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Carnegie Mellon Struggles After Uber Poaches Top Robotics Researchers
ideonexus sends a report from the Wall Street Journal (paywalled) saying Uber has poached 40 researchers from Carnegie Mellon University in an attempt to jump-start development of autonomous vehicle technology. In February, Uber and CMU's National Robotics Engineering Center announced a partnership to work together on the technology. But according to the WSJ, Uber quickly offered massive bonuses and salary increases to simply bring many of the researchers in-house. The NREC's new director made a presentation a few weeks ago about strategies for rebuilding and recovering. The presentation said NREC’s funding from contracts to develop technology with the U.S. Department of Defense and other organizations was expected to sink as low as $17 million from the $30 million originally projected for this year. Some contracts scientists were working on disappeared when the researchers left, accounting for the drop in funding. And it appeared the center would have to raise salaries significantly to prevent more exits. A few scientists left NREC for other companies in Pittsburgh because of concerns the center might be shut down, said two people familiar with the departures.
How loathsome that CMU will have to pay their researchers MARKET VALUE to keep them!
In a year or two Uber will realize that they're spending a lot of money on a technology that is still years out that they'll need to bribe politicians and hire lawyers as their long term strategy of simply breaking existing laws starts to bear fruit. Then the researchers will come running home.
... that they'll even spend probably billions trying to replace the minimum wage guy at the wheel of the taxi with some automated system that probably won't work as well for decades if ever?
Someone explain this techno nerd obsession with replacing people with robots, I just don't get it.
Wow, the government really needs to get it's priorities in order; their fear of government debt in a depression will deprive them of brainpower, which will lead to widespread fear of government debt....
on't get me wrong, Uber seem like scum.
But finally someone gets it! There is NO skills shortage, there's just a cheapass git excess. Uber have apparently realised that one flip side of the free market is you can just offer larger and larger salaries until you get to hire the people you want.
Score a huge WIN for the researchers who were poached.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
... that they'll even spend probably billions trying to replace the minimum wage guy at the wheel of the taxi with some automated system that probably won't work as well for decades if ever?
Someone explain this techno nerd obsession with replacing people with robots, I just don't get it.
the underlying economic principle behind replacing humans with machines is that humans (in this case, taxi drivers) won't be needed no more so they'll go back to school and get a better job with more value added to the overall economy. on the short run it may hurt (because yeah, 60yr old taxi driver won't become a doctor...) but on the long run its what makes economies evolve. thats why the average american is more educated and has a better job than the average chinese... FOR NOW.
...poached Professors Chang and Slater from Greendale Community College!
They offered them better salaries. Is it the case that one can do that in general - but not when it comes to university employees?
It is capitalism after all.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
You only have to solve this problem once, and everyone can enjoy the benefits forever in every vehicle. Not to say that it isn't a hard problem to solve. Personally, I value human life and intelligence enough to think that there is something better a person can be doing with their time than driving others around.
that's because you're an idiot. You're probably the guy they're trying to replace. People demonstrably suck at driving, I'm not going to even link you to a study, just get in your car and go to lunch while paying attention.
Cars that can communicate with each other, react faster, follow rules more reliably, etc. are going to be vastly safer than today's driving situation.
Because we're rich, starve to death and vanish miserable plebs. The rich don't have time for your lot.
Humans have a really annoying habit of continually wanting more money, time to sleep, more independence, etc, while machines work and usually only require minor maintenance once bought.
This has always been battle between academia and private sector jobs. You can get funding to research what you want... or take the golden handcuffs and research what the man requires you to.
Someone explain this techno nerd obsession with replacing people with robots, I just don't get it.
Profit = Revenue - Costs
Lower costs = higher profit
I think we're a long ways off before we can let the vehicle drive everywhere.
A couple issues here.
1. Do they expect to do self-driving vehicles within city limits, something I thought that had to be done by humans?
2. If they do this, I assume the person is pretty much renting the vehicle for one trip.
As for the whole robots stealing people's jobs...
A negative income tax or a basic income.
As for basic income, here is what I'd do...
22-65 years old, $500/month
22-65 years old and married, $750/month/couple
21- years old, $250/month (under 18, check goes to parent)
65+, social security or $750/month, whichever is greater
65+ and married, social security or $1125/month/couple, whichever is greater
For citizens and permanent residents only. How it'd work if someone is incarcerated, don't know.
