
White House predicts all truck, taxi, and delivery drivers will be wiped out - electic
http://qz.com/868716/the-white-house-predicts-nearly-all-truck-taxi-and-delivery-driver-jobs-will-be-automated/
======
subhobroto
Technical innovation moves and concentrates the savings to the top of the
chain.

Technical innovation is a capital expenditure that pays off large returns in
the long term.

Technical innovation permanently removes/drastically minimizes OpEx for those
willing to put up with significant capital expenditure (in building the
Technology in the first place): but once done, those jobs are gone.

It made mining, telephone, retail, manufacturing etc companies drastically
minimize their dependence on human labor. These are salaries that will never
ever need to be paid that goes directly to the bottomline.

Next up is transportation.

Most governments dont want to be bothered with transportation and run it
inefficiently.

New companies are capitalizing on this to establish future oligopolies:
[https://www.quora.com/What-controls-help-ensure-the-
growing-...](https://www.quora.com/What-controls-help-ensure-the-growing-ride-
share-companies-dont-eventually-hold-us-ransom-after-public-private-
transportation-has-eroded-away)

Sure, there will be human intervention required for edge cases but it will be
humans augmenting technology, not technology augmenting humans in
transportation.

Electric (and autonomous) vehicles are going to be the next PC era that is
going to change the world for decades and build the new billionaires.

~~~
dao-
> These are salaries that will never ever need to be paid that goes directly
> to the bottomline.

This is only true for the first innovators. Competition means that these
'saleries' will just disappear rather than going directly to the bottomline.
Exchange value (~ the price) shrinks as you replace human labour, as Karl Marx
would already have told you. ;)

And that's not even a bad thing. It's good that people don't have to waste
their lives in mines etc. The crucial question is how we as a society deal
with this.

~~~
intended
Well if you dont generate value in society, what will society do with you?

Or any system for that matter?

I may not personally support such a view, but from a purely functional stand
point, you are about as much value as you earn and can therefore afford.

~~~
goatlover
Isn't that an old fashioned way of thinking about people in societies headed
for more and more automation?

Your value is that you're human being. Let the machines be enslaved to
producing goods and services for the humans.

~~~
krapp
> Isn't that an old fashioned way of thinking about people in societies headed
> for more and more automation?

That's the capitalist way of thinking about people. Old fashioned or not, it
dominates the lives of most people on the planet, and the value of most lives
can be summed to a precise monetary amount - that being the value of the labor
extracted from them by society over their lifetime, as determined by the
market.

We should be considering what to do about the likelihood that most people made
redundant by automation will simply be left valueless to society. No one seems
to actually be _trying_ to use automation to build a utopia and free everyone
from the struggles of work. Rather, automation is allowing the elite to reap
the benefits of labor without the burden of supporting society through
compensating human beings for work.

------
georgeecollins
This may not be unprecedented, and hence may not be worse overall than other
historical changes in employment. Yes, eventually all delivery driving of
people and things will be able to be replaced by machines. But it doesn't
exist today to do it safely and reliably in all cases.

Imagine if the technology did exist today to do safely and reliably in all
cases. It would still take a huge capital investment and turnover of equipment
to replace or refit all the human driven vehicles. It would be hard to do in a
decade. So imagine it takes another five to ten years to drive the cost down
and work out the kinks with weather and construction and so on and ten years
to do the actual replacing. Keep in mind the existing equipment and labor will
get cheaper as it starts to get replaced, slowing the transition. It seems it
like the whole transition could take twenty years.

So in twenty years a major job category is going to get wiped out. Like
lamplighters, stable hands, textile workers etc. The US has had twenty year
periods where 10% of the population has quit farming
([https://www.census.gov/population/censusdata/table-4.pdf](https://www.census.gov/population/censusdata/table-4.pdf)).

