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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.
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.
Just like all the 20 somethings that signed up for student loans and are now complaining that they student loan debt. They don't want to be right, they just things to be in their favor.
Automating every last job is the correct path to a future where nobody has to work and we can just exist as humans, bettering ourselves. Ideal society if you ask me. Working for masters is overrated.
I 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Not only are there a lot of fruits/vegetables that still have to be hand picked
See Robotic Fruit Picking
People will still need blowjobs and other orifices to fill. Even though sexbots and AI will severely cut into it, there's still plenty of rich folks who'd love a live human to treat like garbage. Pucker up, fuckers.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
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.
The other 997 people do something else entirely, or work at some new company at some *new* site as their operators/techs/engineers. That's just "economic growth".
But the new site will just hire 3 and have a bunch of robots instead. And 994 still need to eat. This is the problem a lot of people seem to have trouble grasping. In 20/30 years we're not going to have specialized robots that weld a steel car frame and every time you want to change what it welds you need to pay a CAD engineer and automation tech for a couple of days of work for the new car frame layout. Instead there are going to be general purpose AIs and robots that will be able to adapt to a number of tasks with minimal reprogramming. Companies won't be hiring new workers, they'll be buying new machines, paying to have them set up once and then that's it. Low skill jobs the world over are particularly vulnerable this time around. There are legions of people working nonstop to automate every aspect of the working world and things like a burger joint are the perfect starting point because there will be so many buyers for that equipment once it works sufficiently well.
The problem isn't that there will be no jobs, we're obviously no where near that point. The problem is that there probably won't be enough jobs to employee all the people being displaced.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace