4 ms·

> These new trucks won’t need sleep, they won’t speed, and they won’t get road rage. They won’t ride the brakes or make unnecessary lane changes, wasting fuel.

> These new trucks won’t need sleep, they won’t speed, and they won’t get road rage. They won’t ride the brakes or make unnecessary lane changes, wasting fuel. And they won’t need to abide by the 11-hour daily driving maximum imposed on long-haul truckers for safety reasons. Exactly. Even if a robot vehicle could "just" match the performance of a human, we would still vastly prefer them because we want people to do higher complexity tasks than operate motor vehicles.

harimau777 1y ago
Even if people want to do higher complexity tasks, that doesn't mean they will have the opportunity to. Much more likely is that people just become poorer and/or switch to more demeaning jobs.
trollbridge 1y ago
There also won't be a truck driver to under pay or not pay at all to load and unload the truck nor be a sham owner-operator who is being leased the truck by the trucking company and can barely eke out a living. Same challenge Uber at al face with autonomous vehicles - when you can underpay a driver 50 cents a mile to drive their own car, it doesn't make much sense to have an autonomous vehicle that costs you closer to 70 cents a mile to operate.
_heimdall 1y ago
> we want people to do higher complexity tasks than operate motor vehicles. Why? And who is the "we" here? I really could care less what kind of job someone else enjoys doing. They don't owe me anything and I don't want to tell them what kind of job to have any more than I want someone telling me what job to have.
- infecto 1y ago
  Ehh, the point is not to tell others what to do but to not stop innovation by government regulation pandering to trade or labor groups. Look at the latest dock workers agreement that includes language to prevent automation. Dockwork is one of the best examples of something that can be automated quite well.
  - soco 1y ago
    And my point is, I don't want to make people lose their living. Period.
    - infecto 1y ago
      If it’s going to happen anyway why pander to that group? It’s like how politicians in the US keep promising coal is coming back. No it’s not. I don’t want to actively “make” people lose jobs but I also don’t want to limit innovation. The relatively free movement of labor is a benefit for all including workers. I guess if someone really wants that Amazon warehouse picker job great but I am not sure that’s true.
    - fragmede 1y ago
      You don't? By paying your taxes, some of which goes to the police, you're forcing criminals, with their ill gotten gains into jail. An absurd thing to point out, other than that fact that there are some people who you do want to lose their living. Because those jobs harm you or society. Then we're just left to debate what harms society and what lets everyone in a society thrive.
  - SonOfKyuss 1y ago
    I mostly disagree with regulations that specifically limit progress, but I can also see the benefit of phasing changes in at a regulated pace in order to give the real humans who depend on those jobs with very little social safety net time to adjust
    - intrasight 1y ago
      A simple regulatory solution is to require every truck to be licensed by a human "driver". That human gets income as the owner of that license. Every truck must have one human license owner and every human can only own one license.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
- djoldman 1y ago
  If you will permit me to be more careful: Instead of "we want people to do higher complexity tasks than operate motor vehicles," I would say: Moving humans from lower to higher complexity tasks generally correlates to increased productivity, higher efficiency, or "getting more with less." Generally, this leads to a wealthier society and other positive things. The above is not true about everything but holds up in general.
  - bluefirebrand 1y ago
