and robotics isn't doing anything radically different. Nor will the supply of jobs dry up because of automation. There will continue to be a demand for what humans can do and a supply of humans that want to work. As long as prices are allowed to adjust so that supply and demand tend to equalize, there will be a labor market. The real problem is interference in this marketplace, interference in people's ability to sell their labor.
Animats 10y ago
It's incremental, but the jobs go away. Here, for your entertainment, is an automated container port in Rotterdam under construction.[1] It was finished in 2014. Here it is in full operation.[2] There are no people on those container cranes. There are a few people in a control room. The little trucks moving the containers around are self-driving. They're also battery powered, and battery swap is automated. The cranes that move containers around the container stacks are totally automated. There are no people in the cargo-handling section of the terminal. This is not the future. This is last year's technology, operating right now. It's quite likely that the first trucking to be automated will be to and from container ports. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLf0m3ucV3M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLf0m3ucV3M [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEk2v4RyFh4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEk2v4RyFh4
pmlnr 10y ago
I'd love to recommend a book on this, but it never was translated to English: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8892205-menschen-wie-g-tter http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8892205-menschen-wie-g-tt... It was originally written to be a satire, but ended up showing a civilization way passed the everything is automated for basic needs. From there on you need to teach people to use their capabilities to create whatever they have in their mind, be that music, inventions, etc. If you take away the purpose of jobs, such as to do something with your life, you need to give alternatives, such as the option and the need for creation.
- tluyben2 10y ago
  It's the logical conclusion; people who can work on / in space exploration, people who can't entertain themselves, preferably by creating but many also by enjoying the creations. Games, movies, ...
- eru 10y ago
  There's a book with a very similar title https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_Like_Gods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_Like_Gods
NicoJuicy 10y ago
Let's generize and say truckers won't do difficult (thinking) work. What are there alternatives for employment? (i'm NOT saying that they can't/won't work, but that their alternative jobs could be replaced in the short-term future also...). There is a huge storm coming in the next 15-20 years and it's coming fast... I just hope the world is ready
- randycupertino 10y ago
  They will go on SSDI.
codesnik 10y ago
there's an ukrainian book, "Hunting wild trucks" by V.Vasiliev, about a parallel world, where human, elves and dwarves hunt and tame automated trucks moving cargo between automated factories. I for one, welcome such a future.
ajuc 10y ago
People speak about surplus workers like "everybody has food and place to sleep - we're out of things to do". We still have to cure cancer, AIDS, deal with malaria, Alzheimer, Zika, etc. We have to solve space exploration and colonization. We have to fix aging. We have to understand the universe. There's no law that says only brightest (most socialy adaptable) 1% of human population can work on all that. It can be 50% or more if we change how we do it (and have the resources). That's why I think guaranteed income is stupid idea. We should have guaranteed science/engineering jobs instead. And work on all the long-shot problems. Why not? So - that's the alternative costs of guaranteed income.
- drabiega 10y ago
  We already produce enough food and housing for everyone, we just don't let the people who don't have jobs to use the surplus.
_ph_ 10y ago
I think we are pretty close to the point where trucks no longer require a human being holding the steering wheel to move between locations. That does not automatically mean, that there are no human beings on board. There are many reasons why there should still be humans involved, like - maintenance: Starting from refueling, to tyre change - security: Completely unguarded trucks would make quite a theft risk - any other interactions, being with the customer at the destination or anything on the road. So, overall there are some aspects and consequently some jobs going away, but there might be additional responsibilities being added to the remaining job, consider the truck driving of the future rather an office job located on the truck.
- majewsky 10y ago
  > maintenance This is the most interesting part. > security Not an expert, but it would be interesting to see if theft is a bigger problem with autonomous cars, or if it's hacker attacks. > interaction on site of the customer There you can still cut down the workforce, and have one person handle a whole fleet of incoming trucks.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

