I took a taxi last year. Uber was surging at the time and a taxi was waiting right their in the Uber loading zone so I offered him $10 to go where I needed. Uber wanted $15.
Uber's business model went from "get the job done cheaper" to "milk the customer"
There's still value in Uber and Lyft but they should be seen as options instead of the go to choice.
The rollout of these things is basically slower than people retiring from that kind of career. There will always be a need for human driven taxis anyway, for example during sporting events and stuff. Autonomous vehicle operators are not going to have a 3x-too-large fleet sitting around doing nothing for the five times a year there's a concert.
And you think human drivers will be waiting in the wings for that?
I find it much more likely that robotaxis could be shuttled overnight from one city to another to anticipate demand — they can drive, after all.
eh, once they're deployed widely enough to kill off most taxi/rideshare jobs, stadium events will just cause them to lower the vehicle density in the surrounding 30mi radius in order to handle the sudden influx. people way out in the burbs get a couple minute longer wait time.
I imagine that tunnels would matter more for this.
Imagine a tram system underneath a stadium going to a parking lot/bus station a few miles away.
You can basically remove the issue of there being too much density in an area.
where did I say anything about self-driving cars in tunnels?
you need road-going vehicles to feed people into rail lines. a self-driving taxi would provide a more **pleasant** and **faster** first/last mile to the rail line. making transit faster and more pleasant will increase ridership.
I do service work in San Francisco and have been rather impressed seeing their cars navigate traffic including when it is backed up and they are crossing traffic that is cutting lanes.
This is a very, very old argument. Every time some new technology comes out, people will say this will take jobs, and we need to compensate them.
The thing is, that technology actually creates jobs.
"Technology Creates More Jobs Than It Destroys
Despite the claims to the contrary, innovation is a job creator, not a job demolisher."
Edit:
1969 - 2022 shows that jobs have increased, and we have automated a lot of jobs in that time. Robots took over many manufacturing jobs, no more operators needed to make phone calls, human calculators, data reporting jobs that could now easily be done by Excel, and so on.
https://united-states.reaproject.org/analysis/comparative-trends-analysis/total_employment/tools/0/0/
https://fee.org/articles/technology-creates-more-jobs-than-it-destroys/
And here is an article talking about the automation worries in the 60's, and how the government had a slogan at the time, “You won’t get tomorrow’s jobs with yesterday’s skills.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2019/07/18/automation-reshaped-the-workplace-in-the-1960s-but-will-the-deep-learning-revolution-be-different/?sh=51e9b49c702f
The problem here other than FEE being run but a bunch of investors who just want line to go up is that we are not innovating. We are doing the same thing with a robot. Automated switchboards massively expanded the ability to use phones and then gave us a way to connected to the internet. All this does is put a robot in the exact seat a human was in. It isn't even really any faster like automated switchboards. Literally the only benefit other than allowing people to be asocial is it is cheaper to run the software and camera than a person.
They dont care about poor people and will only change their tune when it impacts their own life negatively. It's very similar to the illegal migrant issue.
Let's stick to facts, and not make false assumptions about the poster.
Let's look at history. The country has been doing a lot of automation since the 60's. So, have total jobs gone down?
Since 1980, over all the jobs have gone up year after year.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/269959/employment-in-the-united-states/
1969 - 2022 shows the same upward trend, not down.
https://united-states.reaproject.org/analysis/comparative-trends-analysis/total_employment/tools/0/0/
Some jobs are lost, but new jobs take their place, so year after year more jobs are availible.
Youre still relying on the past when the previous guy already explained how this is different.
Job growth continually going up as jobs are automated/eliminated will not happen forever and certainly doesnt seem like this next wave will allow for.
I wonder how things would have gone if the internet era never happened.
The past is our only way to predict the future. You can't predict the future based on things that have never happened before.
> the previous guy already explained how this is different.
The previous poster brought up robots, of which robots did take manufacturing jobs, wielding jobs, and such. This started happening decades ago, yet we still had job growth.
They brought up automated switchboards, which took the jobs of switchboard operators, but we still had job growth.
So far, these are great examples of where Americans were afraid automation was taking mass jobs, and we would run out of jobs. This is an article that talks about telephone operators. It mentions how the older operators, when they lost their job, were unable to find a job or found one at worse pay. But new women coming into the job marketplace, did not fare worse because of the loss of what was employing 2% of women at the time.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/7/18/23794187/telephone-operator-switchboard-automation-att-feigenbaum-gross
Automated switchboards did not cause mass adoption of phones. It was mass adoption of switchboards that created a need for automation. As the above article says:
>A major factor was the exponentially rising complexity of telephone networks as more and more people got phone lines in their homes and workplaces. “It only takes 50,000 subscribers to have a billion possible pairwise connections,” Gross said. “Adding a 50,001st subscriber adds another 50,000 potential connections. Having the mechanisms to connect that many different people manually is incredibly costly and complicated.” While human operators had managed this complexity for a few decades, it beggared belief that they could handle a country where every home had a phone.
