> These new trucks won’t need sleep, they won’t speed, and they won’t get road rage. They won’t ride the brakes or make unnecessary lane changes, wasting fuel. And they won’t need to abide by the 11-hour daily driving maximum imposed on long-haul truckers for safety reasons.
Exactly.
Even if a robot vehicle could "just" match the performance of a human, we would still vastly prefer them because we want people to do higher complexity tasks than operate motor vehicles.
> we want people to do higher complexity tasks than operate motor vehicles.
Why? And who is the "we" here?
I really could care less what kind of job someone else enjoys doing. They don't owe me anything and I don't want to tell them what kind of job to have any more than I want someone telling me what job to have.
Instead of "we want people to do higher complexity tasks than operate motor vehicles," I would say:
Moving humans from lower to higher complexity tasks generally correlates to increased productivity, higher efficiency, or "getting more with less." Generally, this leads to a wealthier society and other positive things.
The above is not true about everything but holds up in general.
Ehh, the point is not to tell others what to do but to not stop innovation by government regulation pandering to trade or labor groups. Look at the latest dock workers agreement that includes language to prevent automation. Dockwork is one of the best examples of something that can be automated quite well.
Even if people want to do higher complexity tasks, that doesn't mean they will have the opportunity to. Much more likely is that people just become poorer and/or switch to more demeaning jobs.
I knew a guy many years ago, super nice guy, who was an over the road trucker. I don’t think he had it in him to do more complex tasks. Hard worker, nice, just the way God made him. I think the task complexity stopped at driving.
There also won't be a truck driver to under pay or not pay at all to load and unload the truck nor be a sham owner-operator who is being leased the truck by the trucking company and can barely eke out a living.
Same challenge Uber at al face with autonomous vehicles - when you can underpay a driver 50 cents a mile to drive their own car, it doesn't make much sense to have an autonomous vehicle that costs you closer to 70 cents a mile to operate.
> we want people to do higher complexity tasks than operate motor vehicles
Does it look like the market is sitting today on a pool of hundreds of thousands of higher complexity jobs that just go unfilled because people choose to "just" operate motor vehicles? Do those jobs look like a realistic fit for today's truck drivers?
There are 3 million truck drivers in the US today. Do "we" understand what's the impact of "our" preference towards what other people should do? Or is what "we" want coming from a place of "I'm safe from all of this so I can afford to have lofty ideals for others"?
> Even if a robot vehicle could "just" match the performance of a human, we would still vastly prefer them because we want people to do higher complexity tasks than operate motor vehicles.
Sadly, this sounds like an anodyne ideal, tuned to rationalize "don't worry, feel happy" indifference in well-to-do people - who are conveniently far away from the affected workers, and the grim realities of how the change will actually play out in their lives and communities.
And diminishing cost of returns. If it just gets 60% of human performance the industry will use them, and push to advance the technology to the point of no human interaction.
These trucks will also not form unions or start trucker protests like in Canada.
They'll centralize and monopolize yet another middleman's dream and create the physical Internet, with vast opportunities for rent seeking and wealth extraction.
You will not own the trucks: They'll be rented to you, you won't be able to repair them. If they malfunction, you'll have to talk to some centralized Email or "AI" based customer "service".
Somehow, the monopolists will extract as much money as you previously spent on a driver.
It may not be a monopoly in the beginning, but it will consolidate to at least an oligopoly soon.
In a mostly driverless industry there will be protocols and standards a human driver will not be able to fulfill. Using humans in these workflows will be a nuisance.
You see, they will be cheaper at first. Or maybe they don't even need to if demand outpaces supply. And then slowly companies begin to rely on them. And once the industry is completely destroyed, they will slowly up their margins. I know, unheard of.
> If that digging would give work to a hundred men with shovels and picks, why not get a thousand men and give them teaspoons with which to dig up the dirt?”
Stereotypical anti-luddite quotes are not thinking. Automation in construction has not led to lower prices, on the contrary, prices are exploding. Automation in car manufacturing has not led to lower prices, cars are still expensive. Automation in health care didn't prevent prices from exploding.
If a monopoly emerges, by definition control and prices are centralized. And I really don't want broligarchs that follow the agenda 2025 to control the food chain.
I could imagine we create dedicated infrastructure lanes which aren't meant for ordinary people. That would make the self-driving problems a lot more manageable.
And if it's not the same infrastructure, we can lower the fuel cost by reducing rolling resistance by switching to steel wheels on steel tracks, and then since no other vehicles will be on this infrastructure, we can chain multiple of the trailers together, aaaand we've invented trains.
All transportation alternatives converge into trains over time, it's like carcinization but for transport.
Such dedicated infrastructure lanes would cost an enormous amount of money, which the operators of such autonomous vehicles are not going to want to pay.