As for a negative income tax, I'd do (Federal Poverty Level - Federal AGI) / 2 = Credit for those 22+ years old.
This is the old Luddite-Techie dialectic; will the people be enlightened enough to either a. destroy the things that will unemploy them b. design a system of "employment" that has minimal work and maximal rewards, and let the robots do the hard stuff For a lot of techies, they spend their entire life automating, never being rewarded for they've made so much as what they will make and how little work it will take to maintain. Extrapolate those values and you'll be pretty close to the psychology =]
If they had let the researchers work through the university, they would have saved themselves a lot of money paying for the research.
Uber apparently thinks they need to own patents on self driving technology rather than just mass produced self driving cars ASAP.
Google is light years ahead of everyone else when it comes to navigating highly complex city streets. By destroying a research facility and bringing researchers in house, they've pretty much just cooked the golden egg. A university has a much better inroad to private industry and public funding to work together to solve this kind of complex problem.
They didn't just need those researchers. They needed access to everyone's researchers who are working on solving this problem. It's a huge win for everyone when people no longer drive cars and everyone gets to their destination safely. There's a huge motivation for collaboration. And apparently Uber isn't interested in that sort of thing.
So a university is out of a lot of money and valuable education resources for nothing.
Work Safe Porn
That minimum wage guy is one of the major costs for a taxi company. The IRS rates miles driven in a car at a little under 60/mile, which should cover maintenance, depreciation, insurance and fuel. A taxi that only had these costs could be quite profitable at 70/mile. In New York, taxis cost $2/mile, which isn't that far off other places in the USA. The minimum wage guy needs to be paid even when the taxi is waiting for the next fare. With an automated car, you'd just leave them scattered around the city powered down and turn on the closest one when you got a new job.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
take people who got acceptance letters in error to fill the gaps.
Why would you give people less money per person for being married? Wouldn't this just lead to people getting divorced or not married in the first place, and living apart for a couple of weeks per year to avoid common law status?
And that is how jobs like "marketeer" came into existence: a job which consists of convincing people to buy stuff they do not need in order to keep the economy running by producing and consuming rubbish.
What happened to the idea that automation would generate free time for humans?
Oh, the corporations are trying to do that ... leave us with minimal work, and maximize their own rewards.
Because corporations don't have to account for the cost to society when most of the jobs are taken away.
Because the deck has been stacked so that society bears all the risk, and corporations get all the rewards.
American style capitalism is a race to the bottom, which will benefit the wealthy and corporations, but nobody else.
Kill the 1%, and stop letting them buy laws which give them control of everything.
(disclaimer: CMU Employee). If someone offers a better salary and the person takes it voluntarily, that's not poaching, that's a "competitive market".
I reckon any resurrected robotics program at Carnegie Mellon will require new hires to sign non-competes. Instead of countering any offers with higher salary other sweeteners and, this is the typical mindset of companies outside of California. At least California bans noncompete contracts.
Works the same in nature... You attract more flies with honey instead of vinegar.
...is how the headline should read.
I would wager that none of these guys are pathologically short-sighted rubes falling for false promises of more money. They more than likely made sure that the money was real, the freedom to develop their work was real, etc.
Every time I hear these "Foo poached all the talent from bar" stories I just automatically reverse the message to "Bar wasn't paying their talent enough."
Robots cost less than humans in the long run.
Robots can run 24/7 without the need for vacations, bathroom breaks, holidays....
Robots do not get sick (even when they breakdown they are relatively simple to fix vs humans, worst case simply replace completely one day to the next).
Robots do not require pension plans, robots will not take home pencils & paper, steal inventory.....
And to top it all off, robots are better at performing a well defined task than a human.
Get the picture?
Yeah, Down with machines. No more excavators, give people shovels. (make sure they are hand forged blades and hand carved handles). Why would you let evil machines do the work of humans? Why would you want to make the roads safer and public transportation cheaper?
How dare Slashdot use machines to check captcha. How dare they run a machine on to display this page... we should have squires hand writing these and mailing them to people.
At first and for a while, robots will be more expensive than human drivers until economy of scales kicks in and bye bye humans.
First they came for the buggy whip producers, and I said nothing...
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Someone explain this techno nerd obsession with replacing people with robots, I just don't get it.