119 points by zt 10y ago

Lack of social safety nets creates unhealthy bias toward preserving jobs that could be automated completely. UBI (universal basic income) actually gives everyone motivation to further automate - the key to freedom. I expect to see more titles about automation and UBI, as I think it is highly crucial.

jMyles 10y ago
I had a thought while driving the other day that an interesting experiment might be to have a government whose only program is UBI.
- legulere 10y ago
  No police, courts, legal system? Where does the money come from when there are no taxes?
  - jMyles 10y ago
    Yeah, it's a hard thing to think through. (I shudder to suggest, but posit for theoretical consideration), a currency whose blockchain has UBI built-in?
    - hsod 10y ago
      not quite what you're talking about since it's centrally managed, but check out the Gresham Dollar: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11441696 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11441696
    - godzillabrennus 10y ago
      A block chain where all participants get a minimal income of coinage simply by existing in the mix? That's an interesting idea but a far cry from a government that exists solely to issue currency without all the other important functions that make it a government.
    - slavik81 10y ago
      How do you ensure each person has exactly one identity on the block chain?
      - jMyles 10y ago
        Obviously this is a hugely tough question. Some kind of reputation / web of trust? I bet the Etherium / Counterparty guys have an idea.
      - johncolanduoni 10y ago
        Well since you're still positing a government (which to make this work would likely also need to have some manner of projecting will so that people are forced to use this monetary system instead of a competing one) the valid identities on the block chain could be handed out and verified by a central system (a la social security numbers).
        politician 10y ago
        Don't be naive; duplicate SSNs exist.
        johncolanduoni 10y ago
        I'm not being naive; I never said social security numbers compared in quality to signed cryptographic credentials. The point it is the same basic idea (hand out an officially accepted identity). Duplication isn't even the biggest disadvantage of the current system. I really wish we had an identity with real non-repudiation with our current government structure.
        lmm 10y ago
        Right, but at that point you need people who register births and a fair chunk of the infrastructure of a conventional government.
  - j-pb 10y ago
    You let the government simply print more of it. This replaced taxation with inflation, having the positive side effect that it pushes people to favour investment over capital hoarding, but incentivizes dept at the same time.
    - vertex-four 10y ago
      I think you'll find that most people in favour of UBI are not in favour of incentivizing people to go into debt.
      - j-pb 10y ago
        Yeah, that should have been disincentivizing dept. Autocorrect screwed me over there and I just realised. The effect is actually as follows. It disincentivizes dept because there is no reason for lending (as interest is eaten up by inflation), and at the same time it's actually alleviating crippling dept because the relative worth of the dept (what you could actually buy with that money) diminishes with inflation.
  - te_chris 10y ago
    Capital/wealth taxes
    - eru 10y ago
      Tax land instead. Supply is fixed, so no economic deadweight loss. (But this is all orthogonal to the original question.)
- nefitty 10y ago
  That would be a conservative's dream government. The reason UBI is supported on both sides of the aisle is because it touches on the priorities of the left and right. As far as I can tell, some conservatives advocate for UBI and removing all other social safety nets. I don't think this is exactly what everyone has in mind when they consider the program.
  - jMyles 10y ago
    Yeah it's not hard to imagine it becoming a really dystopian scenario. It's more difficult, but not impossible, to imagine it being great.
    - eru 10y ago
      What's dystopian about it?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - sokoloff 10y ago
    That's the way to get bi/multi-partisan support. I support UBI iff we dismantle all (or almost all, like > 95%) of existing government give-money-away programs. I can't imagine that I'm remotely unique in this point of view. If you're asking for it to be meaningful in amount, universal, and additive atop the existing programs, I think you'll find very little support from the working people who will bear the costs.
    - eru 10y ago
      The best version has welfare and tax systems fuse. Why have two government bureaucracies assess your wealth / income, if one suffices? Right now, lots of poor people face extremely high effective marginal tax rates because they are in a region of income where benefits are phased out gradually. A fused UBI/tax system could be more rational here.
  - chillacy 10y ago

ecubed 10y ago

Otto (http://ot.to http://ot.to) provides a solution for converting existing trucks into semi-self-driving trucks. I'd be very interested to hear a truck drivers take on using a device like this. In my (not a truck driver) opinion, it seems like in the short term it'll be hugely beneficial to the drivers, since the government will still be mandating that drivers be in the vehicles, but in the long term will completely kill the job.

