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Personally I think there is a huge amount of uncertainty here. On the one hand it's possible that automation will upend society as we know it and the risk here is huge. Society isn't close to being equipped to deal with mass unemployment from from any angle - ethical, economic, political or personal and the transition would be painful under even the best case scenarios (peaceful socialist revolution in this case). Capitalism, though clearly containing feedback mechanisms has no guarantee of full human employment. On the other hand it might not be a problem for another century or three or ever. Technology has been relentlessly destroying jobs for centuries and that destruction has been the main driver growth which has delivered our modern standards of living and at every step you could find people terrified of that destruction. No one knew what people would do if they weren't all tilling the fields but the answer turned out to be lots of things.
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Nov 26, 2015 04:48
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Re:driverless cars This can't be put simply enough - driverless cars are a fantasy that are decades away at a minimum. The google car is basically a joke that can't drive in the rain or above 30 miles per hour and gets frequently rear-ended or pulled over for driving so slow and cautiously. The initial foray into hands-free driving from Tesla and a couple others is one dead child away from a large setback. Things that might happen in the near future are things like long haul trucks driving on special lanes on stretches of open highways in places like Kansas. But this has limited implications for basically anything. A driverless uber picking you up from the bar downtown or replacing your daily commute on existing roads might as well be a dream. It's sometimes fun to talk about fantasies, but not too much, and that's what driverless cars, with all their interesting implications, still are today. Robots are a real thing with real implications, just in places like Amazon warehouses where they have carefully controlled environments and do boring things like move racks of bins around.
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Nov 26, 2015 04:56
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DrSunshine posted:The problem though is that it's easy to see how to go from Agricultural Jobs -> Manufacturing -> Services, but what comes after the service and manufacturing jobs are displaced? Is there a fourth type of job sector that humans can do that will provide gainful employment for billions of people? Well it's easy to see now...there was no way to be sure, say, a century ago when Ford was installing assembly lines in the Model T plants that it would work out.
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Nov 26, 2015 05:06
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LookingGodIntheEye posted:Removing the general populace from pointless labor they don't actually like and allowing them to focus on entirely creative and/or intellectual pursuits could lead to a veritable renaissance. Possibly an unmitigated social disaster with rampant depression and drug use even assuming the economic issues have been solved. Or maybe not that bad? Structured work taps into deep cultural and evolutionary roots. Yanking it out is incredibly disruptive at the least. Of course some people have interests and pursuits that are being held back by employment. Others don't. Assuming we're sure this would happen society would have to make a concerted effort to come up with a plan starting with aggressive incentives to maintain employment - subsidize wages and impose mandatory maximum hours of 30 then maybe 20 a week. Simultaneously construct other forms of organized charity, activities and social groups.
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Nov 26, 2015 15:54
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Effectronica posted:Marx's understanding was that the transition to communism from socialism required the automation of drudgery and repetitive tasks so that people could be free from a large part of alienation. So technological unemployment, or rather the kinds of technologies that would cause it under a capitalist system, was an essential part of Marx's consideration of capitalism, socialism, and production. Marx also predicted falling profits and resulting crisis leading to revolution. It's a reasonably specific take on capitalist failure. Capitalism delivering us peacefully to post-scarcity socialism wouldn't be Marx.
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Nov 27, 2015 05:50
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Paradoxish posted:You can already buy a Mercedes that can drive itself in low-speed highway traffic, and Mercedes has said they'll have a fully autonomous car within the next decade. It sucks that another thread is getting overrun by self-driving car talk, but a lot of people with a narrow focus on Google's progress in this particular arena are going to end up being blindsided by how quickly automated systems are rolling out in production cars. It's kind of shocking how many people I know who don't realize that semi-autonomous parking systems are already a pretty commonplace feature in many new cars. Automated systems are rolling out quickly. I have automated cruise control in my Subaru and it's great. But there is a huge difference between this and the full meaning and implication of "self driving car". They're decades away. RuanGacho posted:I'm not sure how much it's commonplace so much as unknown because most people here are probably not buying new $25-30k+ cars. The average new car is 33k in the US.
