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What I haven't seen is any mention of what happens to all the pilots out there. Between COVID and now this, it seems like the path of a great middle/upper middl

What I haven't seen is any mention of what happens to all the pilots out there. Between COVID and now this, it seems like the path of a great middle/upper middle class job that's lasted for decades is doomed. For UPS/Fedex, I would also guess that the salary of the pilot is effectively a rounding error on all of the total costs of transporting objects around the world. What are your thoughts on this?

scoopertrooper 6y ago
I think it's unfair to ask a technology startup to answer a public policy question. Economic forces will drive automation of these sorts of tasks one way or another, which will shift income away from labour and towards capital. It's up to governments to ensure the winners compensate the losers. In the long term, this may be an UBI, but for now it should take the form of retraining and economic adjustment packages (similar to what might occur when tariffs are repealed). This should be funded by a super-profits tax on heavily automated industries.
- azinman2 6y ago
  We all are responsible for our actions on the world. The government doesn’t set policy that says pilots should be automated, and I wouldn’t necessarily assume this is inevitable at all. Government can only be reactionary, and these things are happening without a larger societal conversation that says yes we want this. So I do believe this is a fair question to ask. It would be unethical to not consider ones actions.
  - zamadatix 6y ago
    One must also consider the ethics of wasting human life and skill on something that can be efficiently automated while other tasks lie undone. Either way I agree with the parent comment, this is a public policy question about how to make sure people are able to maintain lucrative lives (education policy, monetary policy, social policy) not a question for the business making an existing task more efficient and expecting them to answer what society wants to do with the freed time.
MattGaiser 6y ago
The plane still has a human overseer if I understand correctly. It seems that the pilot just gets to work from home like the rest of is.
- azinman2 6y ago
  Then what’s the advantage? I’m assuming said person isn’t 1:1 the whole time, but scaled to a number of concurrent planes, no?
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    Greater scheduling efficiency and cost control. You don’t need to deal with making sure pilots are all at the right airports. You don’t need to provide them lunch. You don’t need a bunk for them. Pilots are limited in hours of piloting time and sleep requirements, but they can be instantly transferred between planes instead of walking.
ChicagoBoy11 6y ago
I can't speak for them, but as a private pilot who has become friends with lots of folks who are not career airline pilots, I can tell you that the delusion among that group of folks is quite high that things like this aren't coming for their jobs -- and fast. The self-flying use case is, at least from a technical standpoint, far more straightforward than self driving, and the cost incentives are pretty huge. Not to mention the fact that some of this tech has already made its way into private aircraft, with Garmin already having a production system in place where non-pilot passengers can simply push a button on an aircraft and it will completely autonomously find a suitable airport to divert to, communicate with ATC, and land -- even taking adverse weather into account. There is also a lot of regulatory and tech work at the FAA to also try to ulitize drone-like systems to help operate aircraft. The reality is that the vast majority of time that a pilot is in a flight it is quite low-intensity work (if there is any work to do at all). The thought here is that remote pilots could control the machine (or assist a single pilot in the cockpit) during critical phases of flight. The advatange here, of course, is that a remote pilot could do many such flights over a short period of time, whereas the one on board is stuck to the one flight even in moments where he/she has absolutely nothing to do. Whichever way you slice it, if you think there is some argument for fully or partially autonomous driving, all of those arguments are orders of magnitude more compelling in flying. Timing, of course, is the real question mark.

scoopertrooper 6y ago

I think it's unfair to ask a technology startup to answer a public policy question. Economic forces will drive automation of these sorts of tasks one way or another, which will shift income away from labour and towards capital. It's up to governments to ensure the winners compensate the losers. In the long term, this may be an UBI, but for now it should take the form of retraining and economic adjustment packages (similar to what might occur when tariffs are repealed). This should be funded by a super-profits tax on heavily automated industries.

azinman2 6y ago
We all are responsible for our actions on the world. The government doesn’t set policy that says pilots should be automated, and I wouldn’t necessarily assume this is inevitable at all. Government can only be reactionary, and these things are happening without a larger societal conversation that says yes we want this. So I do believe this is a fair question to ask. It would be unethical to not consider ones actions.
- zamadatix 6y ago
  One must also consider the ethics of wasting human life and skill on something that can be efficiently automated while other tasks lie undone. Either way I agree with the parent comment, this is a public policy question about how to make sure people are able to maintain lucrative lives (education policy, monetary policy, social policy) not a question for the business making an existing task more efficient and expecting them to answer what society wants to do with the freed time.

MattGaiser 6y ago

The plane still has a human overseer if I understand correctly. It seems that the pilot just gets to work from home like the rest of is.

azinman2 6y ago
Then what’s the advantage? I’m assuming said person isn’t 1:1 the whole time, but scaled to a number of concurrent planes, no?
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  Greater scheduling efficiency and cost control. You don’t need to deal with making sure pilots are all at the right airports. You don’t need to provide them lunch. You don’t need a bunk for them. Pilots are limited in hours of piloting time and sleep requirements, but they can be instantly transferred between planes instead of walking.

ChicagoBoy11 6y ago

I can't speak for them, but as a private pilot who has become friends with lots of folks who are not career airline pilots, I can tell you that the delusion among that group of folks is quite high that things like this aren't coming for their jobs -- and fast. The self-flying use case is, at least from a technical standpoint, far more straightforward than self driving, and the cost incentives are pretty huge. Not to mention the fact that some of this tech has already made its way into private aircraft, with Garmin already having a production system in place where non-pilot passengers can simply push a button on an aircraft and it will completely autonomously find a suitable airport to divert to, communicate with ATC, and land -- even taking adverse weather into account. There is also a lot of regulatory and tech work at the FAA to also try to ulitize drone-like systems to help operate aircraft. The reality is that the vast majority of time that a pilot is in a flight it is quite low-intensity work (if there is any work to do at all). The thought here is that remote pilots could control the machine (or assist a single pilot in the cockpit) during critical phases of flight. The advatange here, of course, is that a remote pilot could do many such flights over a short period of time, whereas the one on board is stuck to the one flight even in moments where he/she has absolutely nothing to do. Whichever way you slice it, if you think there is some argument for fully or partially autonomous driving, all of those arguments are orders of magnitude more compelling in flying. Timing, of course, is the real question mark.