slapshot 10y ago
I've seen their giant demo truck parked in San Francisco. I was wondering why a huge truck had what looked like parking cameras and radar domes on top. And who in the world was driving a full size semi into SoMa just to park it on the street. Thanks for solving a mystery!

chris_va 10y ago

... Until we get driverless RVs, and hordes of retirees roaming the country reinvigorating those rest stops.

alttab 10y ago
They won't have to stop for the same reasons.
- forthefuture 10y ago
  Even with a robot driving you're going to need gas / electricity and food every 4 hours.
  - refriedbeans3 10y ago
    Carry your own food and enough batteries to last to the destination. Or have a hot swap battery bot like a military jet re-fueler. No stopping at all! In all seriousness, I'm not saying there won't be stop offs and rest stops (because really, who wants to be in a moving box for 3 days), but in terms of feasibility I can definitely theorize a situation where stopping is no longer necessary. I just finished a road trip and man, would an auto-RV have been amazing. Instead of only catching ~50% of the view because I was the driver, I could take it all in and interact with my lady at the same time vs focused on driving. Growing up I thought RVs were crazy awful - but now I look forward to my auto-RV at age 75 driving my old ass around the country.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- bertil 10y ago
  Well… re-fueling (although that could be electric soon), eating and pissing every four hours. Sounds fairly similar to me. What differences did you have in mind? More scenic routes and less Pirelli calendar? More batteries for hearing-aids, and less not-necessarily legal ‘pick-me up’?

PhilWright 10y ago

I think the panic over automation of cars and trucks is a little premature. At the moment you cannot buy a car or truck that will auto drive. I mean auto drive in the sense of not needing a driver at all. Until you can completely remove the driver then there is no danger to the taxi/trucking industry, it will be only a driver aid in the same way cruise control is a driver aid. There is a huge gap between Google testing a driverless car, with a person in it for emergencies, and actually seeing hordes of driverless taxis of trucks on our streets. I can imagine a new trend with bored teenagers. Jump in front of the driverless car or truck and watch it emergency stop. Then run away. Or wait for the news report where all the driverless cars in the city have gone to the same car park because a hacker thought it would be hilarious. Just one truck accident that wipes out a few children and the trucks will be taken off the road. After all, if one truck has the bug then they all do. When a person makes a mistake we don't stop all trucks because we blame the person, when a software version crashes then they all could crash.

PhasmaFelis 10y ago
I imagine that we'll get automated convoy AI, with a single driver in the lead truck, well before truly autonomous trucks. That will put a lot of truckers out of work by itself.
- abootstrapper 10y ago
  We should build dedicated roads for these automated convoys.
  - tonyedgecombe 10y ago
    Yes, you could give them rails to make them more efficient.
    - imtringued 10y ago
      And how exactly does that solve the last mile problem?

rch 10y ago

Brings to mind this graphic: http://apps.npr.org/dailygraphics/graphics/hist-job-map-90/child.html?initialWidth=800 http://apps.npr.org/dailygraphics/graphics/hist-job-map-90/c... Truck driver is an extremely common occupation across much of the country.

refurb 10y ago
How many of those are long-haul truck drivers and how many are UPS or other short-haul delivery? You'd still need people to bring packages from the truck to the business/home.
- rch 10y ago
  Those people may not need a commercial driver's license any longer, making it a lower skilled job.

jMyles 10y ago

I find the obsession with "jobs" to be one of the most sour elements of the corportocratic dialogue of the political and economic systems. Many people, including most professional drivers, will be happy not to have to do the chore anymore. They don't want or need jobs, they want and need fulfillment of their wants and needs. Stood next to the monumental task of actually automating the matter around us to please us (which, if our purpose in doing so is good, is a mitzvah), the creation of a system which fulfills these wants and needs without regard to any connection to a "job" seems straightforward and doable.

