I think that in a lot of industries, that’s exactly what is likely to happen, but it is not mere coincidence.
For example, the US must import nurses from the Philipines right now. It is like we are going to have an overabundance of nurses any time soon.
So we can’t wait to automate some of what nurses do. It is unlikely that we’ll have fully automated nurses by 2030… but we probably can’t get some more automation fast enough.
Automating subways is surprisingly hard. Helsinki has already tried it twice without success. The first time was in the 70s, when the technology was simply not mature enough. The second attempt started in 2006 and was abandoned in 2015, when it had become obvious that the company that won the contract could not make the existing trains run automatically.
I don’t think it is hard to automate subway trains in 2017 for technological reasons. We have had fully automated subway trains in some major locations for many years now… Actually making it happen is obviously much harder. And that’s my point regarding automated trucks. Even if we can automate them today, without strong incentives, it is going to be hard to deploy them at scale.
Regarding subway trains, I can see many challenges. For one thing, the financial incentive is not huge. You save one person’s salary… so maybe 100k$ a year. But you still need supervisors, mechanicians and so forth. To top it off, you need extra capital investment and probably extra staff to manage the new computers. It is very hard to see how you can make a lot of money by automating subway trains unless you do it at a large scale… and at that point, you have other problems.
Building a new automatic subway system is certainly doable. Automating an existing one is much harder.
A subway is essentially a massive one-of-a-kind legacy system. Automatization requires making major changes to the system while keeping it running all the time. The technology to do it exists, but the ability to do it reliably does not.
Kyle Heironimussays:
Great article. Can I get on your side of the bet?
Looking at current technologies that have existed for years/decades yet are still not being implemented across the board should show how hard it will be to implement driverless trucks.
I’m no expert, but from what I know, there is little reason for a truck to not have a skirt under the trailer, as it pays off in 3-4 years and then provides significant fuel savings, yet I see many, many trucks without them.
There are similar advances without quite as large a benefit, but with benefits nonetheless. The trailer tail and wide single tires instead of duals are still not even close to being adopted after being available for over a decade.
Soon, driverless trucks will almost certainly look good on paper for a larger company flush with cash and willingness to take a risk, but that’s a lot different than large-scale implementation.
Looking at current technologies that have existed for years/decades yet are still not being implemented across the board should show how hard it will be to implement driverless trucks.
It is certainly uneven. I think it comes down to incentives, politics and all sorts of soft considerations that have little to do with hard science. All these factors are hard to predict.
I’d like to get in on Calum’s side of the bet, even if 2030 is actually only 13 years away.
I’d say that, by 2030, at the very least all long-haul trucking will be automated, if only because of safety improvements and the ability to run the trucks 24 hours per day.
That’s assuming they’re not replaced by Amazon blimp warehouses and drones. :^)
I’d like to get in on Calum’s side of the bet, even if 2030 is actually only 13 years away.
You’d think I could do basic arithmetic by now.
I’d say that, by 2030, at the very least all long-haul trucking will be automated, if only because of safety improvements and the ability to run the trucks 24 hours per day.
What are your thoughts on subways? Do you think that major cities in the US will have fully automated subways?
That’s assuming they’re not replaced by Amazon blimp warehouses and drones.
Even if all Amazon’s transportations needs are met with drones, it still won’t cut it.
Tomasz Jamroszczaksays:
> [In] the automotive industry […] most employees did fine.
So you say Detroit did fine.
> I don’t think anyone would know what to make of a million unemployed truck drivers.
That’s one problem. You give counterexamples of journalists, bank clerks, automotive workers and nurses, but they either are in better position because of education, are in growing business but not fit for men or didn’t work that well.
Second problem is with all the countryside infrastructure which will collapse – just like in the Pixar’s Cars movie.
> I can imagine a scenario where 2030 come and pass, we still do not see elf-driving tractor-trailer trucks on the roads
Sure, automotive driving is far away, probably further than 2030, but we know it will happen – just like it happened with agriculture and automotive. And we should prepare for it, rather than neglecting and trivializing.
According to the US government, in 2009, blue-collar workers in the automobile industry received 37$/h in compensation. (Source) That’s between 70k$ to 80k$ a year. I know many college graduates who are not compensated that well. There are fewer workers today in the US, but only about 20% fewer… and the decline was over many decades.
Regarding Detroit… Entire books have been written about the rise and decline of Detroit. It is a complicated story. The following passage from Wikipedia gives us a clue…
These processes, in which the growth of the auto industry had played such a large part, combined with racial segregation to give Detroit, by 1960, its particularly noteworthy character of a substantially African-American inner city surrounded by mainly white outer sections of the city and suburbs. By 1960 there were more whites living in the city’s suburbs than the city itself. On the other hand, there were very few African-Americans in the suburbs. Real estate agents would not sell to them, and if African-Americans did try to move into suburbs there was “intense hostility and often violence” in reaction.
To sum it up, the people who held the good jobs in the automotive industry did not live in Detroit proper. If you look today at the suburbs of Detroit… even today… I think you will find that they are doing ok.
Sure, automotive driving is far away, probably further than 2030, but we know it will happen – just like it happened with agriculture and automotive. And we should prepare for it, rather than neglecting and trivializing.
The purpose of this bet is to get people to think about the future.
I think the real problem is that today there’s more innovation in educating computers than educating High school students in Europe and the USA. While there’s no real AI risk to humans there’s a really serious problem with the lack of innovation in High school education. In fact, the growing risk of severe long-term unemployment in these regions isn’t due to the arrival of super-human robots which won’t happen anytime soon, it’s due to a complacent education system that hasn’t taken into account significant changes in the modern job market.