    I do not understand what "higher complexity tasks" you think a bunch of unemployed truckers are going to do It is likely that part of the reason they are truckers is because they aren't really suited for higher complexity tasks I'm not trying to be an asshole. I respect the hard work and long hours that truckers do. I don't think they are stupid, and I greatly value the service they provide to society But the reality is trucking is still a relatively low skill job, mostly filled by people who are not really equipped for high skill jobs At some point if we automate all of the low skill jobs, we're going to have to deal with the fact that a ton of people who aren't cut out for complex work are now unemployed (and probably poor, and pissed off)
    - djoldman 1y ago
      I'm not trying to be an asshole either when I ask: what we do with all the former farmers made redundant by modern farming technology or furniture makers made redundant by the increased productivity of manufacturing processes? I think the answer is and has always been education and retraining for different occupations.
      - i80and 1y ago
        People have been talking about "education and retraining" to make up for jobs lost to technology since I was young. It's a nice idea, but I'm curious if that actually happens at scale rather than in isolated pockets. Retraining is hard, expensive, and risky. My general experience is that people tend to fall backwards into either lower-quality work or permanent semi-unemployment, but I could be mistaken about that.
1over137 1y ago
I’ve got news for you: not all humans want, or even can, do high complexity tasks.
- trollbridge 1y ago
  Yep. And there's human dignity in doing work that involves low complexity tasks.
- cr125rider 1y ago
  I knew a guy many years ago, super nice guy, who was an over the road trucker. I don’t think he had it in him to do more complex tasks. Hard worker, nice, just the way God made him. I think the task complexity stopped at driving.
close04 1y ago
> we want people to do higher complexity tasks than operate motor vehicles Does it look like the market is sitting today on a pool of hundreds of thousands of higher complexity jobs that just go unfilled because people choose to "just" operate motor vehicles? Do those jobs look like a realistic fit for today's truck drivers? There are 3 million truck drivers in the US today. Do "we" understand what's the impact of "our" preference towards what other people should do? Or is what "we" want coming from a place of "I'm safe from all of this so I can afford to have lofty ideals for others"?
- djoldman 1y ago
  Well there are 7.2 million job openings: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.nr0.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.nr0.htm I'm not sure how many of them are more complex than truck driving but it's safe to say that there are plenty of employers looking for workers.
  - close04 1y ago
    > I'm not sure You started with a number you don't understand as the answer to a question I certainly did understand when asking. You went from "increased skills jobs are so much better for people" to "maybe they'll find some job, I'm not sure". But the average trucker won't find good job in finance, IT, or health. The jobs either aren't better (better work, better pay), or they're not realistically reachable by a normal trucker (easy enough to upskill to make it likely). Employers aren't usually looking to hire old and inexperienced former truckers when the competition is either people with experience on that job or youngsters willing to take lower pay because they don't have a family to support.
noworld 1y ago
Can they not ride next to each other on two lane roads? That would be great.
Molitor5901 1y ago
And diminishing cost of returns. If it just gets 60% of human performance the industry will use them, and push to advance the technology to the point of no human interaction.
bell-cot 1y ago
> Even if a robot vehicle could "just" match the performance of a human, we would still vastly prefer them because we want people to do higher complexity tasks than operate motor vehicles. Sadly, this sounds like an anodyne ideal, tuned to rationalize "don't worry, feel happy" indifference in well-to-do people - who are conveniently far away from the affected workers, and the grim realities of how the change will actually play out in their lives and communities.

