'We're Just Rentals': Uber Drivers Ask Where They Fit In a Self-Driving Future (theguardian.com) 367
Bloomberg reported on Thursday about Uber's plan to bring its first fleet of self-driving cars to Pittsburgh as soon as this month, a move that has since been confirmed by the cab-hailing company. Amid the announcement, Uber drivers are disappointed at Uber, wondering what the future of the company lies for them. The Guardian reports:"Wo-o-o-o-w," 60-year old Uber driver Cynthia Ingram said. "We all knew it was coming. I just didn't expect it this soon." For Ingram, autonomous Ubers are an unwelcome threat to her livelihood. "I kind of figured it would be a couple more years down the line before it was really implemented and I'll be retired by then," she said. A paralegal with 30 years experience, Ingram began driving for Uber and Lyft in June 2015 when she lost her job. She said that she loves driving for Uber, though she has struggled to make ends meet. Rob Judge, 41, was also concerned with the announcement. "It feels like we're just rentals. We're kind of like placeholders until the technology comes out." A longtime customer service representative, Judge began driving for Uber three months ago to make money while he looks for other work. "For me personally, this isn't a long term stop," he added. "But for a lot of other people that I've connected with, this is their only means."
If You're not rich (Score:3, Interesting)
Hurry up and die.
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Maybe, maybe not.
Depends on the costs... it these self-driving cars get in enough wrecks, the lawsuits may make it too pricey to continue. If the cars constantly get vandalized, hacked, stolen, whatever, it may end up costing too much to continue.
As someone who automates processes and gets paid well for it, I can say right now that some things do not lend themselves to automation at all, and maybe should wait until there is a more cost-effective and/or reliable means to do it.
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You saw how well that worked out for the Luddites.
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Unfortunately there's a difference coming this time around. There aren't going to be replacement jobs to take the displaced. Self driving cars are just the tip of the machine thinking revolution and many future "jobs" will just be filled with other general purpose thinking machines. There are going to be a LOT of unemployed people in the next 30 years.
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Re:If You're not rich, have a bright future! (Score:4, Interesting)
The other 997 people do something else entirely, or work at some new company at some *new* site as their operators/techs/engineers. That's just "economic growth".
But the new site will just hire 3 and have a bunch of robots instead. And 994 still need to eat. This is the problem a lot of people seem to have trouble grasping. In 20/30 years we're not going to have specialized robots that weld a steel car frame and every time you want to change what it welds you need to pay a CAD engineer and automation tech for a couple of days of work for the new car frame layout. Instead there are going to be general purpose AIs and robots that will be able to adapt to a number of tasks with minimal reprogramming. Companies won't be hiring new workers, they'll be buying new machines, paying to have them set up once and then that's it. Low skill jobs the world over are particularly vulnerable this time around. There are legions of people working nonstop to automate every aspect of the working world and things like a burger joint are the perfect starting point because there will be so many buyers for that equipment once it works sufficiently well.
Re:If You're not rich, have a bright future! (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem isn't that there will be no jobs, we're obviously no where near that point. The problem is that there probably won't be enough jobs to employee all the people being displaced.
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I wonder... (Score:2)
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I don't understand that lawsuit.
The drivers signed on as independent contractors, then complained because they were paid as independent contractors.
And they complain because the tip is built into the fare, but they don't get a tip.
Now they'll complain because they're being replaced
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They want things to be fair. Things are currently not in their favor. I refer you to census.gov American Community Survey. Take a look at the data before you speak, please.
They want things to be fair, and in their favor ??
Yeah that about sums up Millennials
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Your intention is quite clear, It's unfair to millennials that things are not in their favor.
Your arrogance is also quite clear, "Anyone who disagrees with you hasn't seen the data"
Fairness... (Score:3)
The problem is that "fair" is a really, really bad word for making policy decisions at almost any level. It is far too nebulous and almost always results in comparing apples to oranges.
Is it fair to have the same standards for getting into college, or should you get a handicap for the "unfair" advantages of your parents' educational level, your family's income, your identification with a dominant religion or race, etc...?
It is fair to spend a hundred thousand dollars less on public medical staff serving cri
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They want things to be fair.
