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'We're Just Rentals': Uber Drivers Ask Where They Fit In a Self-Driving Future (theguardian.com)
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."
Hurry up and die.
"It feels like we're just rentals. We're kind of like placeholders until the technology comes out."
Aren't we all.
Hmm, would the lawsuit by a bunch of Uber drivers (in CA and MA) have had any effect on this decision? After all, self-driving cars would have to be pretty expensive to be more expensive than three-quarters of a billion dollars in legal bills and such....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
It's about time people realized cab drivers are going to be out of work when self driving cars arrive. With more and more people leasing new cars instead of buying, I think in the large urban centers, we will see not only the replacement of human taxi operators but also a shift from leasing cars to leasing rides from a large fleet. It just makes the most sense logistically.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have backups to corrupt.
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 try to find reasons and means to rise car prices under the pretence that it pays for itself.
None of these zenbatsu care about you. You're just masterless samurai Ronin to them.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
That Uber is marginal here. Self driving trucks are really going to take a toll. Faster, cheaper and so on. Still need electricians, plumbers, welders, and so on though.
https://youtu.be/7Pq-S557XQU
The idea that technology will find new things for everyone to do is insane...
We will need a new economic model...
Uber drivers had their brief period of glory, having done heavy damage to the taxi cab industry. Now they'll suffer the same fate.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Sure, Uber could invest in fleets of self-driving cars (which I, actually, doubt will be a significant presence on the roads for a while yet), but doesn't that run against the whole point of Uber and Lyft? That being crowdsourcing ride sharing (and, not so coincidentally, capital costs)? That would seem to turn Uber into just another taxi company, albeit one with a cool mobile app. I do think self-driving cars are a cool concept, especially for taxis, but think there will have to be some serious breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (i.e., it will have to be actualized, as opposed to being essentially Wikipedia with fast lookup and cross-referencing) before this sort of thing is viable on a large scale.
TANSTAAFL
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.
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 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.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
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.
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
Automation has been going on since the industrial revolution. It has never discriminated. Technology does not stop to ask the color of your skin.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
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.
With Uber reaping all the benefits and feeling none of the loss.
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.
>Hurry up and die.
Humans still have value. Hasn't anyone ever told you that you could have a bright future in biofuel?
I thought "The Expendables" was a pair of bad hero comedies
Pair? You might want to sit down.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
No you don't "see them all the time". You might see a Google one once and a while, but they all have drivers and are in carefully mapped areas.
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.
I didn't exactly hear a lot of tears being shed by Uber drivers over the cab drivers being put out of work.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It isn't going to happen.
What in the course of human history haven't we automated?
Most things.
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.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
No it won't. What they have now is the 90% solution: driver assist. It is the last 10% that is the hard part.
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.
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.
Divide and Conquer
It's a very effective strategy that has been used for centuries.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Go ahead. It won't happen. And no they aren't "here". We have 90% solutions which always require a driver to be present. You are one of those "tech is going to always get better". Guess what? It won't necessarily. It isn't magic.
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's not a good way to make a living.
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...
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
How many years was it between the Wright Brothers first flight and landing on the Moon?
Never say never.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
What is automated about a grocery store? Are you talking about self-checkouts? That is an easy problem to solve. It is just a bar code scanner. Self-driving cars is much much harder. Go try picking raspberries with a machine. Even that is much much simpler than self-driving cars.
As an Uber driver, you already fit in better at Arcade City. http://arcade.city/ https://twitter.com/arcadecity... https://www.facebook.com/Arcad...
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.
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 coming close to that in robotics... and that seem to be what will be necessary to pick the more fragile foods.
That or we'll just decide the foods aren't worth and it will relegate most of society to the cheap, easy to automate foods. :(
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.
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.
Clarke's third law
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
As far as you're concerned, yes, it's magic.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
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..
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
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.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
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?...
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.
Doesn't this lower the barrier of entry for any competitor, even small local taxi services dispatching self-driving cars?
i'm certainly optimistic that it can work, but i still don't see driverless trains anywhere. You'd think that would be a pretty easy problem to solve, yet we still have drivers on all the rail systems in all the cities i've lived in.
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: "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.
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 that you still wipe after using a bidet.
