I think the first companies that put driverless long-haul trucks into service better have good insurance, because I think a lot of those trucks are going to be destroyed. Eventually, though, they’ll take over.
If worried about people losing a job, we could reduce workdays to 3 days a week instead of 5. Since corporations will make a lot of profit from automation, they could pay workers well to work less. I don’t know why it always has to be about people losing jobs. I would think one can come up with ways to redistribute the profit.
Good point. Countries like France and Germany work much shorter days/weeks than American workers do.
Also, for countries where population growth is declining or negative, some automation isn’t a bad thing.
Oh they don’t like their profit redistributed much!
GPS has trouble in canyons like Manhattan. Maybe the NY cabbie is still safe for a while.
The NY cabbie is already being wiped out by Uber.
I think it’s amazing to see different technological advances in my lifetime, but I still want to drive my car.
A friend who has a Tesla that has the lane control feature says that it has trouble if the lane line is not bright or is missing. And while GPS is getting better, it is not always perfect (sudden road closure that is not programmed for example).
What about computer system failure? Look at the occasional glitches at airports or in planes. Seems like a “driver” is needed to take over in the case of system failure. Or hacking? Also unless it is mandated that all cars be driverless, how will the driver and driverless vehicles interact?
A driverless car doesn’t need GPS active continuously just to drive, any more than a human does.
Like @Cardinal Fang I live in an area where I see driverless cars all the time and I can’t wait until they are the norm. I particularly hope they’re widely available by the time I’m too old to safely drive myself around!
And yes, society will change, jobs will be lost, but things always evolve and new jobs (perhaps ones we can barely imagine now) will replace many of those that go away.
I know it’s coming, but I’m definitely feeling a shock about it. I still have trouble seeing “everyone” staring into their phones so often. Big, big changes are coming.
There was a recent Mother Jones article, something about You Will Lose Your Job to a Robot Sooner Than You Think, and I had trouble finishing it, it was making me feel so anxious about the future.
Five years ago, I would have said it was a terrible idea. But at least around here drivers seem to have gone completely nuts. I regularly see people making right turns from left hand lanes and left turns from right hand lanes. I’ve been backed into by someone parking who didn’t bother to check their review mirrors. I’ve seen innumerable people weaving over high way lanes on the phone or even texting. Don’t even get me started about no one know what a double yellow line means. Or fatal accidents in 30 mile an hour zoned residential neighborhoods. Or running red lights. Or going fast enough in a school zone (15 mph) that when I am stopped at a red light your air bags go off and my car is totaled.
However, if the current trend of automation destroys jobs without creating other jobs that the job losers can retrain for, that can be a large social, economic, and political problem. If the future trend in jobs is such that the only in-demand jobs for humans are highly skilled creative non-routine jobs that take considerable time and/or money to train for (e.g. MD jobs require 11+ years of education, at considerable expense to the future MD), then there will be lots of people whose labor is unnecessary (i.e. no one willing to pay for it) in the economy.
Economically and politically, what would we do with all of the unemployed or underemployed people? People now are uncomfortable with having a large welfare population. Additionally, many people derive their self worth from their work or achievements. Would mental health issues related to feeling worthless increase?
We have a Tesla with autopilot and I must say I totally underutilize it. (Except the self parking because I suck at parallel parking.) It’s just darn freaky to give up control when you’re in the driver’s seat. I’ve used it on open highways but not in traffic. Bloggers say highway traffic is where it shines, but I haven’t worked up to nerve to pass off control in traffic.
Yep, driverless cars are in our future.
The easy way to solve this problem is to have the driverless car:
- Rate the severity of the human driver's mistake or aggression.
- Save the video, and upload it.
- Lookup the insurance company of the offending driver.
- Send a message to the insurance company along with the pointer to the video evidence.
The entire process can be completely automated.
Actually, in a traffic jam, driverless driving may help. You won’t become so impatient and do things that may make the traffic situation worse. Driverless car can also find the best way considering the traffic.
What I object to is the study claiming how driverless cars are safer since they don’t make human mistakes. You can’t make the claim without also counting inevitable accidents that alert humans can avoid with good judgement.
I could see a future where city cores only have driverless car zones. Many European city centers have pedestrian only zones now. Next could be a ring of driverless, electric, solar or other green energy self driving vehicles - cars and trucks.
“You can’t make the claim without also counting inevitable accidents that alert humans can avoid with good judgement.”
You’re assuming AI technology can’t handle the same “good judgement” at some point.
I am not an expert in driverless car technology, but as both a current car nut and former technologist, this is something I follow closely.
There are been rapid recent advances in processing power, and the leader in this business is NVIDIA, which computer gamers may know as the chip maker behind many of the best video cards. Turns out that the same intensive computations required to render high quality graphics can be used for many types of parallel-processing tasks, including driverless cars. Most automakers are already using current versions of their auto package, known as the “PX” series.
Last month, NVIDIa announced PX Pegasus, which they believe is capable of Level 5 autonomy due to its ability to perform 320 TOPS (Trillion Operations Per Second). This is about a 10x improvement over their previous flagship.
On a related matter, driverless cars have the potential to dramatically reduce traffic delays. Delays are caused by two major things.In the cities, traffic is usually caused by intersections or merges that force traffic to slow or stop. If you ever pay attention to how many cars get through a particular traffic light, you will find that it varies widely, with inattentive drivers letting only about half the cars go through as attentive drivers. Driverless cars should have the ability to get the maximum number of cars through the light, every time. This will make a huge difference in wait times.
On the highways much of the delay is caused by people not adjusting smoothly to the traffic flow, but instead jerking to a stop, causing a ripple effect for all traffic behind them. Again driverless cars have the potential to make this problem go away.
What I am describing above is the promise, but it could easily be 15 years before we get there for half the vehicles on the road.
Driverless cars will have a lot of benefits:
- Fewer accidents (distracted driving, drunk driving)
- Better traffic flow because of more efficient rerouting and fewer accidents
- Lower insurance rates
- Better mobility for the elderly
- Faster time getting goods to market because trucks wont have to stop for drivers to sleep.
- Can take trips without stopping, so you won't need as many hotels.
- Steady driving is more fuel efficient.
- Less need for traffic police.
Disruption of the workforce is going to be massive during this transition. Be sure your kids have a good education and adaptable skills.
re: city slickers vs. us rural folk
I’m wondering if/how these cars will handle situations where you wanted to pull off the main road and explore some random road or dirt path. I do this frequently out where I live… tons of unlabeled dirt roads that lead to all sorts of cool natural locations. In other words, I’m not your typical home->work->trader joes->museum->home type of person… and I can’t imagine I’m the only person like this out there.