No. There is nothing fair in knowingly taking money with a promise to pay it back and then deciding that it isn't important to actually pay it back. That many people in a recent generation are doing the same thing doesn't make it fair or right.
Things are currently not in their favor.
Yes, things are very much in their favor, with all the people who are talking about amnesty for those loans.
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What if say, you could get an hourly rental car like a ZipCar to come pick you up? It hobbles along the road, and a low speed independently. You get in, drive where you need to go, get out, and it hobbles along until it finds another passenger or parking space. Would still be much cheaper than the average taxi service, and not require you to have to walk a vast distance to the nearest parking spot.
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".... but a human will be handling edge cases much better for a long time..."
Assuming, of course, that they're actually paying attention and not talking on the phone, texting, playing Pokemon, fiddling with the radio/cd/mp3 player, trying to each breakfast/lunch, not putting on makeup/clothes/shoes, smoking, dealing with the baby or kids in the backseat, daydreaming, or otherwise disengaged.
Five million accidents, 2.5 million injuries, and 300,000 deaths a year in the US alone pretty much put the lie to "mu
Wake up a smell the coffee (Score:2)
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Well, not really...
The typical urban hipster will certainly see and enjoy the benefits of renting/leasing rides full-time (here in Portland, that's where Zipcar and Car2Go come in, and a huge number of folks downtown don't even bother with owning or even leasing a car, what with parking the thing being hella expensive).
The typical suburbanite *might* see use cases (commuting) where such a thing comes in real handy, but others (hauling kids/crap/groceries, dragging the boat or RV trailer out on vacation, etc
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The typical ruralite will just laugh at the idea
Which is precisely why I made the distinction about large urban centers in my O.P.
Failed model (Score:2)
I dont think this car economy model constructors are aiming for will ever work.
They want to help you subsidize your own car payments by allowing you to "rent" your car through auto-driving capabilities.
But looking at how people disrespect other people propriety, there's no way in hell any sane person would allow total strangers to use their cars, unsupervised.
You'' go back to your car with mud on the seats, semen on the carpet, trash and dead hookers in the trunk.
My car is not your public transport. Dont tr
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Look man, what I do with my car is none of your business.
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That's not how it will work, most of the cars will be centrally owned as a fleet, not by individuals. The better the service get, the less sense it makes for individuals to own cars in the first place.
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...and they'll still get vandalized, hacked, beaten-up and parts of it stolen (e.g. a meth-head swiping the hood for scrap metal, etc).
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Sure if your childless and live in a city.
Out here in the burbs you think uber going to want to do a dump run? Uber would costs me far more than my car just replacing the 2 or 3 trips a day I make.
Uber and automated cars are great now get to the right lane and let me pass in a v8.
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I'd wager that once Uber goes this route it won't be doing it with individuals providing their own car. It'll be a big fleet of cars owned by Uber that they rent out. That eliminates the need to share revenue with anyone else, and over the long haul the price of the car to them won't really be that big of a deal.
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Please stand by as our social re-education bot arrives at your location for "renewal".
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... If you don't embrace this you must be some kind of antisocial who probably should be on a Terror Watchlist.
More accurate. Law enforcement has for years looked on anyone who values their privacy or "keeps to themselves" as someone potentially dangerous. In a few decades maybe they will find a way to make introversion a criminal offense.
Don't you realize (Score:2)
Humans Need Not Apply (Score:3, Insightful)
https://youtu.be/7Pq-S557XQU [youtu.be]
The idea that technology will find new things for everyone to do is insane...
We will need a new economic model...
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https://youtu.be/7Pq-S557XQU [youtu.be]
The idea that technology will find new things for everyone to do is insane...
We will need a new economic model...
Right, whereby humanity can evolve and share in the bounty of automation and robotics, so that people can live healthy and fulfilling lives free of the drudgery of "work".
Good luck with that...
mandatory 50% automation tax coming (Score:2)
That's me being an optimist and viewing the majority of mankind as being generally good most of the time.
Do we really want a whole world that looks like Brazil, but 50x worse?
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https://youtu.be/7Pq-S557XQU [youtu.be]
The idea that technology will find new things for everyone to do is insane...