This will be a big change, but it may not be a worse change than some that
have happened in the past.

~~~
djsumdog
I still don't think driverless tech is even there yet. What Uber is doing in
San Francisco is a little scary. I'm waiting for the first fatality.

Autonomous vehicles will also not solve the transportation problem. A hundred
automated trucks still doesn't come anywhere near the efficiency of three
freight engines pulling the same load. Even if every car was autonomous on the
Interstate, you might get rid of gridlock but you'd still have a lot of people
moving very slowly; well under the theoretical maximum capacity for single
lane transport.

I wrote a post describing this:

[http://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not-
sol...](http://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not-solve-the-
transportation-problem/)

~~~
dragonwriter
> I still don't think driverless tech is even there yet. What Uber is doing in
> San Francisco is a little scary. I'm waiting for the first fatality.

But we're well past the first fatality in a human-driven Uber.

~~~
tomp
Who would you jail when an AI runs over a pedestrian?

~~~
dragonwriter
Fatal accidents often don't result in someone being jailed (fatal accidents
that involve something like DUI do, and if there is an analogous human choice
to deliberately cripple the self-deiving system of a vehicle that results in a
fatality, the person linked to that act would likely be just as jailable as a
DUI driver.)

------
srssays
Amazon Go will be worse. There are a lot more retail workers than drivers. The
technology is closer to fruition: Amazon has a working autonomous store, but
we are still a long way from fully autonomous vehicles.

The hardware requirements for any store that wants to adopt Amazon's tech are
minimal: some cameras, an entry gate and possibly some pressure pads under the
shelves.

Even if Amazon doesn't license out their tech -- and they would be foolish not
to -- you can be sure that Google and Microsoft are working on their own
versions. The market is staggeringly big.

~~~
Erik816
I think it would be hard to argue that we are a long way from fully autonomous
vehicles, since millions of miles have already been driven by autonomous
vehicles. What remains is mostly regulatory hurdles, psychological hurdles,
and fine tuning.

~~~
exDM69
> What remains is mostly regulatory hurdles, psychological hurdles, and fine
> tuning.

I think this is too optimistic. Self-driving cars only work because they are
in the minority. Can you imagine a city full of current state-of-the-art self
driving cars and it not turning into a traffic chaos?

In particular, I think that self-driving cars cannot work fully autonomously
without communicating with other cars or the road infrastructure. And I am not
aware of any effort to create a cross-vendor car-to-car communication
protocol.

There are trivial cases where pure autonomous following of traffic rules will
lead to deadlock (or other issues). Take these two simple examples: 1) 4 cars
arrive at the same time in a four-way intersection without signals or yields
2) on a three lane road, two cars from the outer lanes try to switch to the
middle lane at the same time.

These are by no means difficult problems (I'm sure there are more difficult
cases too), but they _must_ be solved and so far they're not being worked on.

~~~
walrus1066
Add to that, car to human-driven-car, and car to human (police officer,
traffic coordinator) communication.

Sometimes the communication needs to be complex (I.e. Verbal). I've had a few
instances when I've had to negotiate to unblock a traffic deadlock, mostly
when a two way lane is constricted to one vehicle only due to parked cars, or
a HGV which is too big to drive past. In London this happens quite frequently.

I really cannot think how an autonomous car, with no human inside, could
handle these scenarios.

------
jccooper
Barring major infrastructure and cultural changes, or general purpose
ambulatory robots, delivery trucks will still need humans on board to handle
the delivery (and pickup) part. No self-driving car is delivering to the
seventh floor, and I'm certainly not operating the lift gate myself for LTL
pallet deliveries.

That's a pretty fair part of the commercial fleet, though vehicles with self-
mobile cargo (taxis) or dedicated handlers on each end (long haul) are quite
amenable to automation.

~~~
rch
So last-mile service is becoming last-yard service. That's a good way to think
of it because these will be subsistence jobs, or slightly below. Employees
will no longer need a commercial license, or even a clean driving record.