There's a general and a specific answer to that question:
General: If it is going to happen, it is much better to be the person doing it than the person it is done to, so if it can happen, best assume it will.
Specific: Almost all of Uber's problems spring from the fact that cabs currently need to have drivers.
These points of view do not consider what effects this will have on society in general. Capitalism does not do that.
Of course, there are also people who simply like the technical challenge, but they are generally not financing themselves in this pursuit.
Noncompetes with student loan lock in? Let's see what the courts say about that?
this makes me hopeful. I would love to get bought out.
It died with Roddenberry.
Asshats like this.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
What happened to the idea that automation would generate free time for humans?
The people who run things are arranging it so that people have the same (or less) free time, paying them not much more (or less), and pocketing the difference. It's that simple.
There's also the the problem that, with the efficiency of workers going up and people working for as long as before, everyone's needs are met by fewer workers. If pay had gone up in proportion to the work being done, workers would have more money to spend and their "needs" would increase in proportion, which would increase the amount of work needed to provide for them. But since it didn't, fewer workers can provide for everyone's needs and there's a lot of unemployment.
What happened to the idea that automation would generate free time for humans?
Do you work in the fields at a farm all day? Do you have more than one TV/video device in your house... or even on your person? Can an average person afford to buy a car?
Note most of these things apply to Americans or Europeans... but to suggest that automation does society no good is silly.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Because if there's one thing NYC has an overabundance of, it's parking spaces.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
the underlying economic principle behind replacing humans with machines is that humans (in this case, taxi drivers) won't be needed no more so they'll go back to school and get a better job with more value added to the overall economy.
Ummm how is that supposed to work when you have 2 kids to feed at home, a mortgage to pay, all the utility bills?
You cannot just "freeze" this stuff for 3-4 years while you go back to school to be re-trained for something.
... that they'll even spend probably billions trying to replace the minimum wage guy at the wheel of the taxi with some automated system that probably won't work as well for decades if ever?
Someone explain this techno nerd obsession with replacing people with robots, I just don't get it. ...Yep. That's it. They absolutely hate having to pay anyone anything. They are cheap, and if they can reduce the labor cost to zero (we had slavery, what's the problem?), then they can have machinery as slaves instead of having actual real human slaves. Make the knowledge more widely available and more people will know it. People are teachable, so let them learn. Half the problem is the companies are running after the CMU brand which could be replaced by a dozen other universities, but they want only one, and limit themselves, and pay through the nose because of it.
Basic Income... for someone to live on? Where? Your numbers are a grave underestimation even considering a rural Georgia community. When I was renting a (shitty)3 bedroom trailer for me and my wife, that was $600/month alone. That leaves $150 for...what? Weekly food that would give us the proper nutrition to live healthily was $100 by itself. If we wanted to live on junk food that would cause us to be bed-confined at 400 lbs each, $100 might get us 3 weeks worth. Electricity just to run a fridge and a couple of fans every night cost me $80 monthly on the low end. Fuel to get back and forth to work on (Republican town doesn't believe in public transit)? At that time it was $120 a month (couldn't afford to get my motorcycle yet). I was making $1200 a month working my ass off for RadioShack, and almost couldn't afford a pot to piss in on that! Internet? Local library once a week. TV? Built my own OTA antenna from scrap metal because getting one from RadioShack was $30 I couldn't afford to waste. With your numbers, I might as well have been homeless. At least I probably would have been healthier then with $750 going to fuel and food only.
There is no distinction in the two, much less difference. Market value, by definition, is what somebody is willing to pay. By offering more for what these people are selling (their labor), Uber demonstrated their willingness thus automatically raising the market value.
It could be, but it still is a market value. And the "strategy", if that's what it is, is perfectly legitimate too. The people in question aren't slaves of the University and free to change employers.
Wow. "Poached" — as if the employees were chattels or animals in CMU's private reserve... Nice TFA...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
It's gonna be fun to watch what happens when the teamsters start sabotaging self-driving semis.
All the best parts of Mad Max : Fury Road all in better-than-3D on Americas highways!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Put your speculator hat on: IBM, Google, and other car manufactures are working on not only autonomous cars but networked cars that communicate with each other to optimize traffic flow. Allowing human drivers in such a system would add an element of unknown risk to safety and efficiency. Given our fascist friendly government it would not be unreasonable to expect that the government will only allow automated vehicles on the road in the future. Once that happens and transportation is a service Uber wants to be a market leader in automated vehicle fleet ownership. As one can imagine owning a large part of the infrastructure necessary for all public and private transportation is a lucrative proposition.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be-T J
It's better they're in private industry. They might actually accomplish something that benefits society (hence their higher value and higher pay).