We will need a new economic model...
Didn't we already have this argument in the 18th century?
I'm working on projects that involve heavy automation. Leading edge Devops type stuff that 10 years ago required a whole department of Ops engineers to execute, now being made completely redundant. The number of employed people hasn't changed though. We are now heavily developer focused with teams of PMs, BAs, Architects, co-ordinators and support roles instead of engineers.
Based on what I see first hand, automation will kill a lot of jobs, but it
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Didn't we already have this argument in the 18th century?
Yes, but if you watch the video, you'll note that he addresses that point...
You think we've been here before, but we haven't, this time is different...
This isn't replacing some manual labor with mechanical labor, this is replacing our brains... There isn't anything to move to...
Humans moved from mechanical tasks to mental tasks... When the mental tasks get replaced by computers, there isn't anything for humans to do...
Re:Humans Need Not Apply (Score:4, Funny)
People will still need blowjobs and other orifices to fill. Even though sexbots and AI will severely cut into it, there's still plenty of rich folks who'd love a live human to treat like garbage. Pucker up, fuckers.
Ignoring the whole Uber/Lyft Advantage (Score:3)
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the whole point of Uber and Lyft?
Nope.
That being crowdsourcing ride sharing
Was the fastest and cheapest way they could figure out how to collect all the data they needed. Uber now has hundreds of thousands of rides, routes, etc They know where to install charging stations. They know how a stadium empties after a professional sports event.
They just needed data to feed their algorithms so when they did make the jump to autonomy they weren't doing it then.
An alternative gig (Score:2)
You could always do food delivery. I was out of work for a while and my car is too old and has too few doors to work for Uber. However I signed up with Order Ahead (a competitor of Doordash) and did food delivery. It was enough to pay the bills and quite enjoyable. I brought my laptop with me and did some online courses during downtime, which I still got paid for since they pay an hourly rate plus per-mile delivery fees and tips.
I'd say it'll be a while before food delivery gets completely automated. Some s
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Some sort of autonomous Segway device or drone might come to the restaurant to pick up the food? It's a longer way off than driverless taxis.
Why would you think that? The "self driving" bit is the hard part. Once that's good to go adding in an electric box that opens and closes when provided a code (one for the restaurant to open with, one for a person to open to retrieve food) would be absolutely trivial.
We're ALL just placeholders (Score:2)
I don't think people get it. We are ALL just placeholders until the technology is ready. Anyone been to a McDonald's or Wendy's lately where the cashiers are just touch screens? Yes. A computer will be able to do YOUR job some day too.
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A computer will be able to do YOUR job some day too.
Computers are going to write their own code?
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If a robot show up that can climb a 1500 ft. tower and install a microwave dish, I'll be happy to let it do it. But somehow I kinda doubt it...
We won't need that obsolete technology in the future. Mesh networks of IoT electrical outlets will replace it. 1500' towers will just be obstacles to drone delivery vehicles, so they'll all be taken down.
UBI (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:UBI (Score:4, Interesting)
Reminds of the debates over the "Star Trek" replicator economy. Problem is, "who owns the replicator'. If it's you, you're good to go. If, however, someone else controls it and what it produces and wants you to pay for the results... then you're screwed.
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Unless the replicator is protected under the DMCA, and replicating a replicator comes with the very real punishment of death.
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Automating every last job is the correct path to a future where nobody has to work and we can just exist as humans, bettering ourselves.
Ideal society if you ask me. Working for masters is overrated.
I think we can look to children of the rich (and how they busy themselves when they don't have to look after their needs) to figure out where this road goes.
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What will be Uber's unique angle? (Score:2)
Doesn't this lower the barrier of entry for any competitor, even small local taxi services dispatching self-driving cars?
Recursive (Score:2)
So if I understand the story correctly, Uber drivers are like Uber for workers.
We are all Uber now. The gig economy will set us all free from the horrors of prosperity.
You don't fit, support basic income legislature (Score:3)
Where do you fit in a self-driving future?
You don't fit, anywhere in the puzzle. I suggest you support legislature in support of a basic income, because in the future probably 75% of the workforce will be automated out of a job.
