101–110 of 119 posts
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A booming business in automation and robot repair.
Good luck learning to program or repair self-driving trucks when you've been a truck driver for your whole career.
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It would also likely be prudent to have a human visually inspecting the trucks and able to perform small maintenance tasks. My car can tell me the tire pressure is low, but it can't change the tire. It can tell me the backup sensor is obscured, but it can't clean it. Maybe it didn't even notice it hit something/something hit it (like a fast, low flying bird) and now the fender is hanging off. Things that might need t…
Trucks would be standardized and have sensors to detect many types of damage and the truck could be rerouted to an automated repair facility (or perhaps a repair vehicle would be dispatched). Visual inspection could be done better automatically. Automation that relies on humans to minimally function is garbage.
Sigh. It doesn't matter. People have this bizarre conception of the economy as an exact lock-fit between jobs and work that needs doing, and they have a hard time imagining changes to that fit, even though throughout human history there has been constant change. In truth there is a nearly infinite amount of work that needs doing. We just get by with most of the work not being done. Just go back in time and think abou…
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Ok, so you have 3 employees working 24/7 for an average of a $20k salary (33% more than minimum wage). That's $60k/year or $120k over 24 months (based on Bartweiss' ROI estimation). Do you think it's possible to deliver an automated gas pump that services 4,800 trucks per day (~1 truck every 3 minutes) for $120k? I don't.
Except the employees are going to need breaks in between working and I'm going to just guess that manning a gas station in the middle of desert alone makes you insane pretty fast. So at least double that salary estimate if you truly want to keep things rolling with 1 truck every 3 minutes.
My numbers do break down in that one guy per shift probably can't fuel everything, so we might need to double it. (In states with locking pumps, he probably can, though.)
- The number of people occupied per industry is inversely proportional to the number of industries in existence.
- The barrier to entry is also inversely proportional to the number of industries in existence.
The process for every new industry generally goes something like this:
- Stage 1: mostly makers (100%)
- Stage 2: some makers (25%) + some operators of some tech that raises general efficiency (25%) (50% slowly moves to some new industry)
- Stage 3: few makers (5%) + some operators (10%) + some supervisors of some autonomous tech that maximizes efficiency (10%) (25% slowly moves to some new industry)
Was this process historically painless and ultra efficient? No! Did it do the job again and again with some acceptable level of efficiency? Yes!
The argument that this time is different this will stop working is getting stronger and stronger.
I personally think that is not the case. With some pain that require good policy, up and downs and so on this is the way we operate, we adapt.
Take prostitution (the oldest job in the world!), the next thing is robots yes, but also cam girls. Lower barrier to entry and maybe even bigger industry with lots of specialization.
And next thing for cam girls? Is of course virtual cam girls but also avatar builders/modelers/players even lower barrier to entry and potentially bigger industry and so on.
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Think of it this way: Right now, to move one trucks' worth of cargo for one hour requires one man hour. i.e.: 1 man-hour per cargo-hour. If you have a single human that full-services 200 self-driving trucks in one day, you have: 1 man-hour per 200 cargo-hours. Sure, autonomous refueling is easier than self-driving, but self-driving trucks also makes the human relatively way cheaper to employ.
My thoughts exactly. The usual standard for automation, I believe, is 18-24 months salary - if the capital cost can be recouped in two years automation is worthwhile. For hundreds of well-paid truckers that's a relatively generous target, but automating a reliable gas pumping system just to save on one minimum-wage gas pumper looks like a much lower ROI.
The other $40,000 was spent on NEW machines that automatically do NEW processes which we could never do before. I have a lot of pressure from the market to deliver new goods, and I have a lot of competitors both in the USA and in China and India copying my existing products. So this investment is about new streams of revenue (and I like toys/equipment!) . This is a $500 per month investment on the lease.
I have a reasonable expectation that the new machines could help us achieve a sales doubling in the next three years.
So in my case, 18-24 months salary replacement was never the thought process. It was honestly more about getting rid of a supplier, bringing it in-house to control quality and output, and saving money. I have a lot of automation, and I think the bigger concept most don't get is that the automation is way way more accurate and repeatable than a human. Quality goes up as costs go down. The quality part is a big big part of it.
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The factor is availability- you need three of these workers for a around the clock shift. AI does not sleep.
Ok, so you have 3 employees working 24/7 for an average of a $20k salary (33% more than minimum wage). That's $60k/year or $120k over 24 months (based on Bartweiss' ROI estimation). Do you think it's possible to deliver an automated gas pump that services 4,800 trucks per day (~1 truck every 3 minutes) for $120k? I don't.
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I'd say rather than refueling, repairing. Right now there is a human in the truck who will do basic repairs, change a wheel, etc. If you have driverless trucks, they will need people available all over the country to service them on a short notice. Although admittedly these jobs could also be automated in the long term.
There was a story about a Tesla's radar being blocked by a moth, that smashed to its front. A fully autonomous vehicle would have had to stop and wait for someone to come by and clean the radar. Or there need to be lots of additional minor repair gadgets added to the car to clean sensors in case of dirt.
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Except the employees are going to need breaks in between working and I'm going to just guess that manning a gas station in the middle of desert alone makes you insane pretty fast. So at least double that salary estimate if you truly want to keep things rolling with 1 truck every 3 minutes.
I'm not so sure - presumably these are going to be highway truck stops/gas stations. You're not going to leave one guy there alone and shut everything down when he goes on break, you're going to add another 1-2 people to the daily shift at an existing gas station, and share the extra load across them. My numbers do break down in that one guy per shift probably can't fuel everything, so we might need to double it. (In…
It's not just a factor if he can possibly fill every truck by himself, there are other human factors to consider. You need at least two men manning the station all the time for the autonomous trucks to refill there + maybe a spare guy for regular folk who come to visit.
Honestly, I read these studies and think nobody writing them has any idea of what these jobs actually entail. Driving a truck is not the be all and end all of being a truck driver. The driver covers a great many tasks, from admin and security, to safety inspections, to dealing with law enforcement and boarder guards. I see no talk of how the robot is to replace those functions. I do see sweeping statements about rebu…
You could have truck drivers just at the start and end points of a route. Trucking companies can have representatives at the border, who then guide it through customs. No need to sit in the vehicle for hours.