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This is a tech-ignorant political blogger with a serious case of AI weenie-ism.

fisherjeff 9y ago
As a frequent reader of Kevin’s, I can say that he’s certainly not tech-ignorant. In fact, the article itself suggests a pretty decent grasp on the issues. Regarding weenie-ism, he predicts driverless trucks in 2027, which seems perfectly reasonable to me. Now have a look at this article: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-the-most-common-job-in-every-state http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-t... So if only that one prediction is accurate, the most common job in 30 US states will be disappearing in 10 years. How is that not worth addressing?
- adventured 9y ago
  There's nothing to deeply worry about for several reasons. As truckers retire as the automation age sets in, you stop creating new ones at the same rate (specifically you vastly reduce your rate of creation). Most likely we end up with a human driver shortage 30 years out due to that alone. Did you notice we don't have a vast inventory of unemployed radio DJ's spilling out of universities every year? They've nearly stopped making them; adaptation has happened. That's not to compare the scales, it's a principle in action that will apply exactly the same to trucking. It'll take at least 25-30 years to remove just half of all truck driving jobs, assuming that market does get heavily automated. Dramatically over-estimating change in the short-term is by far the single most frequently repeated error in tech journalism and tech prognostication if you look at the post WW2 era. Very high sunk costs in the trucking industry guarantee heavily restrained self-driving progress in the early adoption years. Safe, highly tested, approved commercial solutions won't be ready for a decade. From there staple another decade of sunk cost time onto the equation. In that 20-30 year span when truckers are supposed to be getting fired by the hundreds of thousands, we have a big labor shortage problem that makes one to two million truck driving job losses look like a trivial issue by comparison (while simultaneously the trucking industry stops producing replacement numbers). To say nothing of the fact that that industry employs 8-10 million people. With very modest economic growth over 20-30 years, you absorb a million trucker jobs within that industry alone. If we cycle 100,000 automated-away truck driving jobs out of the economy per year on average for 20 years (assume a spike potential of 50-100k above that), it's meaningless. Half of those truckers will retire before they get fired. We need millions of workers that we are not going to have in the next few decades, as we're facing population contraction most likely.

As a frequent reader of Kevin’s, I can say that he’s certainly not tech-ignorant. In fact, the article itself suggests a pretty decent grasp on the issues. Regarding weenie-ism, he predicts driverless trucks in 2027, which seems perfectly reasonable to me. Now have a look at this article: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-the-most-common-job-in-every-state http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-t... So if only that one prediction is accurate, the most common job in 30 US states will be disappearing in 10 years. How is that not worth addressing?

adventured 9y ago
There's nothing to deeply worry about for several reasons. As truckers retire as the automation age sets in, you stop creating new ones at the same rate (specifically you vastly reduce your rate of creation). Most likely we end up with a human driver shortage 30 years out due to that alone. Did you notice we don't have a vast inventory of unemployed radio DJ's spilling out of universities every year? They've nearly stopped making them; adaptation has happened. That's not to compare the scales, it's a principle in action that will apply exactly the same to trucking. It'll take at least 25-30 years to remove just half of all truck driving jobs, assuming that market does get heavily automated. Dramatically over-estimating change in the short-term is by far the single most frequently repeated error in tech journalism and tech prognostication if you look at the post WW2 era. Very high sunk costs in the trucking industry guarantee heavily restrained self-driving progress in the early adoption years. Safe, highly tested, approved commercial solutions won't be ready for a decade. From there staple another decade of sunk cost time onto the equation. In that 20-30 year span when truckers are supposed to be getting fired by the hundreds of thousands, we have a big labor shortage problem that makes one to two million truck driving job losses look like a trivial issue by comparison (while simultaneously the trucking industry stops producing replacement numbers). To say nothing of the fact that that industry employs 8-10 million people. With very modest economic growth over 20-30 years, you absorb a million trucker jobs within that industry alone. If we cycle 100,000 automated-away truck driving jobs out of the economy per year on average for 20 years (assume a spike potential of 50-100k above that), it's meaningless. Half of those truckers will retire before they get fired. We need millions of workers that we are not going to have in the next few decades, as we're facing population contraction most likely.