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).
I thought there were three of them.
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: 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, is despite popular belief to the contrary, POINTLESS MAKE WORK JOBS ARE NOT "GOOD" FOR THE ECONOMY.
Paralegals are in a job that is ripe for automation, and many of them are indeed losing their jobs. But as people spend less on legal services, they have more money for other things. One thing that is growing rapidly is spending on experiences and adventures. So the answer to your question is that the 60+ paralegal should open a cave diving adventure tour company in Belize.
When it comes down to a choice between starving in the gutter and stabbing you and stealing your iPhone, I'd say, from what I've seen of humanity, your chances are about 50-50.
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?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
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 are welcome on my lawn.
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.
If there is UBI for them then they are not totally worthless. Only if there is nothing for them are they worthless.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
If you're only saving money all your life, then you're not spending money on enriching your kids and your family. This is a bad thing.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Automation has augmented humans since the industrial revolution but it has never before replaced humans.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I might be part of a very tiny minority, but to me, Uber is not the car that takes me to where I want to go, but the person driving the car, who takes me to where I want to go. I like to socialize, i'm a fan of people. I won't use a self-driving car.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
We have electric tooth brushes.
Picking off the more or less easy targets for technology is a long ways from automating the entire thing. I seriously doubt that fully automated tooth brushing (or how about dental work?) is going to be here anytime soon; nor is, for example, fully automated cooking or fully automated dishwashing, even though we have individual components of those somewaht "automated" (toasters, ovens, microwaves, dishwashers). But going from "human clears the table and loads the dishwasher" to "robot clears the table and loads the dishwasher" is a pretty big step in terms of technology. Fragile glass, pets running around, "hey, I wasn't done with that!" ...
Not only are there a lot of fruits/vegetables that still have to be hand picked
See Robotic Fruit Picking
You mean blowing thousands of dollars on your wife's shopping sprees?
I would hardly qualify oranges as ... fragile. At least, that isn't the type of fragility I'm thinking of. When a robot can pick a fully ripe, say, raspberry, or blackberry, or strawberry, or mango, perhaps... or Asian pear ... or probably many others that I can't think of right now ...
And I mean picking it ripe. Not supermarket "pick it while it's green" sort of produce. That's cheating. :)
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.
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.
When no one has a job to pay for stuff, what's your business model? Export?
the brown M&M's
For an interesting reason - they put that clause in the contract, in order to make it obvious whether care had been taken to read, digest, and comply with it.
http://www.snopes.com/music/ar...
Nihilism FTW.
We could hook everyone up to an IV drip and harvest their brainwaves for energy.
Historically this is a very recent phenomena. It's what humanity did for the last 13 thousand years or so.
I think he's talking about automated food production (most things outside the produce department have some amount of automation involved; much of the aisle stuff is totally automated after harvest and a lot is automated there too). Have you seen those shows about what kind of factory makes food product X? Frequently the human touch is only for shlepping jugs of sauce and boxing a dozen or two of whatever after they've been wrapped/labelled/bottled.
http://vivoleum.com.yeslab.org...
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
I suspect coffee shops will be before nail/hair, which will be before plumbers and electricians. Plumbers/electricians have to do onsite stuff, and no two sites are quite the same. Automating that level of flexibility will take longer than building an auto-mixing espresso bot.
autonomous Ubers are an unwelcome threat to her livelihood
They didn't bat an eyelash when it came to screwing over the cabbies and now... where's my violin?
There'll be driverless cars on the streets before you know it.
I remember hearing this in the 80's. I got excited. I even majored in it in college.
What in the course of human history haven't we automated?
Astronaut.
Could some glitch run a car into a wall? Maybe.
The difference is that when a drunk driver gets into an accident, it is clearly and unambiguously the fault of that specific person. He's an active participant in his own destruction. His decision to do something stupid and illegal caused his accident. Yes, there are innocent participants, too, but there is a well-known cause.
When a driverless car crashes into the wall or a crowd, EVERYONE is an innocent participant. There is no stupid or illegal decision that is the cause of the accident, it's just an innocent party or five who gets hurt.
