Self-Driving Cars - Coming Soon to a Nightmare near You

[DonRocks]

Call me old-fashioned, but the notion of these things still scares the hell out of me - especially being next to a truck on the Interstate (cross-country truck drivers are going to be a dying breed, I suppose).

One thing I've thought of that I haven't heard mentioned elsewhere: I envision a future - perhaps not during my lifetime - where self-driving cars on demand pull up to your residence, and take you away (but how will they know where to park?!). This, of course, has been mentioned before.

The novel thing that I've thought of is that, accompanying this disturbing inevitability, will be a *huge* increase in demand for run-flat tires. Companies owning self-driving cars on-demand will not want to send someone out to change a flat tire each time there's a blowout; instead, they'll merely summon the cars back to a central location, and change the tires there - ergo, run-flat tires.

[zgast]

27 minutes ago, DonRocks said:

Call me old-fashioned, but the notion of these things still scares the hell out of me - especially being next to a truck on the Interstate (cross-country truck drivers are going to be a dying breed, I suppose).

Looking at the folks driving around me going to and from work, I fail to see how a computer could do any worse.  I do agree that commercial truck driver is probably not too great an area to recommend our teenagers look into.  That being said, Buffett just bought the largest chain of truck stops, so clearly he doesn't think this is coming too soon.  

[DaveO]

A friend of mine re posted this list of predictions.  A fair amount of it has to do with automobiles:

Quote

USA Association

Predictions!

1. Auto repair shops go away. A gasoline engine has 20,000 individual
parts. An electrical engine has 20. Electric cars are sold with
lifetime guarantees and are only repaired by dealers. It takes only 10
minutes to remove and replace an electric engine. Faulty electric
engines are not repaired in the dealership but are sent to a regional
repair shop that repairs them with robots. I am thinking....your
electric engine malfunction light go on so you drive up to what looks
like a Jiffy-auto wash, Your car is towed through while you have a cup of
coffee and out comes your car with a new engine.
2. Gas stations go away. Parking meters are replaced by meters that
dispense electricity. All companies install electrical recharging
stations.
3. All major auto manufacturers have already designated 5-6 billions
dollars each to start building new plants that only build electric
cars.
4. Coal industries go away. Gasoline/oil companies go away.
Drilling for oil stops.
5. Homes produce and store more electrical energy during the day and
then they use and will sell it back to the grid. The grid stores it
and dispenses it to industries that are high electricity users.

A baby of today will only see personal cars in museums.

1. The FUTURE is approaching faster than one can handle!
In 1998, Kodak had 170,000 employees and sold 85% of all photo paper
worldwide. Within just a few years, their business model disappeared and they
went bankrupt.

What happened to Kodak will happen in a lot of industries in the next
5-10 years and, most people won't see it coming.

Did you think in 1998 that 3 years later you would never take pictures on
film again?

Yet digital cameras were invented in 1975. The first ones only had
10,000 pixels, but followed Moore 's law. So as with all exponential
technologies, it was a disappointment for a time, before it became way
superior and became mainstream in only a few short years. It will now
happen again (but much faster) with Artificial Intelligence, health, autonomous and electric cars,
education, 3D printing, agriculture and jobs.

Welcome to the 4th Industrial Revolution.

Welcome to the Exponential Age!!

2. Software will disrupt most traditional industries in the next 5-10
years.

3. Uber is just a software tool, they don't own any cars, and are now
the biggest taxi company in the world.

4. Airbnb is now the biggest hotel company in the world, although they
don't own any properties.

5. Artificial Intelligence: Computers become exponentially better in
understanding the world. This year, a computer beat the best Go-player
in the world, 10 years earlier than expected.

6. In the U.S., young lawyers already don't get jobs. Because of
IBM's Watson, you can get legal advice (so far for more or less
basic stuff) within seconds, with 90% accuracy compared with 70%
accuracy when done by humans. So, if you study law, stop
immediately. There will be 90% fewer lawyers in the future, only
omniscient specialists will remain.

6A. Watson already helps nurses diagnosing cancer, its 4 times more
accurate than human nurses.

7. Facebook now has a pattern recognition software that can recognize
faces better than humans. In 2030, computers will become more
intelligent than humans.

8. Autonomous cars: In 2018 the first self driving cars will
appear for the public.
Around 2020, the complete industry will start to be disrupted. You
don't want to own a car anymore. You will call a car with your phone, it
will show up at your location and drive you to your
destination. You will not need to park it you only pay for the
driven distance and can be productive while driving. The very young
children of today will never get a driver's license and will never own a
car.

8A. It will change the cities, because we will need 90-95% less cars
for that. We can transform former parking spaces into parks.

1.2 million people die each year in car accidents worldwide. We now
have one accident every 60,000 mi (100,000 km), with autonomous
driving that will
drop to 1 accident
in 6 million mi (10 million km). That will save a million
lives worldwide each year.

8B. Most car companies will doubtless become bankrupt. Traditional car
companies try the evolutionary approach and just build a better car,
while tech companies (Tesla, Apple, Google) will do the revolutionary
approach and build a computer on wheels.

8C. Many engineers from Volkswagen and Audi; are completely terrified of
Tesla.

9. Insurance companies will have massive trouble because, without
accidents, the insurance will become 100x cheaper. Their car
insurance business model will disappear.

10. Real estate will change. Because if you can work while you
commute, people will move further away to live in a more beautiful
neighborhood.

11. Electric cars will become mainstream about 2020.
Cities will be less noisy because all new cars will run on electricity.

12. Electricity will become incredibly cheap and clean: Solar
production has been on an exponential curve for 30 years, but you can
now see the burgeoning impact.

13. Last year, more solar energy was installed worldwide than fossil.
Energy companies are desperately trying to limit access to the grid to
prevent competition from home solar installations, but that simply
cannot continue - technology will take care of that strategy.

14. With cheap electricity comes cheap and abundant
water. Desalination of salt water now only needs 2kWh per cubic meter
(@ 0.25 cents). We don't have scarce water in most places, we only
have scarce drinking water. Imagine what will be possible if anyone
can have as much clean water as he wants, for nearly no cost.

15. Health: The Tricorder X price will be announced this
year. There are companies who will build a medical device (called
the "Tricorder" from Star Trek) that works with your phone, which takes
your retina scan, your blood sample and you breath into it.
It then analyses 54 bio-markers that will identify nearly any
disease. It will be cheap, so in a few years everyone on this planet
will have access to world class
medical analysis, nearly for free.

16. 3D printing: The price of the cheapest 3D printer came down from
$18,000 to $400 within 10 years. In the same time, it became 100
times faster. All major shoe companies have already started 3D
printing shoes.

17. Some spare airplane parts are already 3D printed in remote
airports. The space station now has a printer that eliminates the need
for the large amount of spare parts they used to have in the past.

18. At the end of this year, new smart phones will have 3D scanning
possibilities. You can then 3D scan your feet and print your perfect
shoe at home.

19. In China, they already 3D printed and built a complete 6-story
office building. By 2027, 10% of everything that's being produced will
be 3D printed.

20. Business opportunities: If you think of a niche you want to go
in, first ask yourself: "In the future, do I think we will have
that?" and if the answer is yes, how can you make that happen sooner?

20A. If it doesn't work with your phone, forget the idea. Any idea
designed for success in the 20th century is doomed to failure in the
21st century.

20B. Work: 70-80% of jobs will disappear in the next 20 years. There
will be a lot of new jobs, but it is not clear if there will be enough
new jobs in such a short time.

21. Agriculture: There will be a $100 agricultural robot in the
future. Farmers in 3rd world countries can then become managers of
their field instead of working all day on their fields.

22. Aeroponics will need much less water. The first Petri dish produced
veal is now available and will be cheaper than cow produced veal in
2018. Right now, 30% of all agricultural surfaces is used for cows.
Imagine if we don't need that space anymore.