I had the same reaction to reading this I also had the reaction that the truck would "know" way before seeing the blockage - because the cloud AI will know everything everywhere all at once.
Working on self-driving truck software has to be one of the most high-stress jobs in software development - I'd have trouble sleeping at night, given the carnage that could potentially result from my mistakes.
What's more surprising in there is that it's not Waymo doing this. It's hard to argue that Waymo isn't way ahead of the rest in self driving. And this outfit putting self driving semi trucks on the road is [checks notes] Aurora Innovation.
Who?
Further we learn they are proud of "360-degree sensors that can detect objects 1,000 feet away" and "already logged more than 1,000 driverless miles shuttling goods along Interstate 45 in Texas" - that's what? two days? "We have something like 2.7 million tests that we run the system through" and "two trucks without a driver".
What in the world?
Now, I will grant that some of this nonsense is probably the [checks notes] New York Times writer but still. This is absurd.
The conclusion goes beyond that: "What Aurora’s doing is being much more careful than most,"
Even the trucks will probably start experiencing mechanical failures more quickly than anyone expects (based on the passage of calendar time) due to the 100% duty cycle I would think
Readit News
Exactly.
Even if a robot vehicle could "just" match the performance of a human, we would still vastly prefer them because we want people to do higher complexity tasks than operate motor vehicles.
Why? And who is the "we" here?
I really could care less what kind of job someone else enjoys doing. They don't owe me anything and I don't want to tell them what kind of job to have any more than I want someone telling me what job to have.
Instead of "we want people to do higher complexity tasks than operate motor vehicles," I would say:
Moving humans from lower to higher complexity tasks generally correlates to increased productivity, higher efficiency, or "getting more with less." Generally, this leads to a wealthier society and other positive things.
The above is not true about everything but holds up in general.
Same challenge Uber at al face with autonomous vehicles - when you can underpay a driver 50 cents a mile to drive their own car, it doesn't make much sense to have an autonomous vehicle that costs you closer to 70 cents a mile to operate.
Does it look like the market is sitting today on a pool of hundreds of thousands of higher complexity jobs that just go unfilled because people choose to "just" operate motor vehicles? Do those jobs look like a realistic fit for today's truck drivers?
There are 3 million truck drivers in the US today. Do "we" understand what's the impact of "our" preference towards what other people should do? Or is what "we" want coming from a place of "I'm safe from all of this so I can afford to have lofty ideals for others"?
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.nr0.htm
I'm not sure how many of them are more complex than truck driving but it's safe to say that there are plenty of employers looking for workers.
Sadly, this sounds like an anodyne ideal, tuned to rationalize "don't worry, feel happy" indifference in well-to-do people - who are conveniently far away from the affected workers, and the grim realities of how the change will actually play out in their lives and communities.
They'll centralize and monopolize yet another middleman's dream and create the physical Internet, with vast opportunities for rent seeking and wealth extraction.
You will not own the trucks: They'll be rented to you, you won't be able to repair them. If they malfunction, you'll have to talk to some centralized Email or "AI" based customer "service".
Somehow, the monopolists will extract as much money as you previously spent on a driver.
It may not be a monopoly in the beginning, but it will consolidate to at least an oligopoly soon.
Dead Comment
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/10/10/spoons-shovels/
> If that digging would give work to a hundred men with shovels and picks, why not get a thousand men and give them teaspoons with which to dig up the dirt?”
Hopefully so, but it’s not a given. Factors like consolidation, collusion, anti-competitive regulations, etc all can lead to keeping prices high.
If a monopoly emerges, by definition control and prices are centralized. And I really don't want broligarchs that follow the agenda 2025 to control the food chain.
All transportation alternatives converge into trains over time, it's like carcinization but for transport.
> “I thought for sure I was going to kill those people,” she said.
I hope at least the autonomous truck won't be driving at the very limit of the available stopping distance.
She seems to have been driving too fast around a bend in a signed construction zone.
This driver seems like a perfect example of where the autonomous truck doesn't need to be perfect to improve upon human drivers.
Who?
Further we learn they are proud of "360-degree sensors that can detect objects 1,000 feet away" and "already logged more than 1,000 driverless miles shuttling goods along Interstate 45 in Texas" - that's what? two days? "We have something like 2.7 million tests that we run the system through" and "two trucks without a driver".
What in the world?
Now, I will grant that some of this nonsense is probably the [checks notes] New York Times writer but still. This is absurd.
The conclusion goes beyond that: "What Aurora’s doing is being much more careful than most,"
Even the trucks will probably start experiencing mechanical failures more quickly than anyone expects (based on the passage of calendar time) due to the 100% duty cycle I would think