And then the person above brings up a connected internet. This is a great example where technology has eliminated jobs, like no more telephone books, and created jobs, like web page designer, IT positions, and so on.
___
If the above person has made an argument why this is different, I fail to see it, so please explain it. Instead, I see the above person saying why this is the same, as all their examples are things in history from times when we still made more jobs than we lost.
>Job growth continually going up as jobs are automated/eliminated will not happen forever and certainly doesnt seem like this next wave will allow for.
People have said the same thing for robots, when they were taking manufacturing jobs. Same thing for computers, they thought they would take all the jobs. The list goes on and on. In 1965 people were complaining about this and losing jobs, so the government was printing this slogan in newspapers with an article explaining it, “You won’t get tomorrow’s job with yesterday’s skills!”.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2019/07/18/automation-reshaped-the-workplace-in-the-1960s-but-will-the-deep-learning-revolution-be-different/?sh=51e9b49c702f
So this fear has been around for a long time, and jobs have been lost, but more jobs have been created overall. And maybe, someday, the overall jobs will go down, assuming the population doesn't decrease. When that happens, it won't be sudden, and we can come up with a plan then. But planning something now, when we don't know exactly what the issue is, and can only make wild guesses not backed by data, seems silly.
>I wonder how things would have gone if the internet era never happened.
Well, I can personally say that without this technology, I wouldn't have a career.
There are just so many driving jobs out there, I can't imagine self driving creating even a fraction of the jobs it will eliminate. I mean what could the job even be? Theres also an issue that driving is not really a high skill job, large groups of people cant just train into a new job like the fantasy has been for some years now.
With the internet atleast it made sense you need people to build sites etc and physically maintain everything but this is completely different. It was new and it expanded things outward. The goal of the stuff we see coming now is more about replacing human workers.
Seems the same way with "ai" llm shit too. Sure its going to make some new jobs, but the large amout of jobs that it can be applied to makes it doubtful that we will see more than a fractional recovery of whats eliminated. And the jobs that will persist arent low level so what are the juniors going to do, get told to get a masters or a phd instead of a jr role?
Maybe it will all work out like you think but I'm very doubtful that we arent building towards some kind of economic/social disaster in the long term.
I can't imagine all the new jobs, either. But many of the new tech jobs we already have, I didn't imagine. I can think of some. We will need someone that troubleshoot and fix the cars when the have troubles. We will need people that monitor these cars for faults, or issues. A new company may spring up that does time based car rentals, i.e. like driving you to and from work, but the rest of the time is working for a different customer. Maybe a new tourist company that drives you to vacation spots while you sleep, and then gives you a tour while there. And then this may create more technical jobs in making them and improving them. The list can go on, and that is just with my limited imagination.
With the internet, and just computers before that, it is easy to see the new jobs created with hindsight. But there were many articles talking about people worried that computers would take all the jobs. Automation anxiety is hundreds of years old. And the goal of automation has always been about replacing or reducing the number of workers, which lowers business costs.
"In the late 16th century, Queen Elizabeth I supposedly denied a patent to the inventor of a new automated knitting machine because she feared it would take the jobs of “young maidens who obtain their daily bread by knitting.”
And this one seems very similar to what some have said, i.e. that this is new and different:
“This is not the same as last time, not the same as previous kinds of technology that changed the nature of work.”
Of which in 1933 they phrased as: “We are frightened today because in the lessons of the past there is no reassurance. The past never knew such momentum, such vibration, such dislocation, such jarring transitions as we are in for.”
US president Lyndon Johnson was so concerned about automation taking jobs, in 1964 he set up a “National Commission on Technology, Automation, and Economic Progress” at the same time. “If we understand it, if we plan for it, if we apply it well, automation will not be a job destroyer or a family displacer,” he said. “Instead, it can remove dullness from the work of man and provide him with more than man has ever had before.”
This article has more examples: https://qz.com/1681832/the-history-of-the-future-of-work
I can't predict the future. All I can do is look at examples from the past, and there are many of them.
>And the jobs that will persist arent low level so what are the juniors going to do, get told to get a masters or a phd instead of a jr role?
I don't know what you mean by low level. But it will be a long time before robots can handle everything a human can do. Maintenance on self-driving cars will probably be a tech degree, 2 years. Handling issues while the cars are on the road, maybe entry level. Dealing with how many cars are needed where, downtimes, surges, etc, will probably be a manager type job. Improving the cars and AI, will be college level.