You think basic research doesn't benefit society? The value of something to society isn't necessarily reflected in the salary to do it. Nobody (sane) would argue that a professional baseball player is more valuable to society than a school teacher or police officer but we pay them far more.
It really harkens back to the old adage: Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.
What does that have to do with research? These people weren't hired because they are great teachers. They were hired because they were great researchers.
It's still true .. only in this case "free time" is unemployment.
It was naive to say that automation would make all of our lives better. Mostly it just makes corporate profits go up, and everybody else gets screwed.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Up until now, and for the foreseeable future, machines complement humans and help them work more efficiently.
They replaced humans in jobs that had repeating, simple, well-defined tasks.
The problem on the horizon is that capitalism is so good at driving down the price of everything, that labor costs now represent the majority cost of a commodity, or soon will. However you cannot drive down the cost of human labor easily.....if you pay too little, no human will work the job as that would == death.
Since they cannot easily drive down salaries, the next best thing is to make machine humans. These androids are not meant to enhance the productivity of humans, but rather than to replace them 100% in all aspects (decision making, manual labor, creative work, etc). No human job will be safe (not even those based on creativity, as we have machines that can already produce creative works of art that are indistinguishable from those created by humans). This is what scares people , what do we do in a world where there are 0 jobs for the masses? Does everybody not in the top 1% just starve and die? What happens to the top 1% when that occurs?
That minimum wage guy is one of the major costs for a taxi company. The IRS rates miles driven in a car at a little under 60/mile, which should cover maintenance, depreciation, insurance and fuel. A taxi that only had these costs could be quite profitable at 70/mile. In New York, taxis cost $2/mile, which isn't that far off other places in the USA. The minimum wage guy needs to be paid even when the taxi is waiting for the next fare. With an automated car, you'd just leave them scattered around the city powered down and turn on the closest one when you got a new job.
The problem with your line of reason is that most Taxi drivers are NOT paid by the hour. They rent the Taxi, and have to pay for the fuel as well. Getting paid by the hour, they would make money. I cannot speak to how its done in New York City, but in this state drivers are contract labor with no benefits and pay by the hour. Being a Taxi driver is very much like being a Truck driver and they are both jobs that no one who has ever done would WANT to do. Most times it's that they need 'quick' money to pay bills and don't have the time or money to get a better education since in this county you have to PAY quite a bit for that education.
I left a university to go to a big Silicon Valley company, and I haven't regretted it one bit.
It wasn't about my salary (my university paid me very well). As a professor, you simply don't get to do much research or technical stuff: it's all about securing grant funding, committee meetings, editorships, and administration. And even though I liked the teaching, it also takes away time from research.
I also think there are too many professors in the STEM fields to begin with. The thinking in politics apparently is that if we just create more academic positions in these areas, the students will follow. They don't. The number of students who are actually capable of working academically has remained fairly constant, meaning that an increasing number of professors keeps competing for roughly the same size pool of good students. The only thing that increases is people who want to go into STEM simply to earn a living, turning the university into a kind of vocational school. And since professors aren't actually given the time to do research themselves, the competition for good students is more and more fierce and ruthless.
There is no magical government policy to fix this. Giving more money to universities, raising academic salaries, increasing research funding, etc. just makes the problem worse by attracting even more people to academia who are in it for money and fame, or a sinecure.
Your punctuation leaves much to be desired, rich anonymous coward.
Slavery is not == as $0 labor.
You need to feed, house, clothe and maintain your slave in order for him to be productive enough to warrant having him in the first place.
blue9steel=corporate ass sucker
Better then the GOP system where most get $0 and there only doctor will be the ER that will bill you or ones in the prison (free / fed system has $3 copays)/ jail system (free).
Taking an old saying, and exhaustively expanding it to its logical conclusion, I come up with the following observed hierarchy of value.
Those who can, do.
Those who can't, become managers.
Those who can't manage, teach on the subject.
Those who can't teach, become consultants*.
Those who can't succeed in consulting, run for office.
Those who can't get elected, become lobbyists.