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Nov 28, 2015 02:55
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crabcakes66 posted:This is completely out of touch with reality. Maybe some kind of wishful thinking from people that are afraid of what's coming. And you think a driverless Uber is going to pick you up when? One thing people miss is that current tech like self-parking is a luxury like air conditioning or at best a safety feature like airbags. It's an improvement but not transformative. The serious change only happens when we're wiling to unleash millions of driverless vehicles onto the roads - reliably and in all weather and driving conditions. The technological, regulatory, legal and social changes needed for that are not coming around the corner.
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Nov 28, 2015 05:19
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Also planes are actually easier to automate. An autopilot flying a plane at 30,000 ft could malfunction and do almost literally anything in the 10's of seconds it might take the pilots to take over and they'll be able to fix it. There is lots of time and nothing to crash into. Landing and takeoffs are higher stakes but also assisted by ground control. Meanwhile if you're driving in a car at speed you can routinely be about 1 second from potential death due to oncoming traffic or solid objects on the side of the road. There is no margin for error in an automated car because it can kill you before you have a chance to realistically take back over. Worse, the the visual cues needed drive a car on the road are orders of magnitude more complex than most inputs to a plane autopilot (radar processing and other newer systems are complex, but usually for additional detection, not routine navigation/control).
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Nov 30, 2015 01:33
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Doctor Malaver posted:Those people saying how driverless cars can do only highways and other simple situations and are still decades away, should watch this TED talk. This guy does a great job: 1) Outlining the difference between driver asistance and self-driving (it's huge) 2) Outlining the complexity inherent to driving on real roads (bikers giving hand signals, traffic cops) But the optimism here is misguided in two ways. First, we could have a completely safe self-driving car today and it would still take probably a decade of testing before it got accepted in the market and another decade before it was produced in relevant numbers. The game here isn't just to make this thing, it's to get it deployed. Second, he's naively thinking the end-game is a car that's statistically safer than humans. That's now how this works. Society, for whatever reason accepts high accident rates for human drivers. They're not going to accept those rates from corporate vehicles. Before wide-scale adoption these vehicles are going to have to bend over backwards to prove that they're significantly safer than humans with huge liability consequences if they're not. And any compromises, like no driving in snow or at night in rain won't really be tolerated. Finally I'll add that this guy is right when it comes to driver assistance. Where Tesla and Mercedes are going is largely going to be a dead end. Half-safe pseudo automation isn't going to be acceptable either from a safety or liability point of view.
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Dec 9, 2015 01:32
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Doctor Malaver posted:We saw that car changing lanes too so it doesn't just drive straight. And what do you actually want it to do? I'm perfectly fine with a car that will drive me "straight" from A to B and slow down or stop for obstacles. That's how I drive too. If you can't use it in a snowstorm, so you won't. You can't really drive a BMW convertible in a snowstorm either and yet convertibles are "a thing". Well as it exists now these things are safety/convenience feature for rich people. The point is that an automated uber isn't a thing until most every problem is solved. You can't have the uber fleet shutdown in a moderate snow storm. Snow is brought up because it interferes with vision based driving systems more than the driving implications. Though it's a combination of both. My Subaru eyesight has disabled itself in rain a few times presumably because it decided it couldn't make reliable decisions.
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Dec 13, 2015 16:35
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DOOP posted:How would self-drivin cars work in Atlanta, where an inch of snow shuts down everything In the specific instance of the south in a snowstorm self driving cars might actually be fantastic compared to the comical alternative.
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Dec 13, 2015 18:49
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Let's not trivialize the complexity and risks of large critical networks.
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Jan 5, 2016 04:32
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rudatron posted:Oddly enough, autonomous cars may actually assist transit, in the right situations. You robocar to the rail station, train into urban areas, the bus or robocar to work. You could maybe also do it with other options like biking or walking. If done properly, you could actually reduce congestion. Yes it is good for public transit. One constraint of existing systems is the cost of the human driver which generally means its only economical to run large buses. This means fewer routes running less frequently. With no driver van sized public transit becomes more feasible and allows more routes or higher frequency. Automomous vehicles don't directly reduce congestion or environmental concerns, but their side affects ooen up a lot of possibilities. Though disclaimer: none of this is happening at relevant scale for decades. My 1 month old child is going to own a car with a wheel.