harimau777 1y ago

Even if people want to do higher complexity tasks, that doesn't mean they will have the opportunity to. Much more likely is that people just become poorer and/or switch to more demeaning jobs.

trollbridge 1y ago

There also won't be a truck driver to under pay or not pay at all to load and unload the truck nor be a sham owner-operator who is being leased the truck by the trucking company and can barely eke out a living. Same challenge Uber at al face with autonomous vehicles - when you can underpay a driver 50 cents a mile to drive their own car, it doesn't make much sense to have an autonomous vehicle that costs you closer to 70 cents a mile to operate.

_heimdall 1y ago

> we want people to do higher complexity tasks than operate motor vehicles. Why? And who is the "we" here? I really could care less what kind of job someone else enjoys doing. They don't owe me anything and I don't want to tell them what kind of job to have any more than I want someone telling me what job to have.

infecto 1y ago
Ehh, the point is not to tell others what to do but to not stop innovation by government regulation pandering to trade or labor groups. Look at the latest dock workers agreement that includes language to prevent automation. Dockwork is one of the best examples of something that can be automated quite well.
- soco 1y ago
  And my point is, I don't want to make people lose their living. Period.
  - infecto 1y ago
    If it’s going to happen anyway why pander to that group? It’s like how politicians in the US keep promising coal is coming back. No it’s not. I don’t want to actively “make” people lose jobs but I also don’t want to limit innovation. The relatively free movement of labor is a benefit for all including workers. I guess if someone really wants that Amazon warehouse picker job great but I am not sure that’s true.
  - fragmede 1y ago
    You don't? By paying your taxes, some of which goes to the police, you're forcing criminals, with their ill gotten gains into jail. An absurd thing to point out, other than that fact that there are some people who you do want to lose their living. Because those jobs harm you or society. Then we're just left to debate what harms society and what lets everyone in a society thrive.
- SonOfKyuss 1y ago
  I mostly disagree with regulations that specifically limit progress, but I can also see the benefit of phasing changes in at a regulated pace in order to give the real humans who depend on those jobs with very little social safety net time to adjust
  - intrasight 1y ago
    A simple regulatory solution is to require every truck to be licensed by a human "driver". That human gets income as the owner of that license. Every truck must have one human license owner and every human can only own one license.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
djoldman 1y ago
If you will permit me to be more careful: Instead of "we want people to do higher complexity tasks than operate motor vehicles," I would say: Moving humans from lower to higher complexity tasks generally correlates to increased productivity, higher efficiency, or "getting more with less." Generally, this leads to a wealthier society and other positive things. The above is not true about everything but holds up in general.
- bluefirebrand 1y ago
  I do not understand what "higher complexity tasks" you think a bunch of unemployed truckers are going to do It is likely that part of the reason they are truckers is because they aren't really suited for higher complexity tasks I'm not trying to be an asshole. I respect the hard work and long hours that truckers do. I don't think they are stupid, and I greatly value the service they provide to society But the reality is trucking is still a relatively low skill job, mostly filled by people who are not really equipped for high skill jobs At some point if we automate all of the low skill jobs, we're going to have to deal with the fact that a ton of people who aren't cut out for complex work are now unemployed (and probably poor, and pissed off)
  - djoldman 1y ago
    I'm not trying to be an asshole either when I ask: what we do with all the former farmers made redundant by modern farming technology or furniture makers made redundant by the increased productivity of manufacturing processes? I think the answer is and has always been education and retraining for different occupations.
    - i80and 1y ago
      People have been talking about "education and retraining" to make up for jobs lost to technology since I was young. It's a nice idea, but I'm curious if that actually happens at scale rather than in isolated pockets. Retraining is hard, expensive, and risky. My general experience is that people tend to fall backwards into either lower-quality work or permanent semi-unemployment, but I could be mistaken about that.

1over137 1y ago

I’ve got news for you: not all humans want, or even can, do high complexity tasks.

trollbridge 1y ago
Yep. And there's human dignity in doing work that involves low complexity tasks.
cr125rider 1y ago
I knew a guy many years ago, super nice guy, who was an over the road trucker. I don’t think he had it in him to do more complex tasks. Hard worker, nice, just the way God made him. I think the task complexity stopped at driving.

close04 1y ago

> we want people to do higher complexity tasks than operate motor vehicles Does it look like the market is sitting today on a pool of hundreds of thousands of higher complexity jobs that just go unfilled because people choose to "just" operate motor vehicles? Do those jobs look like a realistic fit for today's truck drivers? There are 3 million truck drivers in the US today. Do "we" understand what's the impact of "our" preference towards what other people should do? Or is what "we" want coming from a place of "I'm safe from all of this so I can afford to have lofty ideals for others"?

djoldman 1y ago
Well there are 7.2 million job openings: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.nr0.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.nr0.htm I'm not sure how many of them are more complex than truck driving but it's safe to say that there are plenty of employers looking for workers.
- close04 1y ago
  > I'm not sure You started with a number you don't understand as the answer to a question I certainly did understand when asking. You went from "increased skills jobs are so much better for people" to "maybe they'll find some job, I'm not sure". But the average trucker won't find good job in finance, IT, or health. The jobs either aren't better (better work, better pay), or they're not realistically reachable by a normal trucker (easy enough to upskill to make it likely). Employers aren't usually looking to hire old and inexperienced former truckers when the competition is either people with experience on that job or youngsters willing to take lower pay because they don't have a family to support.

noworld 1y ago

Can they not ride next to each other on two lane roads? That would be great.

Molitor5901 1y ago

And diminishing cost of returns. If it just gets 60% of human performance the industry will use them, and push to advance the technology to the point of no human interaction.

bell-cot 1y ago

> Even if a robot vehicle could "just" match the performance of a human, we would still vastly prefer them because we want people to do higher complexity tasks than operate motor vehicles. Sadly, this sounds like an anodyne ideal, tuned to rationalize "don't worry, feel happy" indifference in well-to-do people - who are conveniently far away from the affected workers, and the grim realities of how the change will actually play out in their lives and communities.