Udik 10y ago
Right, let's stop talking about jobs. Who's gonna give to today's truck drivers the money to pay the mortgage they have to keep paying for the next 20 years?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- jMyles 10y ago
  I'm not saying we need to "stop talking" about the current economic configuration, including asking the very well-put and timely question in your second sentence. But the constant drone of "create jobs" at every political debate? The yardsticking of every public policy measure against how many "jobs" it will "create" or "destroy"? A central bank with a mandate not to simply implement fair and simple currency regulations, but to actually manipulate the money supply so as to "create jobs"? This is not just a discussion; it's an obsession. And I posit that it's as much about a moralistic work ethic (and a bunch of other things) as it is about any sound economic theory. We need to move on to new ideas about automation, economics, and sustainability.
  - hamilyon2 10y ago
    That may be question of national security i.e. ability to defend against adversary. Let's imagine 30 years from now. World is not yet united and peaceful place. Nation focusing on social nenefits, leisure time, innovation and freedom could be as economically and technically advanced as other nation focusing solely on full employment. But they will be substantially different when facing difficult realities of war: those benefits as well may be cut and those people should go to factories, computers, fields, whatever occupation current war needs. How do you explain a whole generation of people that their allowance will not be paid? How do you tell them that their occupation will be unpleasant? How do you train millions of people discipline, relevant skills, command-and-control? No major nation wants to lose next war, so we are locked in full employment race. (sorry for bad english)

chx 10y ago

From a technical standpoint, this was crystal clear for years now: the first point where automation will happen is long distance trucking on highways. A human drives a truck out of town where (s)he gets out -- and perhaps into a truck just arrived -- and the robot drives it to the destination city. Many hard technical and regulatory problems in automated driving do not even appear in this scenario. There are no pedestrians to hit, traffic lights to navigate etc. Just drive. And this will be quick to be accepted, everyone knows the dangers of truck drives dozing off. The robot never dozes off. And yes, a real large amount of jobs will disappear within the next 15 years if not the next ten due to this.

lukaslalinsky 10y ago

We do not even have driverless cargo trains. The only automated trains I know of are local metro trains. I'm quite sure we will need a person sitting in a truck for a very long time. Sure, that person might not be actually driving the truck, but the job will be still there.

andyjdavis 10y ago
>We do not even have driverless cargo trains. These are definitely on the way, if they have not already arrived. Someone I know was a train driver for a mining company here in Australia. A lot of their trains are already essentially automated with a driver being present largely just in case. Bear in mind that this was several years ago and I doubt automation has halted since then as that specific kind of train driver are exceptionally expensive to have on the payroll. Even a few years back the drivers were either simply supervising the computer system or the human was driving however the computer system would alarm at the driver any time the human driver did something that it disagreed with. In particular, going too fast and being unsafe or going too slow and extending the trip time. The computer was supervising the human just as much as the human was supervising the computer. From memory, the system could even raise alarms with supervisors about what is happening with the train in some circumstances. Going from human only > human supervising computer > computer supervising human > computer only seems like a sensible progression and trains are a long way through it.