23. There are several startups who will bring insect protein to
the market shortly. It contains more protein than meat. It will be
labeled as "alternative protein source" (because most people still
reject the idea of eating insects).

 

[Al Dente]

This podcast from RadioLab brought up concerns about the algorithms used to program the cars. I hadn't even considered these life or death issues. Well worth a listen. 

Driverless Dilemma

I think autonomous vehicles are coming very soon. There's just too much profit to be made for implementing such automation. Truck drivers will be out of work within 10 years. And given our government's insane deregulation spree, I fear the worst for our safety.

[LauraB]

According to this NPR article, Truck Driver is the most common occupation in a large majority of states.  Imagine what will happen when all of these people lose their jobs and have no other alternative.  

[DonRocks]

1 hour ago, LauraB said:

According to this NPR article, Truck Driver is the most common occupation in a large majority of states.  Imagine what will happen when all of these people lose their jobs and have no other alternative.  

Have no fear - these people will develop other skills, and contribute to overall productivity in the process - there will be no further need for them to spend long hours driving trucks. They can become proficient in radiology, artificial intelligence, robotics, and other areas which will advance total GDP.  Or, if they don't wish to put forth the effort, there are plenty of floors that need to be swept.

With relish,
Hetty Green

1 hour ago, Al Dente said:

Driverless Dilemma

The Trolley Problem is fallacious. When you push the man off the bridge, there's a 100% chance of death, without any guarantee that he'll land on the track, or stop the trolley; when you pull the lever, there's a very real chance that the one person on the track can get out of the way. Also, the way the problem is worded, you don't even have the option to hurl yourself from the footbridge. This is a classic case of polling manipulation, and quite frankly, is a perfect parallel to why so many trial lawyers are "successful" - because they've developed the ability to trip up people with this kind of false premise.

The one truth to this (and I think the real point of this) is that "The further away you are from death, the easier it is to swallow," and the lever adds something of a "buffer" between you and murder. You could absolutely save someone's life *today* if you wanted to - just send $1,000 in cash to someone about to die of starvation. The fact that you don't know who is about to die of starvation makes you several degrees of separation removed from the death, and you don't even think about it - but you've absolutely got the power, right now, to save a life, today (or, if not today, certainly within a week).

[Al Dente]

19 minutes ago, DonRocks said:

Have no fear - these people will develop other skills, and contribute to overall productivity in the process - there will be no further need for them to spend long hours driving trucks. They can become proficient in radiology, artificial intelligence, robotics, and other areas which will advance total GDP. 

 

Are you being serious? Just like unemployed coal miners? Because of automation, I think we're headed for mass unemployment like we've never seen. Our society and government are not at all prepared for it. Drastic changes to our economic system, like a universal wage, will need to be implemented.

I fear for my daughter's future.

[DonRocks]

51 minutes ago, Al Dente said:

Are you being serious? Just like unemployed coal miners? Because of automation, I think we're headed for mass unemployment like we've never seen.

Nah, man - they can become real-estate developers: With the added efficiency in traffic, we can build, build, build.

[Tweaked]

Having just sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic from Fredericksburg to the Beltway, I welcome self-driving cars!  

[DonRocks]

For whatever reason, this just now popped into my head: One tremendous advantage of self-driving cars is a miniature version of interstate trucking. If I have tickets to the Wizards-Warriors game, and I can't make it, but someone on the other side of town wants to buy them, I can just plop them in the back seat of a self-driving car, and have it drive to the other person's house with the tickets, but without me. That really *will* increase productivity - it's a crude version of a transporter beam.

Now, as to whether or not I'll get my money, that's another question entirely.

[DanielK]

6 hours ago, DonRocks said:

If I have tickets to the Wizards-Warriors game, and I can't make it, but someone on the other side of town wants to buy them, I can just plop them in the back seat of a self-driving car, and have it drive to the other person's house with the tickets, but without me.

Who still uses paper tickets?

[DonRocks]

31 minutes ago, DanielK said:

Who still uses paper tickets?