------
untog
There's a fascinating (if strongly worded) article on Recode that touches on
this:

[http://www.recode.net/2016/12/19/13600538/silicon-valley-
gro...](http://www.recode.net/2016/12/19/13600538/silicon-valley-grow-up-
donald-trump-election)

In short: Silicon Valley is going to drive a _lot_ of job losses in the not
too distant future. There's a very real danger that will blow back as mass
unemployment drives people to extremes, unless people start thinking very
seriously about what this new world is going to look like, and how the vast
majority of the country will earn a living.

~~~
djsumdog
I really hate the idea that everyone needs to work. I get paid a lot as a
software engineer to write stuff. Over the years, I've just seen so much money
poured into tech that makes people buy more tech or that does nothing but
license intellectual property.

I quit my job for 11 months in 2015 and flew around the world; backpacking off
my savings:

[http://khanism.org/perspective/minimalism/](http://khanism.org/perspective/minimalism/)

It was the happiest time of my life. I'm planning on getting some funding
sources for next time (Pateron, grants for OSS projects, etc.) and see if I
can make it longer next time. I'd rather just make enough, making content and
tech that I like and find useful, supported by peers, than working the the
current tech world.

Reynolds envisioned a world like this in his book Army of Davids. I think he
painted an overly rosy outlook and neglected to realize how difficult it is to
start small businesses or how little time people have after their day jobs to
work on things. (You can kinda glaze over those things when you're a UT
professor).

~~~
gluggymug
I'm visualizing a future world where a million more homeless people are truck-
hopping rather than train-hopping. You summon a delivery robo-truck by
stealing all the goods off a shop shelf. It's a bit like calling for a sand
worm in Dune.

Can't afford Uber? Just hang onto the roof of one.

~~~
marssaxman
That idea came up in conversation among some friends just a couple of days
ago! As soon as we have reliable robo-taxis, we're going to have teenagers
(and drunk adults) reinventing "train surfing".

~~~
gluggymug
It's the latest in hipster travel modes. Riding a penny farthing is too
tame.... Unless you're skitching off the bumper of a robo-Uber.

------
coldcode
In a long enough timeframe, most of our jobs will become obsolete; the
question is how long? As a programmer I am not worried, as AI isn't really
smart enough to interpret the crap I am asked to build.

------
electic
This could have a chilling effect, especially for folks in the midwest who
tend to rely on trucking for their livelihood[1].

[1]
[http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-t...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-
the-most-common-job-in-every-state)

~~~
k2enemy
Yes, this will be a big problem to confront, but it should be noted that the
NPR story is very misleading: [http://www.marketwatch.com/story/no-truck-
driver-isnt-the-mo...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/no-truck-driver-isnt-
the-most-common-job-in-your-state-2015-02-12)

------
gooseus
I see a lot of speculation about how this is going to play out when the robots
take our jobs so hey, why not join in right? Holiday week and all.

We know what people have done in the past when this sort of thing has happened
-
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite)

> The Luddites were a group of English textile workers and self-employed
> weavers in the 19th century that used the destruction of machinery as a form
> of protest.

I think that once the robots take enough jobs such that the anti-automation
movement reaches a critical mass (and it won't take 100% of the jobs to do
that, prob not even 50%) then we'll start seeing these sorts of things happen.

Sabotage of driverless cars will be trivial to carry out and very expensive to
deal with... some forms may not have adequate protection under criminal law
yet, which will require cooperation with legislators and law enforcement to
address (good luck with that Uber).

I'm thinking things like finding and intentionally exploiting environmental
cues that driverless cars use to make decisions (releasing plastic bags into
intersections?) or else using directed radio interference to prevent them from
communicating with homebase to know where to go next.

Some of these may be protected already by FCC or EPA or state-level
equivalents, but will enforcement be up to the task? Is the FCC prepared to
monitor and enforce local signal interference for corporations? Is a $500
littering fine enough to dissuade individuals and groups from continuing in
"civil disobedience"?

My core point is that if anyone thinks people are going to take this lying
down then they don't know human beings. Everyone is only 3 missed meals away
from doing "whatever it takes" and that's even less if it's your kid(s) that
are missing the meals.

If nothing is in place when the layoffs come then it'll take no time for
former workers to organize and take matters into their own hands... within
that election cycle the organization will be co-opted by some other ideology
which conflates their anger at losing their job to automation with race,
class, political affiliation, etc.

/speculation

------
amelius
Another question is: who will be getting their money?

And then: is that fair?

In the long run, shouldn't technological progress benefit us all equally?

