American truck drivers could lose their jobs to robots • Hacker News Board

Re: American truck drivers could lose their jobs to robots

#141

Post by busterarm » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 3:55 AM UTC

tuna-piano wrote: post #6

The other question you need to ask in order to understand this future scenerio:. Shipping costs will significantly decrease, what will consumers and shareholders spend the extra money on? Who knows what they will spend the extra money on, could be healthcare, boats, TVs, whatever. But new jobs will be created in these expanded industries. It really, really bothers me the constant "x technology will drive x people out…

Please. This is what your numbers mean.

    American Population in 1850: 23 million.
    American Population today: 319 million.

    American Farmers in 1850: 14.72 million.
    American Farmers today: 6.38 million.

And this is with several major wars in between.

Basically we've gotten just better than twice as efficient in farming labor in 160 years (this is measured in man-hours worked). The value of that labor is what has changed. Farming itself is more efficient and we can feed 10 times as many people via refrigeration and shipping.

Re: American truck drivers could lose their jobs to robots

#142

Post by awad » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 3:56 AM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #103

awad wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because a competitor will come along and do so

Why, when they can collude (implicitly or explicitly) and keep the profits high for both of them? It's much more profitable to put someone out of business through methods other than competition.

Generally speaking, monopolies are illegal for this very reason

Re: American truck drivers could lose their jobs to robots

#143

Post by WalterBright » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 4:24 AM UTC

NotSammyHagar wrote: post #134

WalterBright wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's already happened. Those AIs are called compilers. Compilers get more powerful every year. If you took them away, there aren't enough people on the planet to do the same job with assemblers.

Brilliant comment! I guess devs are lucky to have enough jobs left to work.

What happens is pretty straightforward - the more powerful the AI devtools get, the more is demanded of them. I look at programs I wrote 20, 30 years ago, and am bemused by how trivial they look today.

I'm calling a compiler an AI tool, because what is it other than you type in what you want the computer to do, and the compiler figures out how to do it?

Re: American truck drivers could lose their jobs to robots

#144

Post by convolvatron » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 4:26 AM UTC

brianwawok wrote: post #99

galacticpony wrote: post #54

Simple solution: Ban self-driving trucks. I'm surprised that in the land of (apparently ) limitless legal liabilities, so many people are bullish on self-driving cars, let alone self-driving trucks. You should be highly concerned that the push towards this by big players is going to lead to laws where ultimately nobody will have to take up personal responsibility for accidents anymore.

Grandparents killed by truck driver on speed. Robot drivers can't get her soon enough.

its surprising this isn't mentioned more often. truck drivers do meth. its the only way for them to stay focussed and awake driving across country.

so, from both sides, we have drivers with long term substance abuse problems controlling really heavy metal whacked out of their skulls. and we have an economy which can only function by effectively ruining people's lives by turning them into machines.

if we were a remotely moral society we would be horrified

Re: American truck drivers could lose their jobs to robots

#145

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 4:26 AM UTC

NotSammyHagar wrote: post #133

sevenless wrote: post #41

I bet developers will start to lose jobs to AI. Maybe before truck drivers do. The reaction here on HN will be something to behold.

There's no doubt that some programmer's jobs will start to disappear. Think about how many web devs/ html jockeys are no longer needed because word press or 100 other web publishing platforms are easy enough for non pgmrs to use. How long will a million programmers write custom software instead of just packaging apps? Today, places like Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Amazon have a lot of programmers writing custom apps.…

[deleted]

Re: American truck drivers could lose their jobs to robots

#146

Post by aaron695 » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 4:27 AM UTC

sevenless wrote: post #41

I bet developers will start to lose jobs to AI. Maybe before truck drivers do. The reaction here on HN will be something to behold.

> I bet developers will start to lose jobs to AI. Maybe before truck drivers do. The reaction here on HN will be something to behold.

Other than the fact you don't really seem to get how hard it is to develop (This would be one to the highest levels of AI)

When developers are automated everyone else will also be unemployed, since it's developers who are doing the un-employing.

Re: American truck drivers could lose their jobs to robots

#147

Post by xbmcuser » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 4:34 AM UTC

rakpol wrote: post #104

sverige wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Assuming this was even possible and assuming there will be jobs for all of these new programmers/etc, is this retraining cheaper than UBI or other plans? That's assuming that programming won't be one of the first categories of jobs to be automated away by AI. Think of the cost savings! But thankfully we don't have to worry about what all those poor programmers are going to do since it's progress for humanity.

