The Boy Who Cried Robot: A World Without Work

[Monoriu]

One of the things that always annoyed me about the implementation of economic theories in practice is the selective application of what Zanza described.  The argument against Luddism is that everyone can be made better off with technology;  the losers can be fully compensated, and the winner will still have something left over after compensation due to increased efficiencies.  In practice, technology marches on, and the losers are given helpful tips on how to pull themselves up by the bootstraps.

I thought the argument against Luddism is, if you refuse to advance technologically, somebody else will, and you'll be left behind?

[Sheilbh]

One of the things that always annoyed me about the implementation of economic theories in practice is the selective application of what Zanza described.  The argument against Luddism is that everyone can be made better off with technology;  the losers can be fully compensated, and the winner will still have something left over after compensation due to increased efficiencies.  In practice, technology marches on, and the losers are given helpful tips on how to pull themselves up by the bootstraps.

I mean with luddism there's also the wider economic context of the various economic crises hitting England during the revolutionary/Napoleonic era, plus the status, power and gender issues around the technological development.

I have a friend who was searching his parents house and found a shuttle used by his nan in the textile mill with a carved Virgin Mary in the middle - which is the most Irish Catholic migrant relic I can imagine

[crazy canuck]

The problem with socializing economic trauma such as with covid is we lose flexibility to deal with systematic problems and future events.

It is cool that the stock market is actually up this year despite covid, and it is great that some folks have even gotten windfalls from this despite their businesses getting hurt. But we may want those few trillion back when all the truckers, uber drivers, car salesmen, etc. are put out of work.

How do "we" lose flexibility and what is this flexibility you are talking about?  Doesn't allowing people to keep functioning (fed, housed, healthy and educated) have some merit for dealing with the future?

Why do you think "we" want to confiscate all economic gains?  Wouldn't a rational progressive tax system do?

[Savonarola]

This month's IEEE Communication Society magazine has an article called "Human-Robot Cooperation for Autonomous Vehicle and Human Drivers: Challenges and Solutions."  The article deals with the issues that are likely to arise as autonomous vehicles are used when most (or even some) of the vehicles are driven by humans.  One topic they cover is "Real Time Gesture Recognition."  If an autonomous vehicle doesn't recognize that you're flipping it off what's the point of driving?  And if it can't flip you off, can you really say that it is driving?



It's really more about gesturing autonomous vehicles through stop signs or work zones.

[Tonitrus]

Will they be able to solve a vehicle-borne Canadian standoff?

[Berkut]

I think it is a fascinating engineering problem.

It is too bad there isn't some significantly large area that would be willing to just pass a law saying you were not allowed to drive your car on public roads anymore, just to test just how good you could make fully autonomous driving if you got the humans out of the way.

I suspect it would not just be radically safer, it would be incredibly more efficient. Imagine no stop signs or stoplights anymore if cars could just drive themselves and know where all the other cars are and what they are doing? Real time traffic management and routing.

[Zanza]

The gesture topic is not relevant to the current level of autonomous driving. The first SAE 4 cars are just coming to the market, but that level means they only need to be fully autonomous in certain scenarios, i.e. probably not in situations where hand gestures matter.

I agree with Berkut that fully autonomous cars only would circumvent many issues, but the main technology needed there would be car-to-car network or even car-to-X network to be able to coordinate the various traffic participants.  That technology also makes progress, but I have the impression as if it is not very fast.

[Savonarola]

The gesture topic is not relevant to the current level of autonomous driving. The first SAE 4 cars are just coming to the market, but that level means they only need to be fully autonomous in certain scenarios, i.e. probably not in situations where hand gestures matter.

That's not a surprise, the journal that I referenced is a research journal; the technologies they cover are, at most, in the prototype stage.  There was a reference to the SAE levels in the article, but they didn't go into any detail - could you tell us what the different levels are?

[Jacob]

The idea of fully networked traffic certainly promises to be more efficient, which is worthwhile.

Concerns that I'd have (which I'm sure are being considered, but remain concerns nonetheless):

1) Ability to handle non-networked contexts and events: pedestrians, bicyclists, wild-life, airplane trying to make emergency landing on the highway, people in regular cars.

2) If the solution to 1) is to isolate the networked traffic from non-networked contexts and events, the impact on marginal and low-political-capital communities. E. g. places where existing transport infrastructure gets converted to autonomous infrastructure, cutting off communities from the wider world.

3) Security vulnerabilities - given the experiences in the networked world, I take it as a given that bad actors will attempt to sabotage the system for various ends.

None of these problems are necessarily insurmountable, I don't think, but I expect that's where the pain points are going to lie.

[Berkut]

The security concern alone is huge for sure.

[Jacob]

The security concern alone is huge for sure.

Yes indeed. Both in terms of logistics - "oh no trucks can get in or out of Atlanta, GA for the next 48 hours due to a security incident" to people "everyone on the I-45 near Houston are stuck in a 12-hour lock-jam as traffic grinds to a halt"... and that's before considering potential loss of life from collisions.

[Zanza]

There was a reference to the SAE levels in the article, but they didn't go into any detail - could you tell us what the different levels are?

[Zanza]

By the way, there was some interesting prototyping for cars giving gestures to e.g. pedestrians ("You can cross") already.

[The Brain]

Does level 6 drive you to where you need to be instead of where you want to be?

[Tonitrus]

Does level 6 drive you to where you need to be instead of where you want to be?

"No, you cannot make a quick stop at the Starbucks, citizen, I must make sure you get to work on time."