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Jan 16, 2016 07:29
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Popular Thug Drink posted:i really, truly do not see the fundamental connection between traffic (cars on the road) and parking (cars off the road). i mean one leads to another, increased cars in motion leads to higher demand to place cars et cetera. but naturally, imo, cars that are in motion, are not not in motion, and the same reversed. generally when cars stop being in motion is when they need to be parked, in my experience. cars can be parked on streets, or in lots, or in garages, but all of these scenarios happen when the car is not on the roads in motion is the gist of my point The connection is not that hard. First on the 'park further away topic'. Do you understand basic engineering principles like caching, buffers etc. Real estate in many systems has extremely tiered importance. And this is true in traffic. A downtown area which lots of people want to move in and out of is extremely expensive real estate. The basic equation here is simple. The percentage of time a car is in use is quite small. And when not in use there is a huge incentive for moving it out of the expensive real estate area. Whether parked or driving it's occupying space in the high priority area (obviously so if its street parking, still true in a downtown garage). There is a benefit to getting the car out of the expensive real estate area during the often large percentage (>95%) of the time its unused, even if it means a small percentage of extra time on the road (computer and database systems make this tradeoff all the time). But more importantly self-driving cars are more conducive to sharing. The model now where people drive downtown and park means there is one car per person. A model where more people use automated uber, a single physical car can get multiple people in and out even if they get transported alone. If you increase the average amount of ride sharing things become better. Again, I'm someone who thinks this is all decades away. Buy anyone who thinks real life automated Uber is 'no big deal' is a fool. You seem to be in that group. asdf32 fucked around with this message at 17:55 on Jan 16, 2016 |
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Jan 16, 2016 17:52
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Popular Thug Drink posted:please explain to me how cpu caching means there will be less parking if we just put the parking further away from where a person needs it, and how this will somehow reduce traffic I just did. Yes. Carpooling, a thing single digit percentage of people currently do, is among the things likely to change when drivers are removed. Just like, as importantly, probably better utilization of individual cars.
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Jan 16, 2016 21:44
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Popular Thug Drink posted:sorry, i just don't see the connection between passenger trip generation and land use in terms of electrical engineering, you might have to elaborate You're in software development and you do understand you're just stuck on a tack where you think its cool to be the guy predicting 'no big deal' horseless buggies will just be buggies without horses. And apparently your shift key is broken. I feel a need to restate that I'm a guy who thinks people drinking the kool aid on this tech are also fools. But it's even dumber to pretend that upending how transportation works (removing drivers) wouldn't have far reaching consequences.
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Jan 17, 2016 02:01
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Sethex posted:This comment is uninformed bullshit, But still doesn't drive in rain or snow. A recent article: Google’s self-driving cars pull over in the rain, while Tesla’s can self-park posted:Google says the self-driving cars will start exploring more challenging environments: “We’re beginning to collect data in all sorts of rainy and snowy conditions as we work toward the goal of a self-driving car that will be able to drive come rain, hail, snow or shine!” http://home.bt.com/tech-gadgets/future-tech/googles-self-driving-cars-december-report-tesla-software-update-71-summon-11364033025413
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Jan 17, 2016 23:22
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Trabisnikof posted:Lol even the section you quoted said they are already driving in rain and snow. Just they can't handle it 100% yet. There are a lot of things "they can't handle 100% yet" and they need to solve them all before the hype of self driving cars is actually realized. And guess which things they've left for last? The hard things. The biggest misunderstandings here are from people who don't actually understand how development works. The last 1-2% is orders of magnitude harder than the bulk of the functionality. Most products just ship when they're 95% done because it's good enough. That's not going to work here. We're talking about cutting edge AI/Sensor processing in one of the most complex, variable, uncontrolled and unforgiving applications possible (far harder than aviation). When they say they're just starting to collect rain and snow data it says a lot.