Oh, but the CAR is at fault, right? The car company is responsible. Of course. How many Audis have had uncontrolled acceleration accidents without Audi actually feeling any pain for their irresponsible decision to let a computer control the throttle? Tesla 'autopilot' is going through the same thing now, isn't it?
Consider the Pinto. No, not one of the pledges in Animal House. The Ford car that is legendary for a fuel tank design leading to fires and deaths in rear-end collisions. According to the fount of all knowldege a design change to fix the problem would have saved 180 deaths and 180 serious burns per year. And yet: "Based on standard procedures used to evaluate field reports, Ford's internal recall evaluation group twice reviewed the field data and found no actionable issue."
To prove that the drunk driver caused the accident is trivial compared to the cost of proving that a car company is at fault, and it takes a lot more accidents to even start that process.
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..
You assume that a failure mode that allows a car to crash into a wall will exist in that car alone, and not in every one of the same model, and probably the manufacturer. (There were 1.5 MILLION Pintos and Bobcats that were recalled for the fuel tank issue, and 12.5 MILLION cars that were subject to the problem.) And not be an unanticipated emergent behaviour that appears in all kinds of autonomous vehicles. I think that optimism is horribly misplaced.
So you're suggesting we should start doing less for our children than the previous generation did for us? That we should not build on the advantages that our parents have afforded us? What an isolated little bubble you must live in.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Airplanes have almost nothing to do with rockets. Completely different tech, although they both go up in the air. Ancient Chinese fireworks makers would have been a more accurate comparison.
...because a taxi without a passenger is still occupied by a human. An unoccupied autonomous uber car could be a tempting target for all those displaced taxi/uber drivers.
Many airports (Orchard Field in Chicago being one) have automated "rail" systems. Those systems operate in a very limited mode, with very restricted access to the outside of the vehicle or the tracks, and go a mile or two at most. They don't have to deal with surprises so programming them is relatively trivial. They're kind of like the elevators of the train world.
I remember life before coffee shops (ca. late 80's). I don't remember it being too bad.
I bought a stretched limousine recently. Lincoln town car, black, stretched. Keeps the junior kid at my office employed full time. I'm not a 'high roller', bought this vehicle mostly as a joke - everyone loves it. The novelty has worn off now sadly, but the fun times continue regardless. Anyways, the topic of self driving cars came up while we were getting driven around. I thought about it.... A self-driving stretched limo would never be 'cool' - for something like this, you NEED a human chauffer to complete the vehicle. When the junior kid gets tired of driving my butt around, I'll need to find someone else. Maybe I could employ an ex-uber driver.
Probes are cheaper.
I don't pay $10,000 per year for electricity, and the brainwaves of most posters here wouldn't power my house for two minutes. If you think that solar and wind power generation will be expensive, they won't hold a candle to the cost of brainwave power.
Christ you are stupid. The "automation chain"? What does that have to do with "automated" vehicles. Actually go to Engineering school sonny and learn what is possible with hard work and stop watching so much scifi.
How many caves are there in Belize? And how many cave-diving operations will the market in Belize support? And, how sure are we that Belize will allow American ex-pats to come in and compete with their own citizens?
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
Very isolated, but happily successful with friends (real, not internet) and family.
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.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Try to argue this with spacenutters.
You people through those stats around fairly freely with no proof that automated vehicles will ever get the adoption they need for such improvements. In the mean time you are suggesting that people should overlook the damage done by these companies today. That's cult-like philosophy.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
of course it has. Modern combine harvester allow a single person to harvest a hundreds acres field in a day. (cf. http://www.bourgault.com/Searc...)
Yes but then they needed mechanics of all sorts. All local jobs.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Looks like the investors and senior executives of Uber are sharing...the spoils. Those people never had any overarching "vision" other than lining their pockets.
Gotcha, retard. I put several of those things in there to see if you'd read the whole post. You didn't. I addressed bidets specifically as not being a point of successful automation because you still have to wipe afterward.
Electric toothbrushes don't automatically brush your teeth. The work you do to brush your teeth with one is only slightly reduced.
Many bricks are still packed and moved by hand. And yes, much of the mortar, cement, etc. used to day is still made by hand. At best you're automating one or two steps while adding several manual steps. For a small cement or mortar job, to automate the mixing you need new tools and new procedures for using those tools. The tools don't use themselves.
