Driverless trucks move all iron ore at Rio Tinto's Pilbara mines, in world first - Polidicks

[QUOTE=Sobotnik;49984798]Your theory rests on the flawed assumption that science and technology are an infinite source of growth. They aren't, and one day the economy will stop growing once the diminishing returns kick in. It's already the case that we are starting to see these diminishing returns in many areas, such as healthcare or education[/QUOTE] No, my assumption relies on the assumption that science and technology are NOT infinite sources of growth. If they were, we would be able to continually and unendingly discover more and more technologies that would lead to more jobs. Pray tell, how will jobs not go down once the fields of ALL factors of production, transportation, PoS, and construction evaporate?

[QUOTE=dai;49981895]unmanning on-site mining tech is awesome, it may put existing giant mining truck drivers into a pinch but it's opening tech jobs to operate and maintain the equipment in a different manor[/QUOTE] To be fair the "operators replaced by technicians" argument is a little fallacious. One automated machine can replace the jobs of multiple workers, and one technician can service multiple machines. Automation is going to seriously hurt the majority of workers and there's no silver lining where they just transfer departments.

[QUOTE=srobins;49984837]To be fair the "operators replaced by technicians" argument is a little fallacious. One automated machine can replace the jobs of multiple workers, and one technician can service multiple machines. Automation is going to seriously hurt the majority of workers and there's no silver lining where they just transfer departments.[/QUOTE] The silver lining is approaching a post-scarcity utopia (even if we never fully get there). Imagine it, a world in which most people don't have to work a day in their lives. It is a very real possibility.

total automation is a very real possibility, many people who work in robotics would agree with me. we have zero precedent for an economy with no (or extremely few) workers, and as such i think it would be foolish to apply traditional economic teachings to it when traditional economic teachings have always assumed that production of products or services requires workers who must be constantly paid.

[QUOTE=Ninja Gnome;49984862]total automation is a very real possibility, many people who work in robotics would agree with me. we have zero precedent for an economy with no (or extremely few) workers, and as such i think it would be foolish to apply traditional economic teachings to it when traditional economic teachings have always assumed that production of products or services requires workers who must be constantly paid.[/QUOTE] You could actually look at slave economies to get an idea of how it would work. Robot societies would have all the benifit of slavery to an economy with none of the human rights issues. Dubai is a good example

[QUOTE=phygon;49984848]The silver lining is approaching a post-scarcity utopia (even if we never fully get there). Imagine it, a world in which most people don't have to work a day in their lives. It is a very real possibility.[/QUOTE] There are already adequate resources to ensure that reality, at least for individual countries like America. Without an accompanying change in our culture and economy all automation will do is increase profits for corporations and further disempower workers.

[QUOTE=Ninja Gnome;49984825]where did you get the idea that healthcare research is slowing down? if anything it is speeding back up again.[/QUOTE] It's producing far fewer returns now than it used to. About a century ago you could easily double a persons lifespan by giving them some vaccines, ensuring they got clean water, and washing your hands. It costs what? A few cents for a polio vaccine? Today it's common for people to live well into their 80s, by which point their bodies need to be kept alive by a growing number of expensive physical therapies, drugs, etc. When few people now die from disease or injury, but instead from simple aging and cancers, it costs upwards of tens of thousands of dollars to keep them alive for shorter and shorter periods of time.

[QUOTE=srobins;49984924]There are already adequate resources to ensure that reality[/QUOTE] Resources? Sure. Factors of production? Not at all, what are you talking about? Who will produce these goods that we would be consuming?

[QUOTE=Ninja Gnome;49984862]total automation is a very real possibility, many people who work in robotics would agree with me. we have zero precedent for an economy with no (or extremely few) workers, and as such i think it would be foolish to apply traditional economic teachings to it when traditional economic teachings have always assumed that production of products or services requires workers who must be constantly paid.[/QUOTE] I completely agree. I just can't take Sobotnik seriously when he often repeats things will work out because they have worked out in the last 200 years. But what we did in the last 200 years was first replacing workers in primary sectors with machines. No problem, industry was booming so many found opportunities in the secondary sector aka factories. Then factories got modernized, but luckily there is a tertiary sector. Now we are in the stage were we are introducing automation in that sector as well, and more and more removing people from the entire economic equation. This never happened in history, a whole new sector is missing for a new shift, so comparing it to anything from last two centuries simply makes no sense to me. Write about theories and make hypothesis about the future, but you can't compare it with anything from the past.