Qantourisc 10y ago

One thing I just wondered about: If you automate away a job, you have to pay this persons UBI, as such you need to tax more. (Lets assume 100% at the point where you automated.) Where is the profit for the company now ? It will now have to pay both the automation and the UBI. The only thing we gained (and that's a good thing) is a human with a lot of spare time. That should be enough motivation, but not for this €€€ obsessed world.

acgourley 10y ago
In this specific idealized scenario the driver has something else he would rather do (another production of value - care for children, writing a novel, playing video games) or else he would offer to drive the truck for less money than the automaton costs. So that driver's alternative production + the value from the automaton is the net positive.
roel_v 10y ago
So then I come in and I start a new company, who has never had any employees. How much do I pay? Or are you essentially just proposing to raise corporate taxes?

protobot 10y ago

If driverless trucks were to be such a transformer of economies, we'd have seen that many more trains and railroads appear, decades ago. This is all just more puff about the massive campaign pushing for autonomous vehicles. Any publicity is good publicity. But let's not pretend we're being given a choice about this driverless car thing.

awjr 10y ago
With the number of deaths caused by human controlled cars, I do not think we humans deserve a choice when it comes to driverless cars. It is going to become very easy to revoke somebody's licence for dangerous driving given that this does not affect their ability to drive from A to B.
pkaye 10y ago
It will probably follow the Gartner Hype Cycle. After the initial peak of excitement for autonomous vehicles, there will be a trough of disillusionment where we realize everyone was too optimistic. But eventually the bugs and limitations will be worked out over decades of engineering of the vehicles and our road infrastructure before meaningful replacement of workers.
bertil 10y ago
> This is all just more puff about the massive campaign pushing for autonomous vehicles. Any publicity is good publicity. Certainly cynical, but not necessarily a wrong interpretation. > But let's not pretend we're being given a choice about this driverless car thing. We will not have a choice on whether automation cost are much cheaper than human driving, indeed — but we have two choices: - should we tax automation? if yes, should it be so that humans remain cheaper (probably a terrible idea) or enough to have enough to help recently out-of-work workers to re-train? - what should do with recently out-of-work workers? In the case of drivers, that is less essential than it would seem, as many are ageing and retirement is a possible option. (Hence my intuition that Unions are not that worried, and this could be puff for automation.) However, there are two generations who have been trained for a labor-intensive world that will need re-training. What and how we handle that is important, and it is our choice.

Razengan 10y ago

A century ago there were people [1] whose job was to manually light street lamps. How did they transition into the advent of electricity? There's been countless other jobs where previously-essential human participation was rendered unnecessary by technology, sometimes with entire social classes finding themselves unemployed; why should this time be any different? How can it be different? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamplighter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamplighter Also interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link-boy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link-boy

Udik 10y ago
Because the current technological quest is, by definition, to build machines that cover any residual advantage human beings had on machines. In essence, the goal is to produce human beings - at least as far as working abilities are concerned - extremely cheap and infinitely available.
- riffraff 10y ago
  But this has always been the quest, agriculture went from 80% of the workforce to 4% as productivity increased EDIT: sorry sent too early ...what changes is the "residual advantage". Until some time ago we assumed machines would only replace people in simple tasks (e.g. mill). Than only repetitive, "mechanic" tasks (i.e. assembly line). Now we realize they can replace in tasks which require some intelligence (i.e. self driving cars) but still assume they won't replace us in some "smarter" jobs. It looks to me like each step is just incremental, I don't see the "tipping" point.
  - majewsky 10y ago
    I always say that we're lucky as developers since our job is likely one of the last to be automated away.
    - eru 10y ago
      We are automating quite a lot of it away (eg think compilers), but yes, there's probably lots of stuff left for humans to do until very late.

partycoder 10y ago

I wonder how the tire replacement mechanism works on a driverless truck.

grondilu 10y ago
The machine stops on the side of the road and calls a human.
- partycoder 10y ago
  What if people start sabotaging the robots just to have more jobs? e.g: perforating tires
  - MagnumOpus 10y ago
    Sabotaging a target that has dozens of cameras pointed at you is a pretty dumb move. (And the same thing could happen today, on less-well monitored cars; I haven't heard much of mass tyre vandalism.)
  - stale2002 10y ago
    The security issue is overblown. Right now, if you wanted to, you could buy a gun, go out into the country side, block the street, and shoot the next driver that comes along. Having trucks be automated just means that those trucks now have a dozen cameras pointed at you.

stretchwithme 10y ago

Automation of human labor is the single biggest cause of prosperity. Its not a new process and robotics isn't doing anything radically different. Nor will the supply of jobs dry up because of automation. There will continue to be a demand for what humans can do and a supply of humans that want to work. As long as prices are allowed to adjust so that supply and demand tend to equalize, there will be a labor market. The real problem is interference in this marketplace, interference in people's ability to sell their labor.

