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| ▲ | jnsie 26 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Took a few last year on a trip to San Francisco and it felt like the future. It's not lost on me that enshittification will take its toll, the fleet will get nastier over time, prices will increase, etc. I'm also torn about more money being given to mega corporations. But purely from a service-enjoyment and technology-appreciation point of view it was amazing! | |
| ▲ | bluefirebrand 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | How is it you guys feel like the future is better when humans don't do things for themselves like driving? I get the idea that you no longer need a driver for a cab, but in my mind all that means is there's an unemployed former cab driver who is explicitly worse off now. The likelihood of that person having tons of great options to go do now that they aren't burdened by driving a cab is pretty low imo? There's probably a name for this somewhere, some kind of automation paradox that makes "society" better but many individuals lives worse. As an individual it's hard for me to understand why anyone is excited about it though | | |
| ▲ | weitendorf 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | This is called the lump of labor fallacy. When jobs get automated, almost always, people find other jobs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy This is why our standard of living is much better now than it was 150 years ago. Even though we have autoamted pretty much all of the jobs since then, except teacher and lawyer (there is another term in economics for what happens here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect) Personally I think it's fine, even as my own profession undergoes the same transition. We now have new jobs in running the waymo fleet in various capacities - the cars still need to be serviced, cleaned, supported, scheduled, etc - and the highly compensated jobs designing what are essentially real-world robots that can safely coexist with humans on the road. This is how technology has always worked and it's always made us better off on the whole. Also, the new product is just better. When a human is not in the car, it's ok for to leave them waiting for a few minutes to pick me up if it's not a busy street, and I don't have to deal with the risk of an unsafe or unsavory person hosting me in their personal vehicle. I can control the music and the AC, and tap a button to have the car pull over. I can and do still take Lyfts and Ubers when I need to - it's cheaper for anything involving the highway, still, and better when I need to get somewhere in a hurry. | | |
| ▲ | DataDive an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | The past does not repeat. IMHO jobs were far less specialized in the past. Working in a factory is not that different from working in a kitchen or laying tile. Take Muhammad, a fresh arrival from Syria, who drives a taxi. What will his next job be that is that easy and he already knows how to do? | | |
| ▲ | SenHeng 24 minutes ago | parent [-] | | The truth is we don't know. Anyone who can answer that question will be rich. But actually, what I've commonly heard from immigrants from developing countries is not having their certifications recognised. What was once a surgeon/lawyer/accountant is now forced to do menial labour. So maybe that's one problem to consider solving. |
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| ▲ | ipaddr an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | "When jobs get automated, almost always, people find other jobs" Never as good pay and many end up on the system. | | |
| ▲ | weitendorf an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | When my parents were my age, there were almost no jobs working with distributed systems or robotics and the relative standard of living was much worse than what I have been able to attain at a similar age and level of education. My grandparents performed jobs that now are rarely performed in the US due to there being better jobs for those qualified to perform them. I am much happier working with AI and distributed systems than as a carpenter or steel mill foreman like my grandfathers. Everybody on my father's side of the family had these white marks all over their forearms from molten metal splashing on them and burning them as they worked. This is only possible because of technological progress. It creates new jobs. | | |
| ▲ | SenHeng 18 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Same. My grandfather was a sailor, then cook. Father drives a taxi. Mom is a seamstress. Stepdad worked at the same factory for 65 years. As I was coming of age in the 90s, they chastised me for spending all my time in front of the computer. Yet here I am still sitting in front of one, making more money than they could've ever imagined. Society progresses whether or not you want it. |
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| ▲ | pj_mukh an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Pretty sure a DoorDash driver now gets paid better than a 19th century farmer inflation adjusted? Over a single lifetime, there are no guarantees because there's too many variables, but civilization-ally, the progress seems to always hold up. | |
| ▲ | cman1444 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | But, as a whole, the entire population's pay goes a lot farther since no one has to pay drivers to drive them around anymore. Living standards would be a lot worse today if we still had to pick crops in the field by hand. | | |