The problem is that everyone lower down than "those who can" incorrectly perceive the value hierarchy to be inverted to make themselves feel better.
* Insultants
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Umm you just ignored the entire second half of the post you quoted, that specifically addressed your very concern.
Ahh the neo-anarchist occupy movement.
Kill the 1%... then... uhh... there will be nobody rich left, nobody would ever take that power vaccum...
No wonder nobody takes you morons seriously.
I love the Occupiers spouting this crap in their designer clothing, equipped with all the latest Apple hardware. They are truly suffering. The lines to the Apple store alone, just like the bread lines of times long past. Damn you corporations/Koch brothers/GOP/Illuminati/Haliburton/Evil-org-du-jour!
I wasn't making social commentary that it was a good thing, just pointing out that the logic wasn't complicated to understand.
Apple and other tech companies having an agreement not to hire each other's employees was evil, but when a school is involved many are saying that they should not be able to hire those from another company. Which one is right?! Tell me what to think!
A better question is why as a country we don't value human life and human dignity more?
In such a rich society we should expect that hard working folk will occasionally obsoleted, and we should have a safety net for them. Once you have a family (much needed for the country in the long term) it is very destructive to take 4 years off and go back to school, not to mention spending a few years getting through the break in period in your new profession to get anywhere close to your old salary.
If we were more humane we would support higher taxation to fund a safety net that provided for retraining and income support while you did it rather than casting our workers in the gutter the minute they are no longer sufficiently profitable. In other words
Given that we are not more human to our citizenry, it is not all that surprising that there is not a strong shared sense of community across the USA. As long as I have mine, the rest can eat cake.
It's still true .. only in this case "free time" is unemployment.
Curiously unemployment remains consistent with historical norms and there is no indication automation is having a meaningful impact on employment rates overall. How do you propose to reconcile your assertion that automation is increasing unemployment when all the data indicates that it is if anything having a positive or neutral effect of employment?
It was naive to say that automation would make all of our lives better. Mostly it just makes corporate profits go up, and everybody else gets screwed.
Really? Automation is responsible for dropping the percent of people working in agriculture from over half to somewhere around 2% in the US. Do you think your life was not improved by that? Automation has made tasks like washing your clothes, cooking your food and getting clean drinking water basically afterthoughts. Do you think your life wasn't improved by that? Automation has eliminated countless tedious and wasteful and repetitive tasks for clerical, agricultural, and manufacturing workers. Do you think their lives were not improved by that?
The US is among the most highly automated countries in the world and also has among the highest per capita GDP. Those facts are not coincidences. The same is true of the EU and Japan. This meme that automation is going to take away all our jobs and turn us into unemployed paupers is ludicrous and tiresome and false. People have been making the same dystopian claims about automation for ages and it's just nonsense.
I've been driving for Uber for about nine months now, part time. While autonomous vehicles seem like a natural fit for this service, I can say from experience that about 30% of the pickups are set by the passenger at a wrong location, and require some driver / passenger interaction in order to actually find the rider and make the pickup. With the driver out of the picture, many of these will trips will likely become a "cancel - wrong address" and re-request, adding to the pickup time. I don't see any practical way for an autonomous vehicle to work out that Peggy isn't actually standing in the middle of the mall - which is where she set her location - she's really outside the Verizon store at the curb, waving frantically.
Further, how will vehicle condition be managed? How will they insure the vehicle is clean and ready for the next passenger? Free of vomit, personal property, not vandalized? Will each vehicle be monitored by a remote Uber employee from a concrete bunker in DurkaDurkastan? If so, then we're right back to the human employee problem set again.
Seems like they'll be trading one problem set for another.
"The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates." - Tacitus
Where are my mod points? That is insightful.
Uber wants to get rid of humans as much as possible, and they aren't the only ones.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I don't disagree with your equations (above) but I don't think you went far enough, either.
Eventually, when most of the producers (of a class of product) have lowered their costs through automation, producers will have to lower their prices to maintain their market share, which will lower their revenue, returning their profit margin to a lower level. At this point, anyone who *didn't* automate will have too high a price (and will rapidly lose market share) or too low (perhaps negative) profit to stay a going concern.
If you aren't moving forwards, you are falling behind. Those who fail to innovate (including through automation) will eventually not be competitive.
The exercise for society is to figure out how to keep the loss of jobs due to increased automation from laying waste to the economy (due to unemployed workers).
was all but been removed from the dictionary of the English language.