[QUOTE=Sobotnik;49984950]It's producing far fewer returns now than it used to. About a century ago you could easily double a persons lifespan by giving them some vaccines, ensuring they got clean water, and washing your hands. It costs what? A few cents for a polio vaccine? Today it's common for people to live well into their 80s, by which point their bodies need to be kept alive by a growing number of expensive physical therapies, drugs, etc. When few people now die from disease or injury, but instead from simple aging and cancers, it costs upwards of tens of thousands of dollars to keep them alive for shorter and shorter periods of time.[/QUOTE] The barriers to overcome now are higher than before but the results of over coming those barriers are also greater. You're essentially writing off the entire field of medical AI because somewhere, at some point, you read an article telling you it was slowing down too much to be of value anymore.

[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;49984995]The barriers to overcome now are higher than before but the results of over coming those barriers are also greater. You're essentially writing off the entire field of medical AI because somewhere, at some point, you read an article telling you it was slowing down too much to be of value anymore.[/QUOTE] that's not the point, and i'm not writing off the entire field at all. i think it's quite conceivable that it will provide many more innovations for centuries to come the point is that nothing covered by the field of economics is immune from the laws of economics. medical research and the costs of developing it come under it. generally people find out the easy stuff first and then tackle the hard ones - a process that will continue until people won't think its worth the cost of research because the benefits do not look like they will become manifest [editline]22nd March 2016[/editline] [QUOTE=AntonioR;49984986]I completely agree. I just can't take Sobotnik seriously when he often repeats things will work out because they have worked out in the last 200 years. But what we did in the last 200 years was first replacing workers in primary sectors with machines. No problem, industry was booming so many found opportunities in the secondary sector aka factories. Then factories got modernized, but luckily there is a tertiary sector. Now we are in the stage were we are introducing automation in that sector as well, and more and more removing people from the entire economic equation. This never happened in history, a whole new sector is missing for a new shift, so comparing it to anything from last two centuries simply makes no sense to me. Write about theories and make hypothesis about the future, but you can't compare it with anything from the past.[/QUOTE] i'll link you to this economics resource guide which helps explain the concept - a lot of people who don't know very much about economics often get caught up on a lot of things and it's good to educate yourself about them when possible: [url]http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/6717/economics/the-luddite-fallacy/[/url]

[QUOTE=Sobotnik;49985036]that's not the point, and i'm not writing off the entire field at all. i think it's quite conceivable that it will provide many more innovations for centuries to come the point is that nothing covered by the field of economics is immune from the laws of economics. medical research and the costs of developing it come under it. generally people find out the easy stuff first and then tackle the hard ones - a process that will continue until people won't think its worth the cost of research because the benefits do not look like they will become manifest [editline]22nd March 2016[/editline] i'll link you to this economics resource guide which helps explain the concept - a lot of people who don't know very much about economics often get caught up on a lot of things and it's good to educate yourself about them when possible: [url]http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/6717/economics/the-luddite-fallacy/[/url][/QUOTE] I'm still curious how you think that jobs will remain 1:1 when all factors of production are handled by robots