Animats 10y ago

It's incremental, but the jobs go away. Here, for your entertainment, is an automated container port in Rotterdam under construction.[1] It was finished in 2014. Here it is in full operation.[2] There are no people on those container cranes. There are a few people in a control room. The little trucks moving the containers around are self-driving. They're also battery powered, and battery swap is automated. The cranes that move containers around the container stacks are totally automated. There are no people in the cargo-handling section of the terminal. This is not the future. This is last year's technology, operating right now. It's quite likely that the first trucking to be automated will be to and from container ports. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLf0m3ucV3M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLf0m3ucV3M [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEk2v4RyFh4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEk2v4RyFh4

pmlnr 10y ago

I'd love to recommend a book on this, but it never was translated to English: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8892205-menschen-wie-g-tter http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8892205-menschen-wie-g-tt... It was originally written to be a satire, but ended up showing a civilization way passed the everything is automated for basic needs. From there on you need to teach people to use their capabilities to create whatever they have in their mind, be that music, inventions, etc. If you take away the purpose of jobs, such as to do something with your life, you need to give alternatives, such as the option and the need for creation.

tluyben2 10y ago
It's the logical conclusion; people who can work on / in space exploration, people who can't entertain themselves, preferably by creating but many also by enjoying the creations. Games, movies, ...
eru 10y ago
There's a book with a very similar title https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_Like_Gods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_Like_Gods

NicoJuicy 10y ago

Let's generize and say truckers won't do difficult (thinking) work. What are there alternatives for employment? (i'm NOT saying that they can't/won't work, but that their alternative jobs could be replaced in the short-term future also...). There is a huge storm coming in the next 15-20 years and it's coming fast... I just hope the world is ready

randycupertino 10y ago
They will go on SSDI.

codesnik 10y ago

there's an ukrainian book, "Hunting wild trucks" by V.Vasiliev, about a parallel world, where human, elves and dwarves hunt and tame automated trucks moving cargo between automated factories. I for one, welcome such a future.

ajuc 10y ago

People speak about surplus workers like "everybody has food and place to sleep - we're out of things to do". We still have to cure cancer, AIDS, deal with malaria, Alzheimer, Zika, etc. We have to solve space exploration and colonization. We have to fix aging. We have to understand the universe. There's no law that says only brightest (most socialy adaptable) 1% of human population can work on all that. It can be 50% or more if we change how we do it (and have the resources). That's why I think guaranteed income is stupid idea. We should have guaranteed science/engineering jobs instead. And work on all the long-shot problems. Why not? So - that's the alternative costs of guaranteed income.

drabiega 10y ago
We already produce enough food and housing for everyone, we just don't let the people who don't have jobs to use the surplus.

_ph_ 10y ago

I think we are pretty close to the point where trucks no longer require a human being holding the steering wheel to move between locations. That does not automatically mean, that there are no human beings on board. There are many reasons why there should still be humans involved, like - maintenance: Starting from refueling, to tyre change - security: Completely unguarded trucks would make quite a theft risk - any other interactions, being with the customer at the destination or anything on the road. So, overall there are some aspects and consequently some jobs going away, but there might be additional responsibilities being added to the remaining job, consider the truck driving of the future rather an office job located on the truck.

majewsky 10y ago
> maintenance This is the most interesting part. > security Not an expert, but it would be interesting to see if theft is a bigger problem with autonomous cars, or if it's hacker attacks. > interaction on site of the customer There you can still cut down the workforce, and have one person handle a whole fleet of incoming trucks.

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