The driverless truck is coming, and it’s going to automate millions of jobs • Hacker News Board

Re: The driverless truck is coming, and it’s going to automate millions of jobs

#431

Post by snuxoll » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 7:28 PM UTC

dspillett wrote: post #380

emp_zealoth wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it's all fine when a lorry rear ends and pancakes a car because the driver fell asleep?

No, but at least from the PoV of public perception the situation is easier to deal with in a way that allays fear. In your example that one drive is taken off the road. That drive is not a problem, and people assume that the remaining drivers are, for the most part, fine and unlikely to make the same mistake. In the automated truck example you can't take that one driver off the road because barring equipment failure…

Human beings don't have the ability to just attain knowledge and experience by a software updated, autonomous vehicles do. Yes, every autonomous truck on the road may be controlled by the same software exhibiting the same behaviors, but unlike a human they can all automatically be updated with new behaviors and share experiences with each other.

This is precisely the goal of IBM's Watson if you will remember, an individual doctor only has their own experience - Watson can aggregate data from a virtually infinite number of data points and that knowledge and experience is shared across the network.

Will accidents happen? Yes. But we can learn from them and the collective as a whole benefits, not one individual instance.

Re: The driverless truck is coming, and it’s going to automate millions of jobs

#432

Post by dclowd9901 » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 7:33 PM UTC

anoonmoose wrote: post #264

ilamont wrote: post #218

The demonstration in Europe shows that driverless trucking is right around the corner. The primary remaining barriers are regulatory. What about the roads themselves? I'm curious how an autonomous truck will handle a snow-covered highway, fog, potholes, and tight corners caused by narrow roads, bad parking, snow banks, etc. This is a way of life where I live (Boston area). The article about the Russian driverless van…

Is there any evidence that a technology with billions of dollars in potential would not be used if it was only 99.99% ready? I feel like lots of dangerous stuff has been deployed when it was nowhere near 99% in the past, and I'm not sure why this technology would be any different. People talk about it like it's a lot different, but how safe are regular cars? Nuclear power? Coal power? Honestly I don't even know what…

The average odds of a human-driven vehicle getting in an accident per 600 miles of driving is about 0.13%, according to the NHTSA. What's crazy to me is that, by the numbers, 99.99% safety would already be 13x better than our current situation. Imagine cutting traffic deaths down by a factor of 13. And that's still not good enough.

I think we need to get over the idea that computers are perfect, especially with regards to how artificial intelligence works. There will always be a situation that is unaccounted for, especially in our non-deterministic universe. It may be uncomfortable to think that a life was taken due to an error in processing, but I feel no better about having a child of mine in a car with a barely experienced friend driving and making many more errors in processing.

Re: The driverless truck is coming, and it’s going to automate millions of jobs

#433

Post by danielweber » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 7:33 PM UTC

hannibalhorn wrote: post #244

peterwwillis wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Truckers have to deal with a sort of standard "road safety dilemma" all the time, which can be boiled down to this: A trucker is driving a 40 ton truck at 65mph. A passenger car with a family of four cuts in front of it, and the distance is closing fast. A passenger car takes roughly 315 feet to come to a complete stop. A fully loaded truck takes 525 feet. The trucker now has to make a decision. A) Do I slam on…

There's a real possibility that once driverless trucks become widespread, human behavior will change as well. A very aggressive driver may take advantage of the fact that an automated truck will brake for them, and start routinely cutting off trucks, whereas today they'd be a little more respectful. Even pedestrians could start crossing a highway where they shouldn't and know they could get away with it.

The next step in this progression is that trucks report cars being purposefully a danger to them, with video evidence.

Re: The driverless truck is coming, and it’s going to automate millions of jobs

#434

Post by Shivetya » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 7:50 PM UTC

madeofpalk wrote: post #302

massysett wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What about the roads themselves? I'm curious how an autonomous truck will handle a snow-covered highway, fog, potholes, and tight corners caused by narrow roads, bad parking, snow banks, etc." It won't; at least, it won't need to handle narrow roads, bad parking, snow banks, etc. The autonomous truck need not drive the whole route that a human driver does now. Drive down the Ohio Turnpike and you will see numerous p…

Would it still be an advanced net if you had humans in the trucks as a 'backup', with the autonomous driving doing 90% of the 'boring' driving down the highways? Humans would still drive the last mile (ha!). Would that be significant safer and more efficient to make it worthwhile? If you limit autonomous driving to the main freight routes on the highway, I can see self driving vehicles happening a lot sooner than I p…

Well I find it always incredible that the point of self driving cars that is most needed is the hardest part and least likely to occur anytime soon, that is driving in bad to very bad conditions.

though with the prevalence of texting while driving maybe cars will not necessarily need to always drive but simply take the needed emergency action

Re: The driverless truck is coming, and it’s going to automate millions of jobs

#435

Post by cowardlydragon » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 8:06 PM UTC

You still need security for these trains of trucks.

People can just "security guard" the trucks. Sleep, play video games, whatever.

Get all the benefits of safety, constant movement, better efficiency, maintain SOME of the jobs. Require mechanic training to make it a skilled job, etc.

Re: The driverless truck is coming, and it’s going to automate millions of jobs

#436

Post by randyrand » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 8:14 PM UTC

ddebernardy wrote: post #246

afterburner wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A very interesting map, but: "The prominence of truck drivers is partly due to the way the government categorizes jobs. It lumps together all truck drivers and delivery people, creating a very large category. Other jobs are split more finely; for example, primary school teachers and secondary school teachers are in separate categories." ... I really wish they'd collapsed some of those categories, could have been even…

Then again, teachers are probably on their way to being (at least semi-)automated as well... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

Let's hope.