Who is dividing and conquering here? Uber came in, smashed an existing industry, with its drivers seemingly quite happy to play their part. If they don't read the news to learn that work has been going on for several years on autonomous self-driving vehicles, that's really their fault.
Technology and automation has been destroying occupations for thousands of years. Do you think all those Medieval scribes put out of work by Gutenberg's press were victims of some grand conspiracy?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Yeah, graduated a decade ago. Been working automating lots of things since then. Stuff which you claim doesn't exist.
And how many of those things you listed have millions of deaths per year?
You conveniently forget the driving reason behind self driving automation.
At best you're automating one or two steps while adding several manual steps
So will self driving cars not count as 'automated' until it picks your ass up out of the couch and drives you to your destination?
Are you arguing that NOT saving for the future is the more prudent course of action? The person you were responding to didn't say you should save ALL of your money, but surely by 60 it would be reasonable to have just about saved enough for your impending retirement.
Please do explain how saving enough for the stability of your family, and to not be a burden on your children when you are inevitably unable to work is a "bad idea".
This is the kind of company that you will always get in the absence of regulations. No company is obligated to have a conscience unless it is illegal not to.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
How much people does it take to harvest and process manually a hundred acres ? Scale that to the average Canadian farm size of 780 acres. Today, a crew of a few people (one driver for the harvester, one support tractor + trailer, plus a pair of dump truck) can harvest and process that much in a 40h week. Now, a diesel engine in a truck in pretty much the same as the diesel engine in the harvester, so job redundancy, the mechanics shop has now 3 employee instead of 2. At worst, you get a few more people in a fab shop when the farmer cannot hack something up, but that pretty much stop here. So really, you can harvest a complete farm with 12 people (including shared support). That doesn't even compare to the hundreds of jobs cut when mechanization was introduced.
Hundreds of mechanics though? Doubtful.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
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.
And that money can cover expenses so they can pursue things that actually make their lives worthwhile. Art, music, maker tech, volunteering, and all those other things we do that fulfill us when we're not working. You know, those things that help make us human and not just worker bees.
-Chris
How many caves are there in Belize?
Belize has the Great Blue Hole. 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.
..and more people were required for manufacturing, assembly, maintenance, sales, etc etc etc.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
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 doesn't change the difference. Billy, who made an own goal and caused his team to lose while playing in an AYSO match for five minutes, gets a participation trophy. This does not prove his worth to the team, it only supports his own feeling of being worthwhile -- while he was actually a drawback to the team as a whole.
You know, those things that help make us human and not just worker bees.
People have been able to do that for millenia without UBI and the requirement for other people to work their asses off to pay the taxes that would allow UBI to succeed. Do you not consider the "worker bees" who pay taxes and care only about the ones to whom the free money is being given?
Most people aren't idiots.
But they're a vocal minority.
You are welcome on my lawn.
She was a paralegal for 40 years?
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..
Now to add to my earlier comment on not just taxi drivers Doctors rather than patching up the above idiots can move into things like solving cancer etc. unfortunately many of them won't have the talent for that. no they aren't all as brilliant as the characters we see portrayed on TV shows
Your'e all thinking it, I just said it for you
As someone with a 30+ year experience in the legal profession I'm sure there are plenty of free-lance jobs available. Make your network known that while you're not working for that company any more, you are available for hire on a contract/project basis to provide paralegal research or advice. That's the sensible thing to do, and with modern forms of communication and a more and more flexible workforce you'd fit right in.
That, assuming you'd still want to be in the paralegal field of course. If not, indeed maybe driving for Uber and Lyft is a good alternative. At least it's something totally different, and that's what is sometimes needed.
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 critical needs every day so you can help small businesses move into a revitalize a community?
Is it fair to force uber drivers out of work because you have a technology that is cheaper and safer, even if some of them lose their homes and lives because of it? How many have to lose their homes before it's unfair?
Is it fair to force people not to use that technology because you want to keep those drivers employed?
Is it fair to outlaw pumping your own gas?
Is it fair for a union to prohibit you from screwing a pencil sharpener to your own desk? To your employer's desk? What if you bring your own desk to your office?