Security (Score:3)
Elephant in the room that the advocates of self-driving cars don't want to discuss, and won't admit is a serious risk: security. Sure, you can claim all day long that these self-driving cars and their control systems will be "uber secure". But hey, in other recent news some folks are selling software they exfiltrated from the NSA. So I'm pretty sure if someone can crack them, then someone can crack Uber.
Thing is, all it takes is one compromise to wreak carnage on an absolutely catastrophic scale.
Imagine a near future with a few million autonomous Uber vehicles deployed and active. One malicious hacker cracks into the system. His motivations don't matter. Hacker sez to the cars: "Attention all self-driving Ubers! Turn hard left now and accelerate to maximum speed." That's all it takes, man, all it takes. I hope that doesn't happen, but I fear it will. Maybe then people will understand the risks they're playing with.
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Uber drivers had their brief period of glory, having done heavy damage to the taxi cab industry. Now they'll suffer the same fate.
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Re:The Expendables (Score:5, Insightful)
I didn't exactly hear a lot of tears being shed by Uber drivers over the cab drivers being put out of work.
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It's a very effective strategy that has been used for centuries.
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I didn't exactly hear a lot of tears being shed by Uber drivers over the cab drivers being put out of work.
This.
They supported a scummy company who didn't care about who they stepped on... now are surprised that they're being stepped on next and expect others to fee sympathy for them.
Nope, Uber drivers I'm fresh out of fucks to give. You made this bed, now you lie in it.
I remember reading about how Uber Fanboys would claim that Uber looked out for its drivers, paid fines for them, managed insurance, so on and so forth. This has all turned out to be complete bollocks. Uber capitalised on an irrational hate of a w
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I thought "The Expendables" was a pair of bad hero comedies
Pair? You might want to sit down.
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now
No. You always have been. Just because people had respect for you in the past doesn't mean that you weren't ultimately a business decision. If it was more expensive to keep you on then to get rid of you then you had no chance, not in a capitalist world.
The ultimate goal of every job that people have always done is to automate it away. The timeline changed nothing. Even where a human touch is desirable we attempt to automate it away (see sex bots).
Aren't we all rentals... like taxi cabs? (Score:5, Interesting)
Isn't "rental" literally what they are? I mean, with a service, but still... a short-term on-demand paid-for one. i.e. "rental".
And anyway, I'm not going to feel bad for technology replacing Uber drivers when Uber itself was a "disruptive" technology to replace taxi cabs. I'm glad for innovation that creates real improvements, and I empathize with people who may lose jobs over it... but this seems a bit of a hypocritical sort of wine from a "high-tech" business model which _very recently_ did exactly the same displacement of an older less-techy business model.
Re: Some of us... (Score:3)
Well let's see: Perhaps the biggest complaint about Uber drivers is the fact that they don't have proper insurance. That, and human drivers are inherently unsafe compared to what automated drivers are likely to be. This only stands to reason that there's less potential liability for the general public.
Why is this a bad thing? Believe it or not, there's plenty of other work out there. Uber was just the natural choice of many who already had a car and knew how to drive, but as one of people from TFA noted, it
Re: Some of us... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is this a bad thing? Believe it or not, there's plenty of other work out there. Uber was just the natural choice of many who already had a car and knew how to drive, but as one of people from TFA noted, it's not a good way to make a living.
So what exactly IS a good way to make a living if you're a 60+ paralegal who lost her job just before retirement? You're too old to get hired someplace new most likely, and you're too young to start drawing on Social Security. So tell me, what is your advice for someone like that? Go back to school? Get a job as a greeter at Walmart?
The obvious answer to all of this is that we need a Universal Basic Income.
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Your solution is to tell that older paralegal that they truly are worthless and should settle for UBI instead? I don't think we improve our society by intentionally disenfranchising people.
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If there is UBI for them then they are not totally worthless.
Giving people free money doesn't give them worth. It gives them money.
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And that money can cover expenses so they can pursue things that actually make their lives worthwhile.
1. The person I replied to said nothing about them doing anything except getting UBI. Handing someone free money in the form of a UBI doesn't give them worth, it gives them money. It is what they do with their lives outside of taking free money that determines their worth.