Even free services such as Kahn Academy blow many teachers out of the water in terms of really teaching things.

The nanny aspect of teachers will be hard to replace though.

Re: The driverless truck is coming, and it’s going to automate millions of jobs

#437

Post by JustSomeNobody » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 8:18 PM UTC

malz wrote: post #399

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #251

> Trucking represents a considerable portion of the cost of all the goods we buy, so consumers everywhere will experience this change as lower prices and higher standards of living. No, consumers won't. The savings will be funneled directly to shareholders.

Fuel is half the price it was two years ago. So we should already be enjoying massive savings, right?

Nope [1].

[1] http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865646660/Why-food-prices...

Re: The driverless truck is coming, and it’s going to automate millions of jobs

#438

Post by GrumpyYoungMan » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 8:58 PM UTC

pm24601 wrote: post #366

GrumpyYoungMan wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How many software developers want to be held criminally responsible for deaths? Nope. Short of gross negligence in design, that seldom happens in any engineering field. How many people were criminally charged in the Challenger disaster? None.

7 people died in the challenger disaster. 30,000 people die each year in car related fatalities. Completely different order of magnitude. Additionally, going up on a rocket is a fundamentally risking proposition done by adults. Having a driverless vehicle that glitches, applies power instead of brakes, and kills a bunch of pretty young girls.... well that makes the 5 oclock news and 11 oclock for many, many days. Peo…

How many criminal charges were filed against individual engineers for any those 30,000 fatalities last year? How many were convicted? None and none.

You're illustrating my point for me quite nicely. Frankly, I can't think of a criminal conviction, even at the corporate level, for design flaws in the auto industry without going all the way back to the Ford Pinto.

Re: The driverless truck is coming, and it’s going to automate millions of jobs

#439

Post by mschuster91 » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 9:00 PM UTC

peterwwillis wrote: post #351

mschuster91 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rail is pretty limited by the huge size of our country Quite the contrary, the US is better suited for rail than the rest of the world, at least for cross-country moving of goods (one single area of law, no customs crap to deal with, the only thing I'm not sure is signalling and interoperability of locomotives on rail systems in different states). Trains are perfect for inter-city travel, the first/last mile should…

How long do you imagine it takes to unload a single car or two cars in a given city and move on to the next city? Once that "last mile" is handled, what else is that truck going to do until the next train shipment arrives? It'll sit doing nothing. If it moved on to another city, it could have just been loaded somewhere else and didn't need to be loaded at last mile. Trains have several single points of failure for a…

> Once that "last mile" is handled, what else is that truck going to do until the next train shipment arrives? It'll sit doing nothing

If you're a responsible freight truck company, you want to avoid this situation at all costs. There's always cargo that wants to be shipped - the only scarce resources are drivers and tractor units, and some companies even let multiple drivers share the tractors to maximize the usage of their tractors (that really depends on the company though, there are also companies where every driver "owns" his tractor).

> The fact remains we don't have enough rail to service most of the country, and nobody is paying for new rail

Yes, indeed. The beginnings of the stock markets actually were railroad construction companies, but these days the financial markets only care about the next big unicorn and not about creating something with real long term value, which a train track certainly is given that, once the track is laid, the land belongs to the company and the only major investments required are 50-year overhauls and regular maintenance. It's a shame.

Re: The driverless truck is coming, and it’s going to automate millions of jobs

#440

Post by madeofpalk » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 9:04 PM UTC

levemi wrote: post #416

madeofpalk wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're exhibiting the AI effect At first I had no idea what you're referring to, but then I realised the confused stemmed from my typo. I meant to ask whether it was a significant advancement , not an advanced net/AI. I know self driving cars are a "thing" already, but only in very limited and constrained circumstances. Last time I checked, Google's can only drive on roads where they've meticulously already mapped…

Self driving cars technology is AI. It is an advancement, a very significant one that will save many, many lives every day. Self driving cars are not in an early stage. Self driving technology is already worth in the billions. See the GM acquisition of Cruise. These cars have driven hundreds of thousands of miles on real roads that other people are also driving, probably including to a movie theater. You are discount…

Woah. I'm not quite sure where the negative sentiment came from - I'm not trying to discount anyone's work, and there's definitely no ignorance. Maybe I'm not optimistic, but I'm definitely not being ignorant.

> Self driving cars technology is AI. It is an advancement

If you go back up the comment chain that I was replying to, you'll note that I don't dispute (or even talk about) whether self driving cars is AI or not - I don't really care to take part of that conversation.

I was commenting on whether if you put self driving tech in trucks if it 'can only' self-drive on the highways, and require human drivers to drive the final mile, is that a significant enough improvement to make it worthwhile deploying it?

I know we've made a significant amount of progress when it comes to this sort of stuff, but we're so much further away from the dream of ubiquitous self driving cars (or even where human-driven cars are illegal or have their own financial/legal drawbacks). I know (Google's) self driving cars have driven x-thousand miles, which is crazy impressive, but they've only done that on like .1% of US roads[0]. They also have trouble driving in varying conditions, like rain or construction or whatever. I can't see ubiquitous self driving cars for consumers really happening in the next 20-50 years.

I can see, however, this bits and pieces of this tech make its way into cars (like Tesla's autopilot, or the self-parking features) a lot sooner than that. Or into trucks driving down the highway. And then Uber/GM/whoever launches self-driving transport in select cities on select routes, and then all over the city, and then in every main city.

[0] Totally made up number, but I assume you'll get my point.