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Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days

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121–130 of 180 posts

Re: Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days

#121
post #119

For better or worse, millions of truck drivers are going to be displaced. Just like the way robots replaced manufacturing jobs. The best plan is to prepare, like Yang and others are saying: https://www.yang2020.com/policies/trucking-czar/ So we can soften the blow.

What's interesting is that it seems that there's already a shortage of truck drivers out there, so it's not only displacement, but also filling of jobs which don't have enough people willing to take https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-24/u-s-truck...

Shortage of a certain type of labor is just an indicator that it doesn’t pay enough. I’ve also got a shortage of Tesla in my garage.

Re: Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days

#122

For better or worse, millions of truck drivers are going to be displaced. Just like the way robots replaced manufacturing jobs. The best plan is to prepare, like Yang and others are saying: https://www.yang2020.com/policies/trucking-czar/ So we can soften the blow.

Yang is acceleration.

Be careful to balance your yang with yin.

Re: Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days

#123
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's interesting is that it seems that there's already a shortage of truck drivers out there, so it's not only displacement, but also filling of jobs which don't have enough people willing to take https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-24/u-s-truck...

Shortage of a certain type of labor is just an indicator that it doesn’t pay enough. I’ve also got a shortage of Tesla in my garage.

It might indicate that the people are aware that the long term prospects are terrible and would make the investment of time/money a bad idea even if the jobs pay incredibly well right now.

Re: Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shortage of a certain type of labor is just an indicator that it doesn’t pay enough. I’ve also got a shortage of Tesla in my garage.

It might indicate that the people are aware that the long term prospects are terrible and would make the investment of time/money a bad idea even if the jobs pay incredibly well right now.

That just means that it doesn't pay enough though. Imagine this thought experiment, if you could make 1,000,000USD a year from being a truck driver, would you do it? Even if that job only has a 3-4 year lifespan?

I suspect that most people would.

Obviously 1,000,000 is _too much_, but conversely whatever the current rate is, is probably too low.

Re: Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shortage of a certain type of labor is just an indicator that it doesn’t pay enough. I’ve also got a shortage of Tesla in my garage.

It might indicate that the people are aware that the long term prospects are terrible and would make the investment of time/money a bad idea even if the jobs pay incredibly well right now.

Well, if they paid you a billion dollars a year, you'd do it, which means that there's a point between a dollar and a billion where you can satisfy demand. The fact that pay is less than that means the grandfather is correct, what you're referring to is just why people feel it doesn't pay well enough.

Re: Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might indicate that the people are aware that the long term prospects are terrible and would make the investment of time/money a bad idea even if the jobs pay incredibly well right now.

That just means that it doesn't pay enough though. Imagine this thought experiment, if you could make 1,000,000USD a year from being a truck driver, would you do it? Even if that job only has a 3-4 year lifespan? I suspect that most people would. Obviously 1,000,000 is _too much_, but conversely whatever the current rate is, is probably too low.

You're looking at the pay in isolation from other career options. Imagine you're 25 and looking for something long term. Do you do trucking knowing that it won't last and you'll have to change to something else later, or do you look for a different career instead? Everyone who thinks it through will choose something else. The current level of pay is attractive to truckers moving to other companies, but it's not much of an incentive to start trucking unless you have no other options.

Re: Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's worse than that, of course. You'll find, like a certain Greek philosopher fond of asking annoying questions, that the first 90% of the last 10% will be OK, and that last 10% will be the other 90% of the ... etc. etc. etc.

In 1995 having a domestic phone call, placed on a wired line, drop due to line issues was effectively inconceivable -- it simply would never happen. In 2015 we were in a time when it happened all the time, people simply accepted that voip was often unreliable. In 2019 the idea of a vehicle around you simply stopping because its driver doesn't know how to handle a situation is extremely rare. I suspect that by 2039 it…

Is that actually true? My parents had phones around then and they've always had this habit where they say "Hello! HELLO!" At the shortest momentary pause in the conversation.

Re: Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That just means that it doesn't pay enough though. Imagine this thought experiment, if you could make 1,000,000USD a year from being a truck driver, would you do it? Even if that job only has a 3-4 year lifespan? I suspect that most people would. Obviously 1,000,000 is _too much_, but conversely whatever the current rate is, is probably too low.

You're looking at the pay in isolation from other career options. Imagine you're 25 and looking for something long term. Do you do trucking knowing that it won't last and you'll have to change to something else later, or do you look for a different career instead? Everyone who thinks it through will choose something else. The current level of pay is attractive to truckers moving to other companies, but it's not much…

If I was 25 and offered $1,000,000/year for 2 years as a trucker, or $100,000 as a code monkey, I'd take the trucking job.

It helps that I have the benefit of hindsight having only started my career in IT at 27, and done all sorts of other stuff before then, none of which had any long term prospects, nor did it pay $1MM/year.

Re: Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days

#129
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure someone's working on telepresence which kicks in when the AI's getting confused.

Earn credits for Stadia - solve these realtime truck simulator captcha!

I would imagine that the current google captcha system has so much traffic, you could use it to power real time driving with static pictures. Set 20 people to tell you if there is a stop sign. 50 more to decide if that object in the road is dangerous or not. All you need is a decent number of responses coming back that agree.

Re: Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days

#130
post #81

Out of curiosity, how do they handle the transmissions in self-driving trucks? My guess was automatics, but torque converter automatics aren't strong enough for use in a big-rig like this. DSG? Fully "automatic" clutch-based manuals? These things have to be pretty expensive.

When trucks go electric, they'll be a lot easier to control. Current trucks are optimized for truck drivers. They become a lot simpler if you no longer need to worry about transporting humans. IMHO autonomous ICE vehicles on the road will probably not happen because they are getting replaced with cheaper EVs in roughly the same time frame that autonomous driving is happening and not having to worry about complex engines simplifies the job of automating things.
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