| ▲ | bluefirebrand an hour ago | parent [-] | | > But, as a whole, the entire population's pay goes a lot farther since no one has to pay drivers to drive them around anymore They still have to pay the Waymo though, it didn't become free. :/ You're kidding yourself if you think autonomous taxis will be cheaper in the long run just because they don't pay a driver. They will outcompete human drivers on cost and once they are dominant they will raise prices. This has happened every other time human labor was replaced too. It is practically the Silicon Valley playbook. | | |
| ▲ | cman1444 26 minutes ago | parent [-] | | The cost to take a picture today and keep it on your phone is not more expensive than it was when you had to get them developed in a darkroom. The cost to watch a movie today through streaming is not more than it was when you had to go to a movie theater to see one. The cost to buy and sell financial instruments today through Robinhood or similar products is not more than when you had to have a broker to place orders for you. The cost to find vast amounts of information through search engines is negligible today. To do so previously would take immense amounts of time, effort, and money parsing through encyclopedias is the information even existed at the time. The cost to print a few drafts of a memo today requires a single session typing into Microsoft word and then printing to your office printer. Previously you had to pay a typist to put together multiple drafts for you. On autonomous vehicles: Yes they will absolutely be cheaper, as long as a complete monopoly is avoided. It's not just that you don't have to pay the driver. You also will have vastly lower insurance rates due to how safe they are. Maintenance costs will be lower due to economies of scale when fleet operators can have the car deliver itself to a dedicated massive maintenance facility. |
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| ▲ | bethekidyouwant an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | I always hear people saying this but when? the 70s the 60s? that’s your golden age? |
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| ▲ | bluefirebrand an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | > When jobs get automated, almost always, people find other jobs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy Yes yes I'm aware of the fallacy It's obviously not the whole picture though. When Number of Jobs automated approaches 100% then what? | | |
| ▲ | vidarh an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | If the number of jobs automated approaches 100%, then either what small proportion that is left is still sufficient to pay people, whether because the number of jobs in absolute terms is still large, say by the creation of new types of work, or because of reduction in working hours, or mass unemployment eventually forces some form of redistribution. Large scale automation is only a problem if society allows it to become a problem. | | |
| ▲ | bluefirebrand an hour ago | parent [-] | | > Large scale automation is only a problem if society allows it to become a problem. When I look around me I see a society that I think would happily have jackboots round up excess labor and execute us rather than redistribute money fairly So I wish I had your optimism |
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| ▲ | jryle70 an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | > When Number of Jobs automated approaches 100% then what? When was that? Or hypothetical? Why would that be and not that new jobs being created? |
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| ▲ | jagraff an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The vast majority of people used to be farmers; I am glad to live in a future where farming jobs have largely been automated away. With driving specifically - human-driven cars are perhaps the greatest danger to my life. I very much would prefer to live in a future where human beings are not in charge of piloting multi-ton vehicles at life threatening speeds in the same areas I walk around. | |
| ▲ | maffyoo an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Don't get me wrong on this, I love driving.. the right car. But, most of the time, driving is one of the most unproductive things a human can do in the modern world. I guess you could argue that some commuters (who aren't driving themselves) don't exactly fill that time with the most productive things but thats a separate issue. | | |
| ▲ | DataDive an hour ago | parent [-] | | I think this oversimplifies life and realities. You don't have to be "productive" all the time. As you put it, driving the car is not just a chore - things happen along the way. It can be a chore - I just contest the most unproductive label here. By this token, sleeping is the most unproductive thing in the world. Except you recharge. | | |
| ▲ | SenHeng 7 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I enjoy driving for pleasure and often go for days long drives. Driving back and forth to work however is definitely a chore. It sounded fun at first, I get to do something I enjoy doing before work, how bad could it be? Turns out, spend a couple hours on the road everyday and you'll quickly get sick of podcasts or ebooks. You can't stop to look up details or check out the code/math/design because you're driving. You can't really do anything else too because you really should be focusing your attention on the road. |
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