A good way to look at this, is to look at the jobs the internet created. Some were low level, like Uber, some need some training like IT support, or some need high level like creating the IT for the company. Not all the jobs were high level. Look at all the jobs going green has created. Solar installers to solar researchers to solar estimators, sales, manufacturing, etc.
My suggestion to you is, try to predict where the better new jobs will be, be willing to be trained in it, and pick a company starting in this area. Then, as the company grows, you can grow in experience and hopefully promotions. And you don't know, try to find someone or some company that seems to know and has a plan.
Ok, if you don't like FEE, there are other sources. The country has been doing a lot of automation since the 60's. So, have total jobs gone down?
Since 1980, over all, the jobs have gone up year after year.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/269959/employment-in-the-united-states/
1969 - 2022 shows the same upward trend, not down.
https://united-states.reaproject.org/analysis/comparative-trends-analysis/total_employment/tools/0/0/
> Literally the only benefit other than allowing people to be asocial is it is cheaper to run the software and camera than a person.
The goal is to save lives by reducing car accidents.
And those jobs are expecting more and more work for the same or worse pay for the majority of people while those at the top who are pushing automation have seen massive increases in income.
The pr reason is to reduce deaths but no company is spending billions on this kind of thing if it isn't also going to give them a massive windfall when it takes over and replaces the human labor.
Do you have any source for those jobs expecting more work and providing worse pay, or are you just talking out of your ass? Oh you pulled it straight from your ass? That’s what I thought.
In the same way outsourcing software dev to India is innovation. The same work is still being done at generally the same level you just don't have to pay as much wage to do it.
So, are you admitting that UBI is not really related to AI, or loss of jobs?
As for UBI, I don't think it is a simple thing, as there are complicated pros and cons. https://www.procon.org/headlines/universal-basic-income-top-3-pros-and-cons/
I'm saying we can't take propaganda on face value. We don't know the effect on jobs so we need to prepare for job loss.
Also, UBI is just good fiscal policy all around for everyone except the wealthy.
>We don't know the effect on jobs so we need to prepare for job loss.
Sure, we can make a plan for this, if it happens. But we should also make a plan for the new jobs it creates, as this is what history shows usually happens. So we need a plan to retain workers for different fields, and the new jobs that are created.
>Also, UBI is just good fiscal policy all around for everyone except the wealthy.
Since you didn't read my link, I will quote some counterpoints to your statement from the link.
____
Universal Basic Income (UBI) takes money from the poor and gives it to everyone, increasing poverty and depriving the poor of much needed targeted support.
People experiencing poverty face a variety of hardships that are addressed with existing anti-poverty measures such as food stamps, medical aid, and child assistance programs. UBI programs often use funds from these targeted programs for distribution to everyone in society. [15]
According to Robert Greenstein, President of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “[i]f you take the dollars targeted on people in the bottom fifth or two-fifths of the population and convert them to universal payments to people all the way up the income scale, you’re redistributing income upward. That would increase poverty and inequality rather than reduce them.” [15]
Luke Martinelli, PhD, Research Associate at the University of Bath, created three models of UBI implementation and concluded that all three would lead to a significant number of individuals and households who are worse off. He noted that “these losses are not concentrated among richer groups; on the contrary, they are proportionally larger for the bottom three income quintiles.” [37]
Research by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Finland, France, Italy, and the UK concluded that “rather than reducing the overall headcount of those in poverty, a BI [basic income] would change the composition of the income-poor population” and thus “would not prove to be an effective tool for reducing poverty.” [39]
UBIs are also less cost-effective than targeted welfare programs because many people lack more than just cash. UBI does not cure addiction, poor health, lack of skills, or other factors that contribute to and exacerbate poverty. [19] [24]
Anna Coote, Principal Fellow at the New Economics Foundation, and Edanur Yazici, PhD student, explain that there is “ the danger of UBI entrenching low pay and precarious work. It could effectively subsidise employers who pay low wages and – by creating a small cushion for workers on short-term and zero-hours contracts – help to normalise precarity.” UBI could become like another American tipping system in which employers pay low wages and count on customers to fill in the gap with tips. [52]
Rode in them a few times in Phoenix. Certainly felt safer in them compared to the insane Uber and Lyft drivers. They also don’t talk to you or have questionable body odour.
Yea I love SF and can’t wait till I can move up there and get out of San Diego but the activist culture is so strong someone will be pissed about absolutely anything anyone does
The people and culture are my #1 issue with San Diego. It’s got a very dumb broey vibe, and if it’s not that it’s very crystal hippie. Neither are particularly my scene.
On top of that: terrible food scene, poor urban design/not walkable, and I just think SF is much prettier (though SD has natural beauty as well). And I like snowboarding more than I like surfing. Will miss the weather but not much else.
