It's incremental, but the jobs go away. Here, for your entertainment, is an automated container port in Rotterdam under construction.[1] It was finished in 2014. Here it is in full operation.[2] There are no people on those container cranes. There are a few people in a control room. The little trucks moving the containers around are self-driving. They're also battery powered, and battery swap is automated. The cranes that move containers around the container stacks are totally automated. There are no people in the cargo-handling section of the terminal.<p>This is not the future. This is last year's technology, operating right now.<p>It's quite likely that the first trucking to be automated will be to and from container ports.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLf0m3ucV3M" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLf0m3ucV3M</a>
[2] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEk2v4RyFh4" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEk2v4RyFh4</a>
I find the obsession with "jobs" to be one of the most sour elements of the corportocratic dialogue of the political and economic systems.<p>Many people, including most professional drivers, will be happy not to have to do the chore anymore. They don't want or need jobs, they want and need fulfillment of their wants and needs.<p>Stood next to the monumental task of actually automating the matter around us to please us (which, if our purpose in doing so is good, is a mitzvah), the creation of a system which fulfills these wants and needs without regard to any connection to a "job" seems straightforward and doable.
Lack of social safety nets creates unhealthy bias toward preserving jobs that could be automated completely. UBI (universal basic income) actually gives everyone motivation to further automate - the key to freedom. I expect to see more titles about automation and UBI, as I think it is highly crucial.
I think the panic over automation of cars and trucks is a little premature. At the moment you cannot buy a car or truck that will auto drive. I mean auto drive in the sense of not needing a driver at all. Until you can completely remove the driver then there is no danger to the taxi/trucking industry, it will be only a driver aid in the same way cruise control is a driver aid.<p>There is a huge gap between Google testing a driverless car, with a person in it for emergencies, and actually seeing hordes of driverless taxis of trucks on our streets.<p>I can imagine a new trend with bored teenagers. Jump in front of the driverless car or truck and watch it emergency stop. Then run away. Or wait for the news report where all the driverless cars in the city have gone to the same car park because a hacker thought it would be hilarious. Just one truck accident that wipes out a few children and the trucks will be taken off the road. After all, if one truck has the bug then they all do. When a person makes a mistake we don't stop all trucks because we blame the person, when a software version crashes then they all could crash.
A century ago there were people [1] whose job was to manually light street lamps. How did they transition into the advent of electricity?<p>There's been countless other jobs where previously-essential human participation was rendered unnecessary by technology, sometimes with entire social classes finding themselves unemployed; why should this time be any different? How can it be different?<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamplighter" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamplighter</a><p>Also interesting: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link-boy" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link-boy</a>
Otto (<a href="http://ot.to" rel="nofollow">http://ot.to</a>) provides a solution for converting existing trucks into semi-self-driving trucks. I'd be very interested to hear a truck drivers take on using a device like this. In my (not a truck driver) opinion, it seems like in the short term it'll be hugely beneficial to the drivers, since the government will still be mandating that drivers be in the vehicles, but in the long term will completely kill the job.
From a technical standpoint, this was crystal clear for years now: the first point where automation will happen is long distance trucking on highways. A human drives a truck out of town where (s)he gets out -- and perhaps into a truck just arrived -- and the robot drives it to the destination city. Many hard technical and regulatory problems in automated driving do not even appear in this scenario. There are no pedestrians to hit, traffic lights to navigate etc. Just drive. And this will be quick to be accepted, everyone knows the dangers of truck drives dozing off. The robot never dozes off. And yes, a real large amount of jobs will disappear within the next 15 years if not the next ten due to this.
Automation of human labor is the single biggest cause of prosperity. Its not a new process and robotics isn't doing anything radically different.<p>Nor will the supply of jobs dry up because of automation. There will continue to be a demand for what humans can do and a supply of humans that want to work. As long as prices are allowed to adjust so that supply and demand tend to equalize, there will be a labor market.<p>The real problem is interference in this marketplace, interference in people's ability to sell their labor.
We do not even have driverless cargo trains. The only automated trains I know of are local metro trains. I'm quite sure we will need a person sitting in a truck for a very long time. Sure, that person might not be actually driving the truck, but the job will be still there.
One thing I just wondered about: If you automate away a job, you have to pay this persons UBI, as such you need to tax more. (Lets assume 100% at the point where you automated.) Where is the profit for the company now ? It will now have to pay both the automation and the UBI. The only thing we gained (and that's a good thing) is a human with a lot of spare time. That should be enough motivation, but not for this €€€ obsessed world.
there's an ukrainian book, "Hunting wild trucks" by V.Vasiliev, about a parallel world, where human, elves and dwarves hunt and tame automated trucks moving cargo between automated factories. I for one, welcome such a future.
Let's generize and say truckers won't do difficult (thinking) work.<p>What are there alternatives for employment? (i'm NOT saying that they can't/won't work, but that their alternative jobs could be replaced in the short-term future also...).<p>There is a huge storm coming in the next 15-20 years and it's coming fast... I just hope the world is ready
Brings to mind this graphic:<p><a href="http://apps.npr.org/dailygraphics/graphics/hist-job-map-90/child.html?initialWidth=800" rel="nofollow">http://apps.npr.org/dailygraphics/graphics/hist-job-map-90/c...</a><p>Truck driver is an extremely common occupation across much of the country.
I'd love to recommend a book on this, but it never was translated to English: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8892205-menschen-wie-g-tter" rel="nofollow">http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8892205-menschen-wie-g-tt...</a><p>It was originally written to be a satire, but ended up showing a civilization way passed the everything is automated for basic needs. From there on you need to teach people to use their capabilities to create whatever they have in their mind, be that music, inventions, etc. If you take away the purpose of jobs, such as to do something with your life, you need to give alternatives, such as the option and the need for creation.
I think we are pretty close to the point where trucks no longer require a human being holding the steering wheel to move between locations. That does not automatically mean, that there are no human beings on board. There are many reasons why there should still be humans involved, like<p>- maintenance: Starting from refueling, to tyre change<p>- security: Completely unguarded trucks would make quite a theft risk<p>- any other interactions, being with the customer at the destination or anything on the road.<p>So, overall there are some aspects and consequently some jobs going away, but there might be additional responsibilities being added to the remaining job, consider the truck driving of the future rather an office job located on the truck.
People speak about surplus workers like "everybody has food and place to sleep - we're out of things to do".<p>We still have to cure cancer, AIDS, deal with malaria, Alzheimer, Zika, etc. We have to solve space exploration and colonization. We have to fix aging. We have to understand the universe.<p>There's no law that says only brightest (most socialy adaptable) 1% of human population can work on all that. It can be 50% or more if we change how we do it (and have the resources).<p>That's why I think guaranteed income is stupid idea. We should have guaranteed science/engineering jobs instead. And work on all the long-shot problems. Why not?<p>So - that's the alternative costs of guaranteed income.
If driverless trucks were to be such a transformer of economies, we'd have seen that many more trains and railroads appear, decades ago.<p>This is all just more puff about the massive campaign pushing for autonomous vehicles. Any publicity is good publicity.<p>But let's not pretend we're being given a choice about this driverless car thing.