I posted this before but I want to top post it and elaborate.
Universities are Open Research institution. Researchers get raises and build reputation by both doing good publicly acknowledged research and by training the next generation of researchers[1]. Both of these factors are now longer present from the robotic researchers Uber hired away. The loss of open research and the loss of experienced trainers of research Scientists is a huge blow to competition, improving the state of the art in robotics, and in training the next generation of researchers. Even if they do a large amount of research the information is likely to be locked up for decades by Uber. In addition there will now be fewer researchers in the pipeline to feed continued innovation.
In my opinion, Uber just set research back by decades.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Are these the same robots that seem to be spamming my inbox with UberEATS and other crap? I've already dumped Uber for Lyft because they've decided they have the right to spam everyone in my contact list in my name, but that hasn't slowed them down any.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
the underlying economic principle behind replacing humans with machines is that humans (in this case, taxi drivers) won't be needed no more so they'll go back to school and get a better job with more value added to the overall economy. on the short run it may hurt (because yeah, 60yr old taxi driver won't become a doctor...) but on the long run its what makes economies evolve. thats why the average american is more educated and has a better job than the average chinese... FOR NOW.
And it has worked so well that we have gone from the 1960s model of a single earner working 40 hours a week bringing home more than enough money to support his family, to the current model of two earners working 60+ hours a week struggling to survive.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
The problem with your line of reason is that most Taxi drivers are NOT paid by the hour. They rent the Taxi, and have to pay for the fuel as well. Getting paid by the hour, they would make money. I cannot speak to how its done in New York City, but in this state drivers are contract labor with no benefits and pay by the hour. Being a Taxi driver is very much like being a Truck driver and they are both jobs that no one who has ever done would WANT to do. Most times it's that they need 'quick' money to pay bills and don't have the time or money to get a better education since in this county you have to PAY quite a bit for that education.
I believe that lower income contract jobs are basically a way to get around the minimum wage. If you look at places that pay contract rates for things like taxis, newspaper delivery, magazine subscriptions, envelope stuffing etc., you will often find if you do the math that they are not making the minimum hourly wage. Not only that, but because they are contract labor, the company "employing" them does not have to pay Social Security, Medicare or Unemployment insurance.
Some of these jobs it is POSSIBLE to make more than minimum wage if you really work your butt off.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
We will just automate the passenger as well! No more confusion.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Many of these people were staff, not faculty at CMU. As a former director of a University research lab (otherwise known as a software sweatshop) I can attest that staff at universities tend to be grossly underpaid. Universities resist any staff making more money than their lower paid professors (think English, History, etc). It is all about politics and ego. A little help from LinkedIn shows some of Uber's employees former titles at CMU: Sr. Research Engineer, Graduate Student - Interaction Design, Commercialization Specialist , Senior Information Systems Specialist, Research Assistant, Senior Commercialization Specialist, Research Programmer, Graduate Research Assistant, Student, Research Assistant, Graduate Research Assistant, ...
Quite shameless of Uber to do so! CMU and other premier Univ's need to craft a more solid agreements for collaborating with Industry, so that this kind of nonsense doesn't happen again! I am not against partnering with Industry by these researchers, but researchers have a proposal obligations to meet too, so they should at least work through end of the calendar year and finish their federal obligations.
The exercise for society is to figure out how to keep the loss of jobs due to increased automation from laying waste to the economy (due to unemployed workers).
Previously this wasn't an issue because people moved on to labor on things which while valuable had previously been at a lower priority level. Now that all three sectors of the economy are becoming automated I question what the bulk of those people are going to be doing.
I am really surprised that CMU didn't include any "No Poaching" clauses in their partnership with Uber. This is standard practice in most partnerships in the private sector for this very scenario. Clearly CMU didn't, or didn't do it correctly, and Uber took them to the shed - stepped in with the partnership, identified the people who were key, then quickly gutted the institution of their key talent. Maybe there was arrogance on CMU's part, thinking that their professors and researchers would not be tempted away from tenure and university prestige for something like money... not realizing the kind of money that Uber would throw around.
It does generate free time: if you choose to consume less, you can work less. But most people choose to consume close to what they are capable of earning. That is, they buy big houses, several cars, Internet, and lots of other stuff.