[QUOTE=phygon;49985079]I'm still curious how you think that jobs will remain 1:1 when all factors of production are handled by robots[/QUOTE] the point is that robots won't do everything because you're not going to have an economy where people are going to spend a great deal of resources on inventing and developing robots that can do literally every single job a person can, only more cheaply. every time a new robot or automated process comes about, it forces down prices and either more of those goods are bought (in turn leading to increased production and therefore employment) or people have more money leftover, which goes into other sectors of the economy which will consequently grow this is not my opinion, it's a observable fact of nature. unlike the 19th century, economists don't sit around all day postulating about the effects of automation when they have well over two centuries of a vast array of detailed information sources that tell us that automation-induced unemployment of the kind you describe isn't observed I mean think about it. Why are there small-scale farmers in Uganda who (with medieval tools and techniques) manage to turn a profit by selling milk to a local town while at the same time in the west, there are vast dairy farms which are heavily in debt yet are heavily automated and subsidized by governments and protected through trade regulations? why is it that japan is in terminal economic decline and that they suffer from severe underemployment in many crucial sectors despite having a lot of technology and automation?

[QUOTE=Sobotnik;49985036]i'll link you to this economics resource guide which helps explain the concept - a lot of people who don't know very much about economics often get caught up on a lot of things and it's good to educate yourself about them when possible: [url]http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/6717/economics/the-luddite-fallacy/[/url][/QUOTE] I'm not sure should I and others here be offended by you linking this article ? The article is a joke stuck in past, and is just a sum of things you often post, which I already said I can't take seriously.

[QUOTE=AntonioR;49985134]I'm not sure should I and others here be offended by you linking this article ? The article is a joke, and is just a sum of things you often post, which I already said I can't take seriously.[/QUOTE] students often use it to help them prepare for exams. it is designed to be easy to read and to give a clear consistent overview of the subject. i mean if you were saying that evolution wasn't real and I linked you an article explaining why evolution is an accepted scientific theory you'd be saying the same thing. this is shit that university educated people are expected to know. economics is a rigorous academic field where disagreeing with basic fundamental concepts leads to a shoddy and broken understanding of how economies actually operate people don't go into school and tell the teacher that they're wrong for teaching that the earth is round

[QUOTE=Sobotnik;49985164]students often use it to help them prepare for exams. it is designed to be easy to read and to give a clear consistent overview of the subject. i mean if you were saying that evolution wasn't real and I linked you an article explaining why evolution is an accepted scientific theory you'd be saying the same thing. this is shit that university educated people are expected to know. economics is a rigorous academic field where disagreeing with basic fundamental concepts leads to a shoddy and broken understanding of how economies actually operate people don't go into school and tell the teacher that they're wrong for teaching that the earth is round[/QUOTE] I just doubt some of their predictions and I find it pretty hard to argue with "no here's the predictions, this is factually how the future will play out" because it's not an arguable position when you've defined the future as one thing.

[QUOTE=OvB;49983960]You also have to consider though, that with a self-driving truck there will be less downtime. You don't have to sit and let the driver rest for x hours a day, you don't have to stop to eat or sleep or use the bathroom. The only time that truck will not be moving will be when it's getting fueled up or at the destination. There will be less opportunity for theft.[/QUOTE] Usually the truck fleet that [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arla_Foods"]Arla [/URL]owns operates on a 3 or 4 shifts-a-day pattern. They're only at a standstill when the trucks are being loaded, unloaded or serviced. So that isn't a new concept at-all. They're even sometimes serviced on-the-spot while their trailer is being loaded/unloaded, that's how keen Arla is on truck usage efficiency.

[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;49985206]I just doubt some of their predictions and I find it pretty hard to argue with "no here's the predictions, this is factually how the future will play out" because it's not an arguable position when you've defined the future as one thing.[/QUOTE] It's not a predictor of the future, it's explaining something observable in reality. What we have observed for the past two centuries, and observe today, is that persistent structural unemployment does not increase due to automation. People do work less these days, that much is true, but that is because higher wages and varied benefits have allowed them to take an increasing amount of leisure time, support children that would have otherwise entered the workforce early on, pensions and other subsidies which take old people out of the workforce at the age of retirement, etc. People often talk about examples of jobs destroyed by the impact of technological innovation, but people don't seem to like talking about all of the varied sectors in the economy which are presently wanting workers but cannot get them. Education and retail are two big ones right now that often suffer for lack of labour, especially during seasonal peaks. There was a recent SH article about how there's suddenly a massive demand for coloured pencils and how the factories are working overtime just to cope. Think about the number of jobs that alone creates right now.