2. "Make their lives worthwhile" is not the same as "not worthless". The former is an internal feeling; the latter is an external value judgement. Yes, it is now common to equate the two so that self esteems are not damaged, but that does
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So what exactly IS a good way to make a living if you're a 60+ paralegal who lost her job just before retirement?
You are falling for the Broken Window Fallacy [wikipedia.org]: If the police stop vandals from breaking windows, they are "destroying jobs" for the glaziers that would make the replacement windows. Of course, that is nonsense, because if people don't have to replace their windows, they will spend the money on something else, such as shoes for their children, generating jobs for shoe makers. So instead of replacing a window for no net gain, their kids have new shoes, hence they are better off. The important lesson here,
Re: Some of us... (Score:3)
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How many caves are there in Belize?
Belize has the Great Blue Hole [wikipedia.org]. There are many other smaller caves/holes/wrecks/etc.
And how many cave-diving operations will the market in Belize support?
When I was there, there was a waiting list, so there is room for more.
And, how sure are we that Belize will allow American ex-pats to come in and compete with their own citizens?
If you come in and start a company, you are creating jobs, not taking them. Besides, Belize let John McAfee in, so I don't think they are picky.
The limits of the Broken Window Fallacy (Score:3)
While of course what you say is true as far as it goes (money can be spent either on repairs or on new stuff), here is a way the broken window fallacy can itself be a fallacy.
If almost all the currency in a society is hoarded by the wealthiest 1% (like kept in the "Casino Economy") and the 1% control the government so it refuses to directly print more currency according to the needs of the 99%, then the economy for the 99% functions as if there were a depression due to insufficient currency in the economy o
Re: Some of us... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Automation has been going on since the industrial revolution. It has never discriminated. Technology does not stop to ask the color of your skin.
Re: Increased automation will harm minorities (Score:2)
I have received many pay increases but I have never once participated in collective bargaining. In fact if I have it my way, I'll never work for a union in my entire life. Why? Because the one company I do business with that's unionized takes a god damn act of Congress just to get them off of their asses to fix shit that they're contractually obligated to do. No joke, they literally have to set out lawn chairs and umbrellas at a work site before they can begin. Why? Union mandate.
Re: Increased automation will harm minorities (Score:5, Insightful)
That "union mandate" you refer to has a name. It's called a "contract". You may not like it, but those were the terms the company management agreed to and signed their names to.
Van Halen famously wrote riders into all their contracts (theirs that word again, "contract") that said the brown M&M's were to be removed from the candy bowl before their shows. Your mortgage with your bank is a contract that says you have to pay your bank several times what your property is worth. The contract most people have with their company says that if they get sick they're allowed to stay home and get better and still get paid. Do you know why most employment contracts say that? Because unions fought (and died) for that right. Do you know why you occasionally get to take a Saturday and Sunday off of work? Why you occasionally get a little vacation? Guess.
Unions have all sorts of things in the contracts they have with companies. And the companies signed all those contracts making it so. If that unionized company you do business with doesn't do a job that you like, find another company and stop whining.
Re: Increased automation will harm minorities (Score:4, Informative)
That's right. Things are put into contracts for all sorts of reasons. But it's not a contract until both sides agree to it. This notion that a union gets all this special stuff just because they're a union is ridiculous. What they get, they bargained for. And management agreed to it.
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It isn't going to happen.
What in the course of human history haven't we automated? We went from having to pick ears of corn to farmers driving vehicles to do it to the vehicles doing it themselves.
Automation is coming, get used to it.
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Less Space than a Nomad. Lame
I can't wait to revisit your quote just like all the other ones from the 00s on how things weren't going to happen.
Self driving vehicles (not just cars) are already here. They're just going to get better and are already better than a human in most scenarios.
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Clarke's third law
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
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As far as you're concerned, yes, it's magic.
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Not only are there a lot of fruits/vegetables that still have to be hand picked, there's still a lot that can't be shipped due to their fragility and whatnot.