There are some limits to this kind of choice: many communities, for example, have minimum square foot sizes for homes and apartments, require you to purchase running water and electricity, and impose other costs on you. But even that pales in comparison to the voluntary increased expenditures people make.
No, it's stupid and uninformed.
Corporate profits going up is exactly how people work less:
(1) When you're young, you work and you save and invest in businesses.
(2) When the profits from the business are large enough to sustain you without work, you retire.
Larger corporate profits mean you can retire earlier.
Of course, if you don't save for retirement, then the larger corporate profits won't help you, but that's your own problem.
Fuck off slaver.
Good! Since I invest my savings in corporate shares, I very much hope they do! I also hope they lower prices.
Corporations provide jobs, they don't "take them away".
The deck has been stacked against morons. Like you. And that's a good thing. May you rot in the hell of your own making.
Good!
Labor has always been the biggest cost in making products. And that is why automation is a good thing: by freeing up labor in some industries, that labor becomes available to do jobs that previously couldn't be done at all.
Automation has always led to increased employment and wealth for the masses.
If it were to occur, it would mean that everybody's needs would be met for free; you wouldn't need a job.
CMU is NOT publicly funded. The only public funds might come from specific contracts awarded to develop specific science. Such as from the DOD. When working in academia you can't expect to earn "market value". What you can expect is to work with other highly qualified professionals in your field. You can also expect to publish your research from the high profile projects on which you participate. This experience increases your "market value" so that when you enter the private sector you are highly sought after and can demand a commensurate salary.
No, but he has to anyway, since the car manufacturers bought up and destroyed public transport and city planners make sure it's almost impossible to live near work and services.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
This really sucked for a friend of mine. He was working with these same academics on another autonomous project. His company had wined and dined these guys every night he was there in the months before. He had to try to suck everything out of these guys in a week before they left. It killed his companies contract with Carnegie.
"Automation has always led to increased employment and wealth for the masses."
Has it? You need to venture outside your parents house and visit the rest of the world occasionally.
Replying to two posts.
I forgot to mention that it would be in addition to foodstamps, something we should make permanent rather than this 3 month period thing going on. If we get rid of SNAP, I would propose increasing those figures I mentioned by $200/month/person.
That said, I do not propose the basic income as a truly universal way to survive. Just some sort of money to try to get by, even if it's difficult in some places. My hope would be that in a worse-case scenario, a group of four single adults could share a place together as unpleasant as it would be.
My suggestion of $750/coupon, a reduced amount, is based on the logic that expenses are less when multiple people share a household. But I'd be willing to scrap that idea if push came to shove in a debate. But I figure it'd more conservative to not just do a flat $500/month/adult regardless of relationship status.
... that they'll even spend probably billions trying to replace the minimum wage guy at the wheel of the taxi with some automated system that probably won't work as well for decades if ever?
Someone explain this techno nerd obsession with replacing people with robots, I just don't get it.
I'm waiting to see the reaction of all the "I'm a libertarian wannabe billionaire programmer" types when someone works out that getting a robot to program a computer is a fuck sight easier than getting one to drive a car.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Yes, as a simple glance at labor participation rates and GDPs across countries and history shows.
You need to take your own advice.
What happened to the idea that automation would generate free time for humans?
Do you work in the fields at a farm all day? Do you have more than one TV/video device in your house... or even on your person? Can an average person afford to buy a car?
Note most of these things apply to Americans or Europeans... but to suggest that automation does society no good is silly.
Back in the 1950s it was widely believed that in fifty years' time people would be working less than ten hours a week, as since the Industrial Revolution people had been slowly working fewer hours while over all prosperity increased.
Automation has obviously done much good, but we still have a society where the majority of our days are spent working, and if anything people are feeling more cash rich but time poor than they were 50 years ago.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
You only have to solve this problem once, and everyone can enjoy the benefits forever in every vehicle. Not to say that it isn't a hard problem to solve. Personally, I value human life and intelligence enough to think that there is something better a person can be doing with their time than driving others around.
Yes, let me guess, they can all retrain as Computer Science PhDs and run their own start up making everyone in the whole world a billionaire?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Ok, fair enough, I live in a city where this has happened and it has sprawled out of control. But what I was trying to say is that people in US/Europe are way way better off post-industrial revolution.