[QUOTE=Sobotnik;49985164]students often use it to help them prepare for exams. it is designed to be easy to read and to give a clear consistent overview of the subject. i mean if you were saying that evolution wasn't real and I linked you an article explaining why evolution is an accepted scientific theory you'd be saying the same thing. this is shit that university educated people are expected to know. economics is a rigorous academic field where disagreeing with basic fundamental concepts leads to a shoddy and broken understanding of how economies actually operate people don't go into school and tell the teacher that they're wrong for teaching that the earth is round[/QUOTE] You do know, not that long ago, schools claimed the Earth was flat, and it turned out the teachers were wrong ? Economics is not an exact science, you can't discover one day that the "Earth is round" and take it as a fact for the rest of eternity. Not even 2+2 is a constant 4 in economics, you need to include interest rates, inflation and all that voodoo. Everything is relative.

[QUOTE=Sobotnik;49985268]It's not a predictor of the future, it's explaining something observable in reality. What we have observed for the past two centuries, and observe today, is that persistent structural unemployment does not increase due to automation. People do work less these days, that much is true, but that is because higher wages and varied benefits have allowed them to take an increasing amount of leisure time, support children that would have otherwise entered the workforce early on, pensions and other subsidies which take old people out of the workforce at the age of retirement, etc. People often talk about examples of jobs destroyed by the impact of technological innovation, but people don't seem to like talking about all of the varied sectors in the economy which are presently wanting workers but cannot get them. Education and retail are two big ones right now that often suffer for lack of labour, especially during seasonal peaks. There was a recent SH article about how there's suddenly a massive demand for coloured pencils and how the factories are working overtime just to cope. Think about the number of jobs that alone creates right now.[/QUOTE] Those lacking of jobs means there's a lack of qualified workers, no? Something that automation will need, qualified workers, so they're filling empty jobs, and still not creating them at a 1-1 basis in the education sphere. Retail? Seriously? I can go into any grocery store, and ignore people entirely, by using the automated check out line. It's faster, easier. And it's becoming much more common. Instead of 10 cashiers, we now have on average, 5 cashiers, and 1 supervisor covering 10 self checkout tills. That's not 1:1 job creation. That's 1:5, 1 job for every 5 replaced. And you don't think if that coloured pencil factory was automated from the start, they'd be able to keep up with demand with minimal changes in hiring, a definite way to save money and generate profits? You don't think they'd do that if they had an option? And seasonal/geographical job creation doesn't mean much if there isn't the work force in those areas. I really, truly don't think you're seeing that element of it.

[QUOTE=AntonioR;49985322]You do know, not that long ago, schools claimed the Earth was flat, and it turned out the teachers were wrong ? Economics is not an exact science, you can't discover one day that the "Earth is round" and take it as a fact for the rest of eternity. Not even 2+2 is a constant 4 in economics, you need to include interest rates, inflation and all that voodoo. Everything is relative.[/QUOTE] Schools haven't claimed the earth has been flat in history at all. While I know that economics is not an exact science, it doesn't mean you can come up with the automation = unemployment thesis when it doesn't fit in what we've actually observed in the world people throughout this thread have been constantly asserting that automation causes structural unemployment despite the fact that there is no evidence for this at all. economics isn't the hardest of sciences, but this doesn't mean that the field is lacking in science [editline]22nd March 2016[/editline] [QUOTE=HumanAbyss;49985380]Those lacking of jobs means there's a lack of qualified workers, no? Something that automation will need, qualified workers, so they're filling empty jobs, and still not creating them at a 1-1 basis in the education sphere. Retail? Seriously? I can go into any grocery store, and ignore people entirely, by using the automated check out line. It's faster, easier. And it's becoming much more common. Instead of 10 cashiers, we now have on average, 5 cashiers, and 1 supervisor covering 10 self checkout tills. That's not 1:1 job creation. That's 1:5, 1 job for every 5 replaced. And you don't think if that coloured pencil factory was automated from the start, they'd be able to keep up with demand with minimal changes in hiring, a definite way to save money and generate profits? You don't think they'd do that if they had an option? And seasonal/geographical job creation doesn't mean much if there isn't the work force in those areas. I really, truly don't think you're seeing that element of it.[/QUOTE] you're still not getting the point that it doesn't permanently increase. what you are saying is true only in the short term, because it eventually returns back to an equilibrium

