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Even if driverless transport technology arrives, it would take quite sometime for it to be adopted on a massive scale. In that time, there would be a rapid ris

Even if driverless transport technology arrives, it would take quite sometime for it to be adopted on a massive scale. In that time, there would be a rapid rise in number of companies around this industry which would create a lot better work than those mundane jobs. I think people are underestimating how many new jobs could be created. Driverless trucks would give rise companies selling fleet tracking software, integrated inventory management software, and automated vehicle servicing applications. Imagine hundreds of such companies, employing engineers, sales people, marketers, customer success guys and you have a world where you think - "Did we really have humans to do that?"

politician 10y ago
> Driverless trucks would give rise companies selling fleet tracking software, integrated inventory management software, and automated vehicle servicing applications. Providing jobs for, literally, hundreds of people!
Pamar 10y ago
Imagine hundreds of such companies, employing engineers, sales people, marketers, customer success guys What you seem to miss is that someone who was working as a truck driver has little chances to successfully transition to being an engineer, sales people, etc. Industrialization did destroy jobs, but replaced these with jobs that did not require advanced education. So becoming an assembly line worker could be a reasonable goal for someone who had been raised as a farmer, for example (result: lots of people transitioned from farming to industry, while industry was at he same time producing better tools for farmers reducing the need for a human workers in the fields). If 2 robots can replace 10 people working at garbage collection/disposal, how many of them will become sw developers to improve/mantain the 2 robots?
dagw 10y ago
Driverless trucks would give rise companies selling... All those companies exist today and large trucking operations already use software for fleet tracking, routing, inventory management etc. So while these software companies might sell more software and might have to hire a few more people to add the features needed for handling an automated truck fleet, it's not like it's a whole new industry being created.
- shubhamjain 10y ago
  Do you know how people did analytics in pre-GA days? By parsing access.log files. I don't think anyone could have imagined web analytics will grow so big as it is now. Yes, fleet tracking software already exists but don't think that it can grow only till we scale it to certain level and add some extra features. There will be myriad of possibilities when this data is easy to access. Currently, it is limited to only those companies who can procure the GPS devices, and install it for their customers which translated to high barrier to entry and CAC costs.
roel_v 10y ago
"Even if driverless transport technology arrives, it would take quite sometime for it to be adopted on a massive scale." It will take as much time as factories can produce 100's of millions self-drive retro-fit kits, or alternatively, the average write-off time of a truck, say 5 years? Because 95% of companies that don't start transitioning to self-driving the day after it becomes available on the general market, will not be able to compete within the year or 2 after. "I think people are underestimating how many new jobs could be created." A company providing a fully automated solution for all of that is, what, 300-500 people? So let's say there would be 10 of those (which is too many, consolidation and all). Let's say that we round that up (double) to 10000, and then say we're off by a factor of 10. That's 100k, vs 3.5 million jobs now (counting just truckers, and just in the US, so not even counting all 'associated' jobs). This whole 'but there will be new jobs' thing doesn't stand up to even the tiniest bit of math, even with very generous assumptions. And that's not even considering the nature of those new jobs. Someone who is a truck driver now, isn't going to be a software engineer, or even a sales guy. There are going to be vast portions of the population who will not be qualified to do any of the jobs that the automated ones will generate. I don't know the solution, and I don't think UBI is it, but what I do know is that the commercial availability of self-driving cars will hit the labor market like a Mack truck (pardon the pun).
- shubhamjain 10y ago
  I agree that you can't replace 3.5M truckers with highly technical jobs but this is an oversimplified analysis that doesn't consider how industries will grow. When Power Loom was introduced, it was often a centre of vandalism because it was destroying jobs. Within few decades, the textile industry was employing more people than it was ever before. Replacing truckers with highly reliable and automated transport, would only increase the size of the industry and volume of goods transported would multiply . Analysing what are the exact jobs that would replace these truckers is flawed. There is so much interdependence in industries and technology is changing at so many points that you have to assume there would different kinds of work that would be created. I can guess that, with more goods transported, there would be more humans needed to transport it to their destination. Of course, there could be flaw in my argument that there is an upper limit on products we can create that need transportation but I am assuming this won't be a case for a long time.

politician 10y ago

> Driverless trucks would give rise companies selling fleet tracking software, integrated inventory management software, and automated vehicle servicing applications. Providing jobs for, literally, hundreds of people!

Pamar 10y ago

Imagine hundreds of such companies, employing engineers, sales people, marketers, customer success guys What you seem to miss is that someone who was working as a truck driver has little chances to successfully transition to being an engineer, sales people, etc. Industrialization did destroy jobs, but replaced these with jobs that did not require advanced education. So becoming an assembly line worker could be a reasonable goal for someone who had been raised as a farmer, for example (result: lots of people transitioned from farming to industry, while industry was at he same time producing better tools for farmers reducing the need for a human workers in the fields). If 2 robots can replace 10 people working at garbage collection/disposal, how many of them will become sw developers to improve/mantain the 2 robots?

dagw 10y ago

Driverless trucks would give rise companies selling... All those companies exist today and large trucking operations already use software for fleet tracking, routing, inventory management etc. So while these software companies might sell more software and might have to hire a few more people to add the features needed for handling an automated truck fleet, it's not like it's a whole new industry being created.

shubhamjain 10y ago
Do you know how people did analytics in pre-GA days? By parsing access.log files. I don't think anyone could have imagined web analytics will grow so big as it is now. Yes, fleet tracking software already exists but don't think that it can grow only till we scale it to certain level and add some extra features. There will be myriad of possibilities when this data is easy to access. Currently, it is limited to only those companies who can procure the GPS devices, and install it for their customers which translated to high barrier to entry and CAC costs.

roel_v 10y ago

"Even if driverless transport technology arrives, it would take quite sometime for it to be adopted on a massive scale." It will take as much time as factories can produce 100's of millions self-drive retro-fit kits, or alternatively, the average write-off time of a truck, say 5 years? Because 95% of companies that don't start transitioning to self-driving the day after it becomes available on the general market, will not be able to compete within the year or 2 after. "I think people are underestimating how many new jobs could be created." A company providing a fully automated solution for all of that is, what, 300-500 people? So let's say there would be 10 of those (which is too many, consolidation and all). Let's say that we round that up (double) to 10000, and then say we're off by a factor of 10. That's 100k, vs 3.5 million jobs now (counting just truckers, and just in the US, so not even counting all 'associated' jobs). This whole 'but there will be new jobs' thing doesn't stand up to even the tiniest bit of math, even with very generous assumptions. And that's not even considering the nature of those new jobs. Someone who is a truck driver now, isn't going to be a software engineer, or even a sales guy. There are going to be vast portions of the population who will not be qualified to do any of the jobs that the automated ones will generate. I don't know the solution, and I don't think UBI is it, but what I do know is that the commercial availability of self-driving cars will hit the labor market like a Mack truck (pardon the pun).

shubhamjain 10y ago
I agree that you can't replace 3.5M truckers with highly technical jobs but this is an oversimplified analysis that doesn't consider how industries will grow. When Power Loom was introduced, it was often a centre of vandalism because it was destroying jobs. Within few decades, the textile industry was employing more people than it was ever before. Replacing truckers with highly reliable and automated transport, would only increase the size of the industry and volume of goods transported would multiply . Analysing what are the exact jobs that would replace these truckers is flawed. There is so much interdependence in industries and technology is changing at so many points that you have to assume there would different kinds of work that would be created. I can guess that, with more goods transported, there would be more humans needed to transport it to their destination. Of course, there could be flaw in my argument that there is an upper limit on products we can create that need transportation but I am assuming this won't be a case for a long time.