Thus the reason I know carpentry :3 but, having programmed for a while, it seems like the hardest problems are converting plain english requirements to source code. At the point that that becomes trivial (and doesn't fall into WYSIWYG editors or graphical languages, which already exist and haven't brought about the apocalypse), wouldn't you just ask the computer to make itself smarter over and over? Or ask it to auto…

  I think specialisation in software will be the first to go not programing itself.
  I expect machine learning software to get very good at finding and fixing software exploits in the next few years. Google used deepmind and machine learning to optimise their energy use. How long before (maybe they are doing it already) put it to work on optimising their software code like chrome and android etc to find to speed it up or find exploits.

Re: American truck drivers could lose their jobs to robots

#148

Post by paulddraper » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 5:38 AM UTC

themagician wrote: post #48

tuna-piano wrote: post #6

The other question you need to ask in order to understand this future scenerio:. Shipping costs will significantly decrease, what will consumers and shareholders spend the extra money on? Who knows what they will spend the extra money on, could be healthcare, boats, TVs, whatever. But new jobs will be created in these expanded industries. It really, really bothers me the constant "x technology will drive x people out…

Don't kid yourself. New jobs get created, but fewer. And many of those who lose their jobs don't get retrained—for a myriad of reasons—and end up leaving the workforce entirely. Many just end up on long term disability because it's the only path they have. Jobs are disappearing. They aren't "coming back" in greater numbers. And the new jobs, by and large, aren't for the previous workforce. We already live in a world…

> UBI is an inevitability.

UBI inevitability:

https://youtu.be/x5m1A7zoIcc

---

Market forces are inevitable. Human behavior is inevitable. The future does look like the past.

Re: American truck drivers could lose their jobs to robots

#149

Post by icebraining » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 6:18 AM UTC

internaut wrote: post #47

icebraining wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were the people who created computers and advances in healthcare and those other innovations really driven by the need to have food on the table? Is that, and not either the seek of knowledge or the desire to get rich, really the engine of these advancements?

I think it credible that some people need stress in order to perform at a high level (in response to short to medium term objectives), and yet others require peace & quiet to develop for longer periods. These may or may not be the same people. I think it is important we understand in detail how humans become creative before large scale implementation of UBI. Personally I believe UBI should be earned in some way, with…

I think it credible that some people need stress in order to perform at a high level

How is that relevant? UBI doesn't propose to eliminate jobs (even stressful ones), just make them non-compulsory.

If you're saying that these people would simply not get a stressful job if they had UBI, hence they wouldn't perform at an high level, what about if they currently choose a non-stressful job? Doesn't your argument imply we should force people to take certain jobs, even against their will, so that they perform at an high level?

Presently Israel makes people train for the army for a year or two, which I believe is partially responsible for their high level of innovation.

There are 71 countries in the world with compulsory conscription, including Algeria, Austria, Austria, Azerbaijan, Benin, Bolivia, Brazil, Cambodia, Cape Verde, Colombia, Côte d'Ivoire, Cyprus, Denmark, Ecuador, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, Finland, Georgia, Greece, Guatemala, Iran, Kuwait, Laos, Moldova, Mongolia, Norway, Paraguay, Russia, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, the United Arab Emirates and Uzbekistan.

Do you see them all as countries with high levels of innovation? Have you considered that the correlation may be spurious?

Having people just work together is a very difficult but necessarily task and I believe obtaining UBI should require that.

How do you account then for the existence of the Open Source community, a mostly voluntary collaboration between many thousands of inviduals often thought to be people with poor social skills? Not to mention all the volunteer-based non-profits, churches, events, etc?

Re: American truck drivers could lose their jobs to robots

#150

Post by stefs » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 6:56 AM UTC

tuna-piano wrote: post #6

The other question you need to ask in order to understand this future scenerio:. Shipping costs will significantly decrease, what will consumers and shareholders spend the extra money on? Who knows what they will spend the extra money on, could be healthcare, boats, TVs, whatever. But new jobs will be created in these expanded industries. It really, really bothers me the constant "x technology will drive x people out…

> If we had established UBI then, and people could get paid to sit around, imagine the state we'd be in today.

that's simplistic - people generally don't want to be unemployed. if they get enough money to (barely) scrap by it takes a lot of weight off their shoulders, because they know they wont starve without their jobs. but having a job that fulfills you and income that enables you to save money is a big part of being happy. the (healthy) unemployed i know are mostly young people and every single one of them is constantly applying for jobs, even though they're able to pay rent, food and the occasional treat on unemployment benefits.