[QUOTE=Hillo;49982929]Beats sitting in a office all day[/QUOTE] As someone who has both done the most menial office jobs (try paper shredding for 8 hours a day) and also done long delivery jobs (3-5 hours one way, delivery work, then back.) They're about as bad. Short deliveries can be fun, but distance driving is mind-numbing and exhausting. If I had to choose 8 hours of driving or 8 hours of deskwork, I'd do the deskwork every day. Then there's no chance I'm stuck out in bumfuck nowhere with a problem hours away from my house/work.

[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;49985380]Those lacking of jobs means there's a lack of qualified workers, no? Something that automation will need, qualified workers, so they're filling empty jobs, and still not creating them at a 1-1 basis in the education sphere. Retail? Seriously? I can go into any grocery store, and ignore people entirely, by using the automated check out line. It's faster, easier. And it's becoming much more common. Instead of 10 cashiers, we now have on average, 5 cashiers, and 1 supervisor covering 10 self checkout tills. That's not 1:1 job creation. That's 1:5, 1 job for every 5 replaced. And you don't think if that coloured pencil factory was automated from the start, they'd be able to keep up with demand with minimal changes in hiring, a definite way to save money and generate profits? You don't think they'd do that if they had an option? And seasonal/geographical job creation doesn't mean much if there isn't the work force in those areas. I really, truly don't think you're seeing that element of it.[/QUOTE] Expanding on the cash register analogy. B-b-b-but technical maintenance jobs! Normal cash registers still require similar maintenance, and a handful of maintenance techs can service hundreds, even thousands, of machines. These same concepts are applied almost everywhere. Jobs don't remain 1:1 unless you significantly increase productivity and profits in tandem with mechanization. If you don't, there's no financial incentive to move towards increased mechanization in the first place. That's pretty basic economics.

[QUOTE=Sobotnik;49985433] you're still not getting the point that it doesn't permanently increase. what you are saying is true only in the short term, because it eventually returns back to an equilibrium[/QUOTE] I need you to elaborate how that works. Your example of retail is fairly unfounded as retail jobs are likely to be some of the first to go. Now, based on that knowledge, where do relatively unskilled workers, usually young people, go next without an education? Service jobs at a restaurant? Also highly likely to be automated, and will reduce the staff by over half. Higher end restaurants may very well keep them employed for the sake of having a "personalized" dining experience, but even then, that's not 1:1 job replacement. For medical professionals, they'll see automation largely take over clinical roles, being incredibly more capable of diagnosing issues due to having a connection to all the other clinical medical robots, acquiring a larger set of medical data in no time compared to what any human may see. Humans will be kept in the loop, but even doctors will see the need for them reduced quite drastically. Even my job, which is 100% talking to customers, and explaining what they're buying in simple, and understandable terms is at risk of automation on some level. If you could buy your policy from a machine that could just as easily answer your questions as I could, maybe even better, then my job only stays as long as it's more costly to replace me. I can't think of a single industry that won't see massive job reductions. Where are these 1:1 replacements coming from?

At best you can argue that new fields will develop, but that's an entirely separate point. Once again it boils down to the abstract notion of profitability. Profitability must go up or no change occurs. At it's essence, that's increasing productivity, and or reducing operational costs. Salaries are operational costs. Sobotnik has made these claims in the past, and I don't expect him to be able to back them up this time either. The 1:1 jobs jargon flies in the face of any sort of capitalistic theory, and in practice has been repeatedly shown to be bullshit.