What you are saying seems to boil down to there will be fewer jobs, but it won’t matter since there will be fewer people young enough to do them.
@Dominic
I think that in a lot of industries, that’s exactly what is likely to happen, but it is not mere coincidence.
For example, the US must import nurses from the Philipines right now. It is like we are going to have an overabundance of nurses any time soon.
So we can’t wait to automate some of what nurses do. It is unlikely that we’ll have fully automated nurses by 2030… but we probably can’t get some more automation fast enough.
Automating subways is surprisingly hard. Helsinki has already tried it twice without success. The first time was in the 70s, when the technology was simply not mature enough. The second attempt started in 2006 and was abandoned in 2015, when it had become obvious that the company that won the contract could not make the existing trains run automatically.
I don’t think it is hard to automate subway trains in 2017 for technological reasons. We have had fully automated subway trains in some major locations for many years now… Actually making it happen is obviously much harder. And that’s my point regarding automated trucks. Even if we can automate them today, without strong incentives, it is going to be hard to deploy them at scale.
Regarding subway trains, I can see many challenges. For one thing, the financial incentive is not huge. You save one person’s salary… so maybe 100k$ a year. But you still need supervisors, mechanicians and so forth. To top it off, you need extra capital investment and probably extra staff to manage the new computers. It is very hard to see how you can make a lot of money by automating subway trains unless you do it at a large scale… and at that point, you have other problems.
Building a new automatic subway system is certainly doable. Automating an existing one is much harder.
A subway is essentially a massive one-of-a-kind legacy system. Automatization requires making major changes to the system while keeping it running all the time. The technology to do it exists, but the ability to do it reliably does not.
Great article. Can I get on your side of the bet?
Looking at current technologies that have existed for years/decades yet are still not being implemented across the board should show how hard it will be to implement driverless trucks.
I’m no expert, but from what I know, there is little reason for a truck to not have a skirt under the trailer, as it pays off in 3-4 years and then provides significant fuel savings, yet I see many, many trucks without them.
There are similar advances without quite as large a benefit, but with benefits nonetheless. The trailer tail and wide single tires instead of duals are still not even close to being adopted after being available for over a decade.
Soon, driverless trucks will almost certainly look good on paper for a larger company flush with cash and willingness to take a risk, but that’s a lot different than large-scale implementation.
Can I get on your side of the bet?
Calum may be willing to entertain further bets.
Looking at current technologies that have existed for years/decades yet are still not being implemented across the board should show how hard it will be to implement driverless trucks.
It is certainly uneven. I think it comes down to incentives, politics and all sorts of soft considerations that have little to do with hard science. All these factors are hard to predict.
I’d like to get in on Calum’s side of the bet, even if 2030 is actually only 13 years away.
I’d say that, by 2030, at the very least all long-haul trucking will be automated, if only because of safety improvements and the ability to run the trucks 24 hours per day.
That’s assuming they’re not replaced by Amazon blimp warehouses and drones. :^)
I’d like to get in on Calum’s side of the bet, even if 2030 is actually only 13 years away.
You’d think I could do basic arithmetic by now.
I’d say that, by 2030, at the very least all long-haul trucking will be automated, if only because of safety improvements and the ability to run the trucks 24 hours per day.
What are your thoughts on subways? Do you think that major cities in the US will have fully automated subways?
That’s assuming they’re not replaced by Amazon blimp warehouses and drones.
Even if all Amazon’s transportations needs are met with drones, it still won’t cut it.
> [In] the automotive industry […] most employees did fine.
So you say Detroit did fine.
> I don’t think anyone would know what to make of a million unemployed truck drivers.
That’s one problem. You give counterexamples of journalists, bank clerks, automotive workers and nurses, but they either are in better position because of education, are in growing business but not fit for men or didn’t work that well.
Second problem is with all the countryside infrastructure which will collapse – just like in the Pixar’s Cars movie.
> I can imagine a scenario where 2030 come and pass, we still do not see elf-driving tractor-trailer trucks on the roads
Sure, automotive driving is far away, probably further than 2030, but we know it will happen – just like it happened with agriculture and automotive. And we should prepare for it, rather than neglecting and trivializing.
So you say Detroit did fine.
According to the US government, in 2009, blue-collar workers in the automobile industry received 37$/h in compensation. (Source) That’s between 70k$ to 80k$ a year. I know many college graduates who are not compensated that well. There are fewer workers today in the US, but only about 20% fewer… and the decline was over many decades.
Regarding Detroit… Entire books have been written about the rise and decline of Detroit. It is a complicated story. The following passage from Wikipedia gives us a clue…
To sum it up, the people who held the good jobs in the automotive industry did not live in Detroit proper. If you look today at the suburbs of Detroit… even today… I think you will find that they are doing ok.
Sure, automotive driving is far away, probably further than 2030, but we know it will happen – just like it happened with agriculture and automotive. And we should prepare for it, rather than neglecting and trivializing.
The purpose of this bet is to get people to think about the future.
I think the real problem is that today there’s more innovation in educating computers than educating High school students in Europe and the USA. While there’s no real AI risk to humans there’s a really serious problem with the lack of innovation in High school education. In fact, the growing risk of severe long-term unemployment in these regions isn’t due to the arrival of super-human robots which won’t happen anytime soon, it’s due to a complacent education system that hasn’t taken into account significant changes in the modern job market.
I wrote more about this here: https://keplerlounge.com/2017/01/16/where-education-failed/