Most real decisions in life involve allocating resources unequally when people have different points of view about how they should be allocated and different sets of other resources to trade for them (whether physical or intangible). The grade-school concept of "fairness" does not provide answers to almost any decision or policy question. There is always a second-level argument about what makes something "fair," and humans are VERY good at rationalizing the opinion that supports their point of view. Arguments can almost always be structured to make "fair" whatever outcome you claim is the fair one. It's just a simple way of rationalizing our opinions about how things ought to be done.
Real lawyers write in C++
Yes, innovation is good for society at large. No, most people who read /. probably don't feel to bad when an established business is upset by a disruptive new company. Yes, change is good in the economy, as it keeps companies innovating. No it isn't good that a lot of people are going to lose their jobs.
But, this is particularly disturbing because driving a taxi is a hard problem to automate, and if this can be done, then it puts a timer on a lot of manual labor that people at the bottom of the financial ladder depend on to get by. Society in its current form cannot survive with 50% of the population perpetually impoverished and unemployed. There is a saying that a country is only ever meals away from revolution, and either we need to become a lot more generous with social entitlements, or cities will burn, and it will be France 1793 all over again.
The only real question is when? Based on social and technological change, I am guessing in no less that 20 years, but no more than 50 years.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I addressed bidets specifically as not being a point of successful automation because you still have to wipe afterward.
Have you not tried the Toto Washlet with built-in blow dryer? Truly a superior post-pooping experience. (There may be other models/brands that are even better, this is just a well-known example.)
Coming from the exact same group of people that threw the old buggy-whip makers argument in the face of cab drivers, this is too much. Yep, times change alright: and now they've changed against you. Seriously, what did you expect from Über?. And, you know, it's not like it's been a big secret that this was the long term plan.
Dear drivers;
Thank you for funding our autonomous vehicle research. Bye now.
Yours very sincerely,
T K
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.
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 well regulated industry and now we're seeing why that industry had to be so well regulated.
BTW, rental isn't really the right word for how Uber treats its drivers, chattel is closer. Things to be used, then thrown away when no longer convenient or fashionable.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
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.
Van Halen had a good reason for doing this. Concerts are set up in a matter of hours by contractors that are impossible to vet due to the sheer number of locations and short times between shows. So writing in instructions that seem like whimsy from a rock star demonstrates two things,
1. The venue has read the whole contract.
2. That the contractors can follow instructions.
This is important because you're trusting these venues and their staff to set up complex electrical and pyrotechnic systems. Also no band wants their fans to go home disappointed due to someone fucking up cabling to an amp.
And that is the kind of things unions are really useful for, monitoring and enforcing OH&S (Occupational Health and Safety). I'll be the first to admit that some unions go to excess, but most don't and do perform valuable services, not just to their members but also the company they're working for. Its no accident that unions tend to be popular amongst the more dangerous of jobs, construction, mariners and stevedores, so on and so forth because people can and do get hurt on the job. Unions do minimise this kind of thing, you might think of it as obstruction but in reality we don't just let people die in the street any more because they broke their wrist at work any more. This means that people who have work related injuries become a cost to society at large, that's why unions minimising work related injuries is a good thing.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
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 of real goods and services.
The health of an economy for most people (as well as the political health of a democracy) is not just how much currency there is, or how fast it moves, but how broadly the currency is distributed. Many average economic indicators may not reflect this economic depression for the 99% due to currency unavailability -- in the same way that if Bill Gates stepped into a homeless shelter by accident, everyone in the building would on average be a millionaire.
For more on the "Casino Economy" or "Gambling Economy" of abstract finance see the section of Money as Debt II starting around here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
In such a circumstance (which is close to the economy we have now), if a window breaks that a wealthy person or the government wants to fix, then some of the hoarded and speculated cash from the Casino economy may be leaked into the real economy of the 99%. This would temporarily alleviate a tiny bit of the ongoing defacto economic depression until the money is sucked back into the ever expanding Casino economy again via interest on debt or other forms of rent-seeking. Someone breaking a to-be-replaced window of a wealthy person or government in such a situation is then engaging in an indirect form of theft. WWII was another example that led to increased government spending and progressive taxation in the USA, although to great human suffering across the globe in other ways.