It will take a long time for tech to overcome some of those problems... and it doesn't actually seem to be the programming/engineering side, in farming, that's the problem; it's the physical engineering component. Human hands + skin + muscles are amazing at what it can do and how delicately it can do it. We seem to still be a long ways off from comin
Re:Bullshit (Score:4, Funny)
Not only are there a lot of fruits/vegetables that still have to be hand picked
See Robotic Fruit Picking [youtube.com]
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Picking ears of corn is easy. You just twist and pull. We still hand pick many fruits and some vegetables. Give me a break. Everyone has starry eyes, but it ain't gonna happen.
What I want to know is why Google, Uber, Apple, Tesla, Mercedes, BMW, and so aren't hiring you as a consultant. You could have saved them hundreds of billions of dollars.
Oh, I know why. Because your lunch break is only 30 minutes.
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It isn't going to happen.
What in the course of human history haven't we automated?
Most things.
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Such as? Because look around you, a lot of everything you see was built with automation.
From getting raw materials out of the ground to giving you electricity. Grocery stores are monuments to automation.
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Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
What is automated about a grocery store
Everything in it? The supply chain that keeps it there? The machines used to build it? The modern grocery store wouldn't have been able to exist 500 years ago because the automation chain
Go try picking raspberries with a machine.
How about picking something that doesn't already exist.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
I can't wait until people like you finally die off so the rest of society can move or with progress. According to your beliefs on this we'd never had a printing press either.
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Plumbing, masonry, eating, picking your nose, dancing, brushing your teeth, wiping your ass, pumping gas, getting dressed, walking, cracking your knuckles, etc. etc. etc.
You could probably find an automatic nose picker at Sharper Image, sure, but just because you can automate something doesn't mean you can automate it well enough to be a substitute for the manual task. See the utter failures that are automatic dressing machines, the Segway, full-service gas stations outside of that one state, and the fact
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Plumbing sure seems a lot like automating carrying around buckets.
Do you think those bricks were made by hand? Was the mortar used to bind them mixed by hand as well?
We have electric tooth brushes.
And Bidets.
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The technology is already too far along to think it won't work.
It won't just happen - consumer-ready self-driving cars will be completely ready and commonly sold within 10 years and the technology will be damned near perfect in 20 years.
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Without a time machine we could go back and forth on this, but I'm quite confident that in a decade or so I'll be proven right on this, and you'll be about like the Cliff Stroll who in 1995 was writing about how the internet and online shopping would never take off:
http://thenextweb.com/shareabl... [thenextweb.com]
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You don't need the system to be perfect. Here in the US it just needs to avoid some 5.5 million auto accidents each and every year that in turn injured 2.5 million people and killed 30,000 others.
Could some glitch run a car into a wall? Maybe.
But that's one death vs all of the others where dumb, drunk, distracted, texting, road raging idiots drove their cars into walls, other cars, pedestrians, bikes, etc..
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Never say never.
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Re: Bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
Okay, head out of the sand time for you buddy. You're just flaunting your ignorance in public here. They already exist. They've logged thousands of hours on the road without drivers. They're coming whether you believe in them or not.
I'd like to see a citation for that claim. As far as I can tell, the Google fleet still operates with human drivers along for the ride.
Then there's this, from the Wikipedia article on the Google self-driving car [wikipedia.org]: "As of August 28, 2014* the latest prototype has not been tested in heavy rain or snow due to safety concerns. Because the cars rely primarily on pre-programmed route data, they do not obey temporary traffic lights and, in some situations, revert to a slower "extra cautious" mode in complex unmapped intersections. The vehicle has difficulty identifying when objects, such as trash and light debris, are harmless, causing the vehicle to veer unnecessarily. Additionally, the lidar technology cannot spot some potholes or discern when humans, such as a police officer, are signaling the car to stop. Google projects having these issues fixed by 2020."
And that lidar technology that can't spot some potholes or tell when a human is signalling for the car to stop? From the same Wikipedia article: "Google's robotic cars have about $150,000 in equipment including a $70,000 LIDAR system". So, very expensive and severely limited in real-world situations.
* The article has been updated on a fairly continuous basis since that time; I would guess that if any substantial improvement had been made, it would be included in the write-up.