
Autonomous vehicles could contribute $1.3T a year to the U.S. economy - troydavis
http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/12/driving-the-new-american-century/
======
gaelenh
Last week in my robotics classes, the 4th grade students built and programmed
simple "self-driving" cars with LEGO EV3's. My students are mostly 1st
generation immigrants in Brooklyn. Many of their families' main source of
income is through driving for a car service.

Looking at one of the charts from OP, these kids' parents are horses. What
will they do when those jobs don't exist anymore? Will the new "horse"
population be reduced? How will they fit into the new economy?

Other than providing childcare for upper middle class families (subsidized by
sending their own kids to substandard preschools), most of their jobs will be
replaced through automation in less than 10 years. Most of these families are
working 40+ hour weeks on minimum wages and still need WIC and other benefits
to get groceries and low end govt/city childcare for their kids. I know basic
income is an (the?) answer, however I don't see the US getting on board with
that idea in the next 10 years.

~~~
winter_blue
A basic needs guarantee (or even basic income) might be the only way to
guarantee that a chunk of the population doesn't fall into total destitution.

Once so much is automated, would it not be feasible and practical to provide
basic needs (food, clothing, housing, etc) to every human being?

Also, a politically acceptable alternative to basic income might be Keynesian
economics:

-> In one case, the government taxes the middle and upper classes, and gives out that money to everyone -- no strings attached.

-> In Keynesian economics, government similarly hands out money to people, but requires them to do something in return for it.

Both involve high taxes and high government spending. I just realized this
similarity between Keynesian economics and basic incomes, and I'm amazed by
the parallel.

With Keynesian economics, the governments gets to makes people "do stuff", in
return for what would've been "free money" with basic income.

If a government uses this to direct the population towards productive and
meaningful endeavors, then could this be better? Government could provide
"basic income" to all the unemployed arts graduates by funding the arts.
Similarly, we could encourage every smart person to pursue pure research, and
then instead of "basic income", fund them to do research!

~~~
bravo22
I agree with GBI for the interim, but one thing everyone is forgetting is that
we're resource bound as a race. GBI will deal with the distribution issue but
not overall consumption. And I hate to say it but the more prosperous the
average family becomes, i.e. less death and hunger, the faster the overall
population will grow. At the same time the faster technology grows the less
need we'll have for average person to work.

The environmental problems we are experiencing are mostly an issue of our
population relative to the environment. Ultimately there needs to be a
population control/reduction mechanism.

It won't be easy, pretty, or likely even ethical but it will happen and it
will be a source of great conflict.

The alternative is we end up space ferrying before that happens.

~~~
winter_blue
> but the more prosperous the average family becomes ... the faster the
> overall population will grow

All statistics point to the opposite. Education and higher income correlate
with lower number of children.

In countries like India, the educated middle and upper classes have a very low
birth rate -- most families have 1 or 2 kids. It usually the poor and
uneducated families that have the most kids.

Most developed countries also have a birth rate that is below replacement. As
people get more educated, the human population (for whatever reason) _seems to
be at risk of collapse / rapid shrinkage_.

I don't know why educated people chose to have less kids, but that is what the
statistics are telling us.

------
matheweis
Maybe ... before that happens, however, there will be a major shift in the
most common vocation in nearly every state in the US. 3 million truckers will
need major vocational re-training, and that doesn't even begin to count the
many other services and industries that are dependent on truckers. See
[https://medium.com/basic-income/self-driving-trucks-are-
goin...](https://medium.com/basic-income/self-driving-trucks-are-going-to-hit-
us-like-a-human-driven-truck-b8507d9c5961)

------
teach
This is a really interesting article, but I still haven't heard a convincing
argument _why_ people will suddenly want to share/rent rather than own cars.

Can anyone sketch the logic for me?

~~~
fernly
Also, just plain convenience. You want to go into the city center for a date,
e.g. wife and I want to go have dinner at the Hayes St. Grille and hear a
concert at SF Jazz. Today: drive into the city, deal with stressful traffic,
also stress at finding somewhere to park which will often be blocks from the
restaurant. After, walk some blocks through the dark streets, drive home.

Tomorrow: driverless Lyft. Request a Lyft, hop in, ignore traffic entirely
while talking or reading; step out at the door of the restaurant. After,
request a Lyft while walking out of concert, step out the door of SF Jazz and
hop into car(1), read/chat on the way home. The reduction of stress is huge,
the whole date is much more enjoyable.