To be clear, breaking a window that needs to be repaired by the 99% does not have this currency redistribution effect since no additional currency will be moved from the casino economy to the real economy. Then we are just left with the fallacy in its standard form -- not the fallacy in the limiting case of concentrated hoarded wealth.
Of course, in practice, things getting broken only gives excuses for future crackdowns on "terrorists" and the diversion of what little cash is left circulating in the real economy for the 99% into new taxes for a larger security apparatus to protect the windows of the 1%, so ultimately the path of breaking windows is likely self-defeating.
Better options include alternative currencies, local exchange trading systems (LETS), an improved gift economy like via free software and shared knowledge like with Slashdot, improved local subsistence production like via 3D printing or home gardening robots like Farmbot, better democratic processes leading to better government planning, and political change towards a basic income (with the BI funded by progressive taxation and rents on resource extraction or government-granted monopolies like broadcast spectrum use). I discuss those and more options here:
http://pdfernhout.net/beyond-a...
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Obviously nothing related to UBER since they will be operating their own vehicles autonomously. Why would they pay you anything when they can keep all for themselves? You are just a step in that process, you will make them money, you will fund their research and when they have the job done you will be disposed as crap. As the crap that you are now if you are working for that obnoxious company.
"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."
She's 60 now? She'll be 70 before even a substantial number of autonomous taxis hit the street. It will certainly happen - autonomous vehicles will demolish the auto industries as well as the taxi industries, but it's not going to be overnight. The technology is still in its infancy.
I'm 66 now, and my car - probably the last car I'll ever buy - is 7 years old. I look forward to being able to summon a small autonomous vehicle to take me to the supermarket, and an hour later summon a larger vehicle to take me and my groceries home. Between that and Amazon Prime deliveries, I don't foresee a need for me to ever buy a new car again.
Docklands Light Rail in London. They have a guy on the train who can drive it if need be, but I can't remember the last time I saw anyone in the driver's seat other than a passenger, and I use it twice a day, 5 days a week.
We're overlooking the accidents, injuries, and deaths today. You probably drove today, despite knowing its one of the most dangerous things you do daily.
And seriously, look at all of the idiots and distracted drivers on the road. Do you really think a car that's actively monitoring its environment thousands of times a second can actually do WORSE?
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
You mean like the same "failure" mode that crashed the Tesla into the semi? Yes, that failure mode is (was) in all of them, but only one out of the thousands on the road managed to trip the scenario that caused a crash.
Further, while an alert, attentive driver could have avoided the collision, there are plenty of less-alert, distracted drivers out there who could well have plowed into the same semi in the same scenario.
And baring a true mechanical issue (that can occur in all cars), there's no need for massive recalls in case of a software glitch, just download the latest update into the car's computer overnight and the next morning everyone's good to go.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Uber drivers are desperate for cash. I don't begrudge the starving person who steals a loaf of bread. I begrudge the people cheering that person on.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Particularly the "human signalling something" part is not as much a LIDAR issue as it is an image/video interpretation issue. Computerised image interpretation is hard; video is even harder.
Also you'll have to teach the system to distinguish the various hand signals a police office can give (stop, go, go left, whatever), and distinguish a police officer's hand signals from a mom waving her kid goodbye as he cycles to school. Not an easy feat, and for sure a lot harder than avoiding static obstacles or predicting the path of other vehicles.
That with the temporary traffic lights, they should be able to get that under control much sooner. After all those are static objects with a rather well defined shape.
That was two years ago. Where do you think we'll be five years from now?
My reply was to the person who said, "They've logged thousands of hours on the road without drivers." No one knows where we'll be five years from now.
They are doing worse. Do I have to remind you that a google car just drove into a bus because there was a sandbag in the road? That a driver was decapitated because an automated car thought a trailor was a bridge? People have an intuition that prevents accidents that thousands of samples a second isn't going to solve. Is an automated car going to look down my street to see if there are any garage doors open so it knows there might be kids to run over? Because I do every time I leave my house. My driving record has been perfect for years, so far self driving cars aren't beating that.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
You mean like the same "failure" mode that crashed the Tesla into the semi? Yes, that failure mode is (was) in all of them, but only one out of the thousands on the road managed to trip the scenario that caused a crash.