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Jan 17, 2016 23:54
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Sethex posted:It needs to drive better than people, that is it. And this is the second point of confusion: The Goal. Some google engineers drink their own kool-aide and think the tech is actually going to be completely ironed out but the second problem with the publicly stated timeline is that silicon valley (and you) think society is going to accept these things on reason alone. First, I actually do believe, probably like you, that these things will be safer than humans in most circumstances within maybe 10 years. But that's not going to be the real life criteria for people accepting this tech. This isn't grandma behind the wheel, it's corporate america and when a corporation runs over a child it plays out entirely differently. The standards are going to be higher. Being as safe as humans is not the goal. And it takes time to prove out. Even if a literally perfect car existed today it would be a more than a decade before it passed the safety hurdles for widespread adoption. And that's assuming the costs are reasonable.
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Jan 18, 2016 02:13
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And? Yes some general purpose reasoning get work in a lot of situations but the real world can cook up a dizzying array of complex scenarios which not only have to be dealt with safely but also efficiently. The automated car can't wait 20 minutes to make a left turn onto a busy road in rush hour. That's completely unacceptable from a user point of view.
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Jan 18, 2016 18:29
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Trabisnikof posted:And? No it's not a misunderstanding because "learning machine" doesn't mean anything. At all. All the work in AI is to come up with the algorithms to process data intelligently. If the algorithm isn't good throwing more data at it and "learning" doesn't matter. There are learning chat bots which have been up and running for decades collecting data and because they completely lack the necessary sophistication, they're not actually approaching anything close to intelligence. The chat bots were one of many examples of AI tech which showed rapid progress before hitting a wall.
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Jan 18, 2016 19:11
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Trabisnikof posted:Yeah and the fact you're comparing the work Google does on learning machines now to 90s chat bots does in fact indicate you might not be up to speed on the advances that have been made in the last several decades. Thus far you've actually not really articulated a rational why this task isn't feasible for google's learning machine backed approach. Your own inability to conceputualize the solution isn't actually a proof the solution isn't feasible. Stop using the phrase "learning machine" as if that means something. Google neural net and you can be playing with a "learning machine" in a JavaScript app in 5 minutes. Second it's not impossible but it's simply a matter of comparing where they are to where they need to go (far) and layering those data points over historical examples of similar development processes (it's not a straight line). When you do that, you realize it's decades away. And when you add in the social/regulatory/legal problems that come on top it's crystal clear.
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Jan 18, 2016 20:03
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McDowell posted:I think this problem will be solved by a secure networking standard that is only for cars. This would come before fully autonomous vehicles. Right but I would basically categorize this as an "infrastructure solution" in that the environment outside the car is being modified to facilitate its automation. In this case other cars would be modified to broadcast information and most other cars have to be on board. "Infrastructure solutions" like networking or like dedicated lanes or signaling or signage or whatever make lots of sense but are different than what is currently being advertised. And it takes lots of time to overhaul infrastructure.
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Jan 18, 2016 21:02
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Trabisnikof posted:Why exactly can't autocars turn left with onboard sensors again? Remember that unlike humans they'll have correct information on the speeds and distances involved. Because the reality is you have to be a dick and cut people off sometimes which requires significantly better interpretation and prediction of data with lower margins of error than just determining "all clear". And this is exactly an example of a performance enhancement that may be orders of magnitude more difficult than the more basic functionality. Being overly cautious is how the Google cars are doing what they're doing right now but it's ultimately unacceptable for widespread adoption.
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Jan 18, 2016 21:25
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Paradoxish posted:Yeah, the amount of hand waving about why everything is going to be fine is pretty disconcerting. So is the fact that the report's own findings say that four out of five $20/hour or less jobs are at risk of automation, but less than ten paragraphs (in a 400+ page report) are devoted to the effects of technology on the labor market. The focus on the effects of automation on productivity rather than wages ain't great either, given that these two things are effectively decoupled now. That's not true at all.
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Feb 26, 2016 04:38
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DrSunshine posted:I was reading the "Right Wing Populism" thread, and this image came up: It's worth noting that a graph looking like this could roughly apply to any point in the last 100 years. Millions and millions of jobs have continuously been wiped out since industrialization. The graph is interesting but it's not the problem. The problem happens when those jobs can't be replaced. That part of the equation is harder to analyze and harder to predict.
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Mar 7, 2016 00:15
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