~~~
soared
My answer is... no? Why would that be the case? Those people don't necesarrily
have any right to that money. They /arguably/ have a right to a
job/food/housing, but that is a whole other discussion.

Stopping technological progress because its unfair feels absurd.

~~~
stephancoral
Continuing technical progress just for the sake of progress and at the expense
of human life and dignity feels absurd.

~~~
wavefunction
And if we go by soared's answer, it's all for the sake of a diminishingly
smaller number of people.

------
wernerb
I feel this short (but worthwhile) video explains the problem best.
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU)

~~~
pdkl95
I recommend also watching Mark Blyth's brief overview[1] of how this problem
has already affected the political landscape over the last several decades.
Significant changes need to be made immediately to handle the changes
technology is forcing on the economy.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWMmBG3Z4DI#t=792](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWMmBG3Z4DI#t=792)

------
analog31
At the extreme, a drastic decline in incomes, through unemployment or wage
reduction, would eliminate the need for trucks altogether, because there would
be no money to drive demand for goods.

------
Deckard256
I've worked for a medical laboratory as a courier for eleven years. I don't
think all of these jobs will be completely wiped out, for several reasons hit
on by people in this thread. Many of the things I do on a daily basis can be
automated, (I know because I've been able to automate parts of my job), but
other parts will prove to be such a high bar, it will be twenty years before
they will be cost effective and/or the technology is created. I worry more
about low cost, easy to use scanning technologies displacing my job more than
I do automated vehicles, at least in the near term. Retraining those of us who
want it really wouldn't be as daunting a task as it sounds. I've been able to
listen to thousands of hours of audio while I drive, both audio books and
university classes, and I encourage my coworkers to do the same. Most of us
understand that this line of work will be disrupted at some point. Places like
Uber will lead the front of the change. Business like where I am at, where I
handle hazardous materials, and places like ups, which have unions blocking
automation, will take quite a bit longer in switching over to autonomous
vehicles.

------
blakesterz
>> What those new jobs for truck or delivery drivers might be is “not
currently foreseeable.”

I wonder if the same thing has been said about other professions that have
been more or less wiped out in the past? I would guess the answer is "yes"

And then the next logical question is "So what did all those people end up
doing?" Maybe that's how we being to answer the question of what all the
truck, taxi and delivery drivers can be doing when those jobs are gone?

Or do those jobs just get phased out as people leave them? Like people who
quit for whatever reason are just not replaced by other people, they get
replaced with the bots (or whatever we call the things that are replacing
people here).

[Added thought] Maybe the answer is found in how secretaries were replaced?
They were recently the most popular jobs in many states, and now are not.

~~~
electic
Most of these folks will be phased out but likely might never find work again.
Things are different this time. There are multiple regions in the United
States and the world solely focused on disrupting entire industries by
automating them.

In the past, the speed of automation was slower giving time for people to
adapt. Going forward, things will be swift and I am not sure what these people
will do.

~~~
pm90
I think that is precisely why the White House is weighing in on this.
Unfortunately, the Obama administration seems to be the only branch of the US
legislature that is willing to look at the real issues that will cause much
pain for US citizens in the future (instead of bickering about religion,
climate change denial etc.)

~~~
wavefunction
Just a nit, President Obama heads the Executive branch of the US Federal
government, with the other two branches being the Judicial branch (Supreme
Court of the USA), and the Legislative branch (Congress).

------
amelius
If only AI could wipe out the advertisement industry first ...

------
pier25
I'm guessing with the rise of automated jobs there will be a huge rise in
electrical and mechanical engineers.

After all, someone has to take care of those machines, no?

~~~
lotsoflumens
I don't think so - the machines will serviced by machines. It's easier to
design machines that can be easily maintained by machines than to design
machines that can replace humans.

------
selimthegrim
The report also comes out against UBI.