Yes, a failure mode that exists in all implementations, so claiming it was "just one" so it's not a problem IS a problem.
but only one out of the thousands on the road managed to trip the scenario that caused a crash.
1. So far.
2. It was an unknown problem until it happened, just like the next problem will be, and the one after that, and the one after that. Trying to claim that this is the only problem there will ever be and everything will be unicorns and pixie dust after this one vehicle with just one problem is fixed is ridiculous. That is exactly the kind of claim being made when claims of unrealizable safety are made regarding autonomous vehicles.
Further, while an alert, attentive driver could have avoided the collision,
Not when his perfectly safe autonomous vehicle has no steering wheel or pedals.
there are plenty of less-alert, distracted drivers out there
Yes, we know, humans make mistakes, so it is ok that we deliberately create autonomous systems that will make mistakes and use smoke and mirrors to try to hide the unsafe situations that those systems have already demonstrated. It is ok to turn everyone into innocent victims reliant on some distant computer engineer to understand the full ramifications of any tiny change to the system instead of keeping some human responsible for the stupid mistakes he makes.
And baring a true mechanical issue (that can occur in all cars), there's no need for massive recalls in case of a software glitch, just download the latest update into the car's computer overnight
Are you truly ignorant of the safety issues such a system has, over and above the safety issues that it is trying to resolve? Do the words "windows" and "ten" not mean anything, that we'd want to create such a large scale problem with two-ton rolling steel missles instead of just a laptop computer?
and the next morning everyone's good to go.
"Preparing your car for updates, please do not shut the car off. Processing update 2 of 318 ..." OMG.
We're overlooking the accidents, injuries, and deaths today.
You may be doing that, but that's not everyone.
You probably drove today, despite knowing its one of the most dangerous things you do daily.
Yep. And I did that because I evaluate the costs and benefits of doing that, considering the risks and hazards and mitigating what I could and then reaching an informed decision. With an autonomous vehicle it is entirely "trust me, we know how to program things better than you know how to drive". As someone who works with computers programmed by the same kinds of people every day, that scares me.
Do you really think a car that's actively monitoring its environment thousands of times a second can actually do WORSE?
Yes. Of course. "Monitoring" doesn't mean shit when "the proper reaction" is required. And "monitoring" can fail.
But it doesn't matter that it can do worse. I am not ready to accept the grandiose, unproven claims of magical safety that autonomous vehicle proponents keep spreading around. If you notice, the argument for how safe these things will be always devolves into "but humans aren't perfect...", as if that were the only concern. And you started your posting with exactly that argument. "We're overlooking" the death and carnage and wanton destruction ...
Strawberry picking robot. "The robot can harvest strawberries every 8 seconds and works while farmers sleep."
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.
Not one thing you listed here was brought about by unions. I'm sick of this myth being repeated because it's a total load of shit.
Paid sick days is a concept that goes as far back as Ancient Egypt, and has been in use almost all throughout history.
Having Sunday off has been a thing since the industrial revolution, prior to which most people were farmers and didn't have a "work week" per se. Saturdays off, and indeed the 40 hour work week, began with Henry Ford, who wanted to attract workers who wouldn't just suddenly stop showing up one day to seek greener pastures. Unions had absolutely not a thing to do with that, nevermind dying for it.
Paid time off began as a similar industry trend, along with company sponsored health insurance, as a result of government wage ceilings during WWII. Why? Because companies needed something other than money to offer employees to retain them from going elsewhere.
Another concept that people like to attribute to unions, which isn't, is hazardous duty pay/benefits. Dupont started that before unions were even a thing to retain workers who wanted to switch jobs because they were afraid that their families would starve if they were to die while making black powder and other explosives like nitroglycerine.
So please, stop these lies (yes, they're blatant lies) about how good you think unions are, because they aren't responsible for ANY of the things that people think they're responsible for.
As for the lawn chair and umbrellas bit, that's not in the contract. What's in the contract is how long it will take for the job to be completed. The company I'm referring to, CenturyLink, figures that into the SLA guarantees, which are total crap compred to their main competitor, Cox. However we need a dual-home WAN link, which means we need both companies, even if one is totally shitty.