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I'm worried about the implications on the labor market. Here are some quick numbers from the BLS about US employment: There are 3.664 million motor vehicle oper

I'm worried about the implications on the labor market. Here are some quick numbers from the BLS about US employment: There are 3.664 million motor vehicle operators with an annual mean income of $35,000. That includes 158,000 transit bus drivers, 500,000 school bus drivers, 170,000 taxi drivers and chauffeurs, 1.6 million tractor-trailer drivers, 777,000 delivery truck drivers and 400,000 driver/sales workers (restaurant take out, newspaper delivery, etc) By comparison, there are 3.7 million working in all computer and mathematical occupations. [http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#53-0000 http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#53-0000]

proexploit 12y ago
I believe that there's many many more jobs at risk but it doesn't need to be a bad thing. Once a robot can accept orders and cook a burger as well as a McDonalds employee, won't we lose them too? Many many jobs will be automated. As a society we need to find a way to handle this so that people out of work have their needs met and aren't just left to starve but I'm not sure we can expect to keep employment so high.
semiel 12y ago
This might be the single thing I find most absurd and frustrating about our current society. We've somehow arranged the incentives so that it's a very bad thing to reduce the amount of work we need to do to maintain our standard of living. As robotics and other technologies continue to improve, we're going to keep hitting this problem in a large number of fields.
AlexDanger 12y ago
What happened to all the typewriter repairmen when computers became ubiquitous? Certainly there will be upheaval in the labor market. I can certainly see unions and lobby groups pushing back against autonomous vehicles and delaying adoption. But I dont think its significantly different to other technological revolutions (the wheel, the transistor, the computer, the internet).

proexploit 12y ago

I believe that there's many many more jobs at risk but it doesn't need to be a bad thing. Once a robot can accept orders and cook a burger as well as a McDonalds employee, won't we lose them too? Many many jobs will be automated. As a society we need to find a way to handle this so that people out of work have their needs met and aren't just left to starve but I'm not sure we can expect to keep employment so high.

semiel 12y ago

This might be the single thing I find most absurd and frustrating about our current society. We've somehow arranged the incentives so that it's a very bad thing to reduce the amount of work we need to do to maintain our standard of living. As robotics and other technologies continue to improve, we're going to keep hitting this problem in a large number of fields.

AlexDanger 12y ago

What happened to all the typewriter repairmen when computers became ubiquitous? Certainly there will be upheaval in the labor market. I can certainly see unions and lobby groups pushing back against autonomous vehicles and delaying adoption. But I dont think its significantly different to other technological revolutions (the wheel, the transistor, the computer, the internet).