(1) This scenario does reveal a future problem, what happens when a whole
bunch of people call for a driverless ride after an event? Does this happen
now, are bunches of people competing for Ubers and Lyfts after concerts today?
How will we identify ourselves to a _driverless_ car as being the requesting
party?

~~~
afarrell
What happens is that in order to request a lyft, you'll put in your
destination and if a bunch of people put in a similar destination, the option
will pop up to take an auto-scheduled van/minibus.

Also, lyft will download the Giants schedule.

------
ZoeZoeBee
Contribute should really be "save" as most of the contributions $563 Billion
from auto-accidents and $422 Billion in "efficiency gains" are merely taken
away from Collision and Auto Repair shops as well as the Millions of
Professional Drivers which are never mentioned in the article.

------
abalone
This article is a bit sloppy. Just because we use our cars 5% of the time does
not mean we only need 5% as many self-driving cars. That assumes there is no
overlap in when we want to use them.

Also, all those words and not one mention of the liability shift to the
manufacturer when cars go fully autonomous. That's one of the biggest issues
with the transition. Software will have to be near perfect to avoid
bankrupting manufacturers through tort suits. (It's not just an insurance
premium shift, it's liability for major tort damages in fatal accidents that
often bankrupt the responsible party.) So we are more likely to be in a _semi_
-autonomous, driver-assistance world for quite some time. And that invalidates
pretty much all of the article which is predicated on driverless vehicles.

------
pschastain
But where does this wealth go? I love the idea of autonomous vehicles - I
drive A LOT - but I also agree with Prof. Hawking and what he's said about
technology and the wealth/opportunities it generates serving the few vs. the
many.

------
x5n1
Is that contribute 1.3T or cost the economy 1.3T. Those "savings" is money not
going to other people and businesses.

~~~
newjersey
As with any automation, I understand it frees people up so they can do other
productive things.

~~~
x0054
But at some point we run out of productive things to do. And then what? Well,
if we play our cards right, utopia. But what are the chances of that.

~~~
stale2002
Why do you believe we are anywhere near that point? The same thing has been
going on too the last 300 years due to industrialization, and things have
turned out great. Why is THIS innovation going to be any different?

~~~
zanny
Workforce participation is at a 20 year low, considering the introduction of
women into the workforce (who previously were a sleeper population of
housekeepers and caretakers of children and elderly, which are now just
general businesses) it is the lowest it has _ever_ been.

Likewise, the glut of minimum wage labor (and the gradual transition of most
of the populace into low level service workers) and the lack of well paying
careers outside tech going forward, with the propensity to attempt to automate
_all_ of it as soon as we are able, means it will keep getting worse.

Point me to _any_ use we will have in the next ten years for just a human
being without any specialized training that will see significant enough gains
to offset all these obviously continuing declines in workforce participation
and available work. And even beyond that - how many tasks are we going to have
for anyone but programmers? Is _any_ industry going to grow rather than
shrink?

We are going to try our hardest to automate as much of every industry there is
as we can. We won't eliminate your doctor in 10 years, but Watson and similar
AI will replace 90% of his job, so that one doctor can handle 10 times as many
patients as they do now. You might insist on a meatbag barista, but once a
barista bot can sense your phone is nearby and makes your coffee for you
before you even get to the counter just the way you like it at _any_ location
anywhere, most people will much prefer that convenience, and the cheaper
coffee is just a nice perk.

All professions are under threat - even programmers are being threatened, not
the forward thinkers who found startups or push new ideas, but the cogs that
work in big inefficient bureaucratic business software - it is often solving
the same problem, that better languages, frameworks, and general solution are
working to replace. Local IT admins have died an unsung death in the last five
years as cloud infrastructure has taken over the industry, for example.

~~~
newjersey
Absolutely. There is a challenge here and we must acknowledge it. The
challenge is how do we ensure people can sustain themselves? One part should
be universal basic income so we can ensure people don't physically starve to
death. There is a second part here as well though. People need to feel they
are doing something worthwhile, that they are productive. Basic income won't
solve that. My hope is as we reduce inefficiencies in the labor force, we will
be able to put more towards infrastructure building and repairing as well as
(like someone else said above) taking care of the very young, the very old,
and those in need.

