Comment by ninetyninenine 3 days ago
This is amazing. Don't forget that by you doing this you're taking us one step closer to AI replacing not just the job of drivers but the jobs of all of us. Good sides and bad sides.
Hopefully we won't get there and only uber drivers are the ones screwed. Since you and I aren't uber drivers, we don't really care do we?
I'm not actually convinced that "AI" will even replace all the jobs of drivers. Rumor is that Waymo had trouble in Austin (where I live) when they were centered downtown, because they would gridlock. I'm not convinced that they will work well once they become common on the roads, because they will all drive cautiously, and that may lend itself to gridlock situations. Right now they're in the SE corner of town (also where I live), and they don't seem to gridlock, but the first thing they do is almost always to go to another part of town. They will likely have a useful place, but I'm not convinced that it will pay enough to keep the cars in good shape, long term. The cars are all new, right now, but what happens when they get old and start to malfunction? Will they be making enough money to pay for that? Right now they might (like Uber and Lyft before them) just be burning through VC money, without any prospect of profitability.
Imagine how backwards our socioeconomic order is that "people are no longer needed for grueling work" is a bad thing.
I mean, you're not wrong, but I feel like it's a condemnation of out economic system.
Driving is not grueling work. Imagine a utopia where people aren't needed for any work at all! No job for you. Only AI robots taking care of rich people while everything else burns. Just make sure you're one of the rich ones and everything is A-okay!
Sitting for extended periods of time is bad for one’s health. Also, being in a vehicle is the highest morbidity/mortality risk thing people do. More time on the road = more chance of injury.
Agreed. But it’s not grueling. Programming you also sit for long periods. Programming usually isn’t considered grueling.
I'm for equal opportunity screwing: if they lose their jobs, it's only fair my job is at risk too - and given improvements in programming agents, it will be.
The only way we're getting through this is by facing it together, not throwing the more precarious of us under the bus.