[QUOTE=The Aussie;49983928]1. [url=http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/19/mining-tax-its-time-for-all-australians-to-realise-they-are-being-ripped-off]No, the effective tax rate is still 13%.[/url][/quote] You've linked an opinion piece that linked to a statement by Julia Gillard. I think I can safely dismiss that. [quote]2. We should be giving more money to the mining companies so they don't have to pay taxes on fuel while they plunder the Crown's natural resources, of which you and me are entitled to, for short term economic gain while simultaneously pushing all the money gained out of the Australian economy and into the international market? Oh yeah. I'm not arguing against farmers or fishermen getting that same tax credit. $2.2 Billion is going directly to the Mining industry for no good reason, and this increases their dependence on fossil fuels. [url=https://greens.org.au/sites/greens.org.au/files/ending_fossil_fuel_subsidies.pdf]Source.[/url][/quote] You haven't justified it there other than some special pleading bullshit. Why should any business not using their fuel on a public road have to pay for them? Are you going to call for peaking diesel power station to pay fuel tax as well? You haven't justified it at all. [quote]3. Royalties are paid yes, but they are a piss poor amount compared to a decent tax, maxing out at around 5-10%. There's also "royalty free thresholds" so if they make enough money, they don't have to pay anymore tax. [url=https://www.business.qld.gov.au/industry/mining/applications-compliance/rents-royalties/royalties/calculating-mining/rates]Source 1[/url] [url=http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/industries/energy-utilities-mining/mining/territories/australia.html#footnote-30]Source 2.[/url][/quote] "Royalty free thrsholds" as you claim don't exist in your source. I can also just dismiss that. [quote]Additionally, i've found this neat little source from a tax review from the Treasury which shows that, in 2001, mining companies paid about 40% of their profits to the government. As of 2009, this is not less than 20%. This is taxed profit, and it includes royalties. [url=http://taxreview.treasury.gov.au/content/downloads/final_report_part_1/00_AFTS_final_report_consolidated.pdf]Major Source,[/url] [url=http://www.mining-tax.com.au/]Condensed source, graph thumbed below for convenience.[/url] [t]http://www.mining-tax.com.au/images/chart1.png[/t][/QUOTE] Oh look, they want to tax the mining companies at a special 40% rate while charging everyone else 28%, and then taking away royalty control from the states. No wonder it was so unpopular. You've cited a clearly biased website that cites a labour government report. No thanks.

[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;49986013]Your example of retail is fairly unfounded as retail jobs are likely to be some of the first to go.[/quote] Based on what? Which retail jobs? How many? What is the likely replacement rate? What is the replacement by? Is the new technology competing on the margins or is it presently posing an existential threat to the entirety of retail employment? How much does this technology cost? Automation is a piecemeal process that doesn't usually happen all at once. It might also be often that a company won't actually fire the workers because they still need to expand production anyways, so the extra staff left from a new machine are sent off to other other new tasks the company needs done because they already know the place and how to work there. Taking the example of a biscuit factory, sure we had a lot of automated equipment there and were constantly introducing new machinery that cut down on labour - but the actual need for workers didn't change much. The company kept hiring people simply because a factory is a massive and complex place to run, and the minor niggle of labour is a small part of the greater whole. [quote]Now, based on that knowledge, where do relatively unskilled workers, usually young people, go next without an education? Service jobs at a restaurant? Also highly likely to be automated, and will reduce the staff by over half. Higher end restaurants may very well keep them employed for the sake of having a "personalized" dining experience, but even then, that's not 1:1 job replacement.[/quote] Just look at job-searching websites today and see what people are offering. There's quite a lot of different jobs in all sorts of different areas. Remember that if a lot of people were suddenly made unemployed it would soon become apparent to companies that they could take on a lot more staff cheaply instead of investing into new machinery right now. You have to think of companies making decisions based on cost-effectiveness, and surprising enough humans are pretty cost-effective for a lot of industries. Why bother inventing a machine that can do all a human can (one unlikely to be invented in the next century) when you have a ready supply of cheap people lying around? The Romans felt no need to invent steam engines despite knowing the obvious practical applications of it because labour was so cheap. When they introduced labour-saving watermills, it was in response to the growing labour shortages that eventually destroyed their empire. [quote]I can't think of a single industry that won't see massive job reductions. Where are these 1:1 replacements coming from?[/QUOTE] From the other sectors of the economy which could use unskilled or semi-skilled labour? Look at Japan today, massive sectors of their economy (such as in construction, sanitation, maintenance, etc) are in desperate need of workers to build and maintain their crumbling infrastructure. Every year, millions leave the workforce and enter retirement in the developed nations. The number of people in the workforce in Japan is shrinking rapidly, and this is a pattern that will be soon followed in most of the West (like Germany especially), Russia, China, Korea, Persia, etc. The problem today is not too much automation, it's that the lack of it will mean it will become hard to sustain the advanced economies.