Yes, wealth disparity has become very absurd in the past 20 or 30 years, and the political machine has been working to marginalize the average person since pretty much forever; but waxing nostalgic about the middle ages is going to do nothing but make someone sound foolish.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Ok, I can see the GGP's point in this regard. People are working more now then they were pre-information-age. And often making less money doing it.
While I have stuff that my parents at this age could only dream of... and overall people are better off than any previous generation; it seems like people are working harder to achieve it. I would be happy to take a 20% pay cut for 20% less work, but today it is more like "take a 20% pay cut or else we fire you". Fuck that, and fuck them.
And what is this bullshit I hear from the current administration about raising the retirement age? My dad is already at the current retirement age, but can't because he doesn't have enough savings to retire.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
I question what the bulk of those people are going to be doing.
Since you can't just let the bulk of your population starve to death without precipitating a revolution, at some point governments will have to introduce some sort of guaranteed minimum income, which is to say re-brand welfare to avoid stigmatising the 90% of the people who have no traditional work available to them once things like cleaning toilets, serving burgers, or stacking supermarket shelves are all automated too.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I don't disagree, however so far the elite appear to be favoring increased repression instead.
The problem with your line of reason is that most Taxi drivers are NOT paid by the hour. They rent the Taxi, and have to pay for the fuel as well. Getting paid by the hour, they would make money. I cannot speak to how its done in New York City, but in this state drivers are contract labor with no benefits and pay by the hour. Being a Taxi driver is very much like being a Truck driver and they are both jobs that no one who has ever done would WANT to do. Most times it's that they need 'quick' money to pay bills and don't have the time or money to get a better education since in this county you have to PAY quite a bit for that education.
I believe that lower income contract jobs are basically a way to get around the minimum wage. If you look at places that pay contract rates for things like taxis, newspaper delivery, magazine subscriptions, envelope stuffing etc., you will often find if you do the math that they are not making the minimum hourly wage. Not only that, but because they are contract labor, the company "employing" them does not have to pay Social Security, Medicare or Unemployment insurance. Some of these jobs it is POSSIBLE to make more than minimum wage if you really work your butt off.
In the UK, you aren't allowed to get round paying at least the minimum wage by calling your workers contractors or paying impossible-to-reach piece-rates. This seems to me to be self-evidently necessary in a predatory free market which would ideally pay as little as they could get away with.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Does anyone have an actual list of all the people poached from CMU by Uber in this incident?
The newspaper stories are high on breathlessness and background, but low on the actual names.
I'm not aware of any such law in the U.S. that would limit contract rates. But then if somebody is willing to work for that much and somebody else is willing to pay them that much then I don't see why the government should say that they can't have that arrangement.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
No, this is simply a freedom-loving position. I don't want to have to submit my employment choices to your approval so I am resisting your attempts to similarly violate the freedom of others.
Actually, I said nothing about "economic might" one way or the other — it was my opponent, who kept trying to bring Uber's wealth into the discussion. I consider that irrelevant.
My argument is that the voluntary agreements between employees and employers are simply none of our business.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The error in that analysis is that people's needs aren't constant; the more a society develops, the more it industrializes and automates, the more people's "needs" (really, desires) increase.
Half a century ago, a vacation consisted of a trip to the local beach; today, it's a flight across the country or to some tropical resort; in another half century, it's probably a trip into space. The only reason we can afford to do that is because automation frees workers from menial tasks and allows them to do more.
The labor participation rate actually strongly increases as societies industrialize and become more automated. That is, both a larger fraction of the population and a larger total number of people work as societies automate and industrialize. That's pretty much universally true across the globe.
("Unemployment" is a technical short-term measure that is irrelevant to such discussions, but it generally also decreases.)
I drive for Uber, the one thing that doesn't on the surface fit is, actually paying a 40 person team enough to get them to jump ship. Uber is dirt cheap, ask a driver how they cut the fare rates and the drivers income regularly. I would have guessed with the success with Google's autonomous driving fleet et al, I am surprised they didn't partner with Google. Then again Uber is all about being vertically integrated and trying to own everything but the car in the equation, there by scoring all the benefits but mitigating legal exposure at the expense of the drivers. Automated cars will allow them to further reduce that, but as they are starting out at zero they will have to spend a lot of cash to make up the distance Google has already, and Uber doesn't strike me as being that smart, cheap yes but they seem to think they can make shortcuts with out consequences. personally I hope Google comes back with a Google cab to counter Uber.