[QUOTE=OvB;49981885]Transportation industries days are numbered like it or not. Driving trucks for a living is on the way out. Self driving cars are right around the corner.[/QUOTE] That's not true at all. I'm a company LTL driver and it wouldn't be technologically feasible to replace what I do for at least another decade or two. Driving a truck is not going point A to point B. You have hundreds of variables that would need to be accounted for. We don't follow the rules that the average driver follows. There is a plethora of rules and regulations that vary state by state. There are roads that do not allow for truck traffic which many trucking GPS companies claim they know of but they will always at some point direct you where you're not supposed to go. Is your load a hazmat? Well now you need to follow a state sanctioned route in order to avoid violations and massive fines. Even with maps like Waze that are generally the most up to date still don't account for changing road conditions. You need human intuition to judge whether or not the route you will be taking is the proper and legal one. Shit even bridges that are technically high enough to pass will end up being too low because the road beneath was paved over several times and the height sign was never updated. I can go all day about how most of what I do can't be automated by a computer. It's too much for an autonomous system to handle. I still see my job being viable for at least another couple of decades, but who knows shit changes fast. On the other hand the transportation industry adapts incredibly slowly, we're [I]just[/I] getting electronic logging as a standard. Most companies are sticking with paper logs until it becomes mandatory.

[QUOTE=Amez;49986837]That's not true at all. I'm a company LTL driver and it wouldn't be technologically feasible to replace what I do for at least another decade or two. Driving a truck is not going point A to point B. You have hundreds of variables that would need to be accounted for. We don't follow the rules that the average driver follows. There is a plethora of rules and regulations that vary state by state. There are roads that do not allow for truck traffic which many trucking GPS companies claim they know of but they will always at some point direct you where you're not supposed to go. Is your load a hazmat? Well now you need to follow a state sanctioned route in order to avoid violations and massive fines. Even with maps like Waze that are generally the most up to date still don't account for changing road conditions. You need human intuition to judge whether or not the route you will be taking is the proper and legal one. Shit even bridges that are technically high enough to pass will end up being too low because the road beneath was paved over several times and the height sign was never updated. I can go all day about how most of what I do can't be automated by a computer. It's too much for an autonomous system to handle. I still see my job being viable for at least another couple of decades, but who knows shit changes fast. On the other hand the transportation industry adapts incredibly slowly, we're [I]just[/I] getting electronic logging as a standard. Most companies are sticking with paper logs until it becomes mandatory.[/QUOTE] None of that seems like it needs a human being in charge. I worked as a delivery driver before, and even knowing that town like the back of my hand, a sufficiently skilled robot driver would do my job better.

[QUOTE=Amez;49986837]On the other hand the transportation industry adapts incredibly slowly, we're [I]just[/I] getting electronic logging as a standard. Most companies are sticking with paper logs until it becomes mandatory.[/QUOTE] I know quite a few Owner/Operators who refuse to use electronic logging because of the somewhat new 10 hour reset periods. They fudge the logs and drive the way they always used to. Classic case of regulation messing things up. Some of them even went [i]back[/i] to paper logs after that change in regulation because elogs aren't trivial to fudge, which costs them time, and time is money. They won't use elogging until it is federally required.