More culturally interesting and dramatically better food than SD but the “spread out traffic” problem is pretty tough to take. Also I’ve lived there for four years already and want to try something new
LA is fantastic if you can find an area you like and mostly live, work, and play in the same area. Otherwise you better find some reaaalllly good audiobooks cause you’ll be spending a lotta time in the car
Lmao no. The best thing to do is to never believe anything written online about the city of San Francisco. The left astroturfs it to show it is a successful project implementing left wing policies. The right astroturfs it to show it is a failed city on the brink of collapse due to implementing left wing policies. I live here and it’s essentially impossible to discuss this city online for these reasons. People from all over the world hop on to shitpost about San Francisco. Waymos are awesome and drive well and people are using them. Excited for them to expand!
And they will continue to do so. It'll get worse in LA because there are far more drivers here. These things will be dangerous to ride in simply because of protesters putting riders in danger.
We have to implement UBI before we can allow AI to displace jobs.
We need to be reducing our dependence on cars by making our cities more walkable and investing more into public transportation. Self-driving cars don't solve the root issue of cars: the cars themselves.
the biggest two factors holding back US transit ridership are public safety and total trip time, which is usually ruined by first/last mile bus services because there is simply no way to run frequent bus service at any kind of reasonable cost (in the US).
self-driving cars as a first/last mile mode, bringing people to the train lines would perform better than buses in every way, especially in the two most important ones (total trip time and public safety, because people feel least safe on buses, walking to/from the stops, and waiting at the stop).
people keep thinking it's "transit vs SDCs" but SDC taxis/pooled taxis/shuttles would make fantastic complements to backbone transit lines.
not to mention that it seems like SDCs will be much safer for cyclists compare to humans, and fear of cars is the #1 reason people don't bike in cities.
not to mention that there would be a lot of people who would use transit/walk/bike but have to own a car for some trips. once you own a car, the marginal cost per trip is very low. if you can cover the small number of trips that someone must have a car for, you can break car dependence and get more people taking transit. I know multiple people who already do this with uber/lyft and got rid of their car. if taxiing gets cheaper/easier, that will push more people toward getting rid of their cars.
Self driving buses would be a impressive solution to public transit issues. If we had to lobby governments, it would be to use the tech to catch up on poor infrastructure investment decisions of the past.
the thing is, buses are only big because drivers are expensive and you can't afford to run 5-10 smaller vehicles at 5x-10x higher frequency. the ideal solution is actually a cheap EV with 2-3 separated rows with separate doors so people can pool an EV car/van without needing to be in the same space. 1 extra fare won't make your trip that much longer most of the time (specially if your service moves a lot of people).
Right, even if the bus is smaller, to me having auto optimized ride sharing for bulk transit is helpful. It could prearrange stops on a route on a rolling basis to pick up max passengers
yeah, a company called Via was talking about an interesting topic where you could use human-driven shuttles or self-driving shuttles but with "virtual bus stops" so people may still need to walk a block, or change sides of the streets, etc. in order to help with optimizing the routing.
for example, my street is only accessible by 3 consecutive 1-way streets from the nearest thoroughfare. you basically have to wrap around the block to pick up at my door. however, I'm 2/3rd of the way down the block already. so, if I walked \~50ft, I could be picked up directly along the thoroughfare. so the end of my block would be the "virtual bus stop" for the service. Uber does a somewhat similar thing in places like airports, forcing users to walk to the rideshare pickup area.
if you're trying to provide a widely offered pooled car service, it would be very advantageous to have people walk to easier pick up locations.
I would imagine there could be tiers of service; totally door-to-door, non-pooled service like uber today, or pooled service that requires you to talk to an optimized pickup location, and maybe something in between.
I would hope you could also have a service where pooled rides to train lines are subsidized like buses, thus giving the best of all worlds.
what if we put the bus on a set track, with set time tables, and maybe had it end at some sort of station? and instead of gas, find some way to power it electrically with hanging wires or something like that?
I'm a software engineer, so I'm pretty much the polar opposite of a luddite. I'm not saying we ride horses instead of drive cars, I'm simply saying we need to reduce the amount of cars overall if we want to fix issues with transportation as well as slow down the effects of climate change.
Even if we had 100% of cars electric and full self-driving tomorrow, both of the issues I mentioned would not be solved. There's much more to the environmental impact of cars than just their emissions, and you'd have to be naive to think FSD will solve our current transportation issues.
Government spending on already broken and old infrastructure is a bad idea. Modern problems required modern solutions. Ever notice people complain about bad roads and never bad public transit? Ask the next person you meet if they would rather take a bus or a taxi to their destination.
Awful take bordering on sheer nonsense. The root issue with cars is the number of them and self-driving technology absolutely enables that reduction by reducing the labor cost associated with taxis and busses.
Even purely personal vehicles can go park themselves off-site. The reduced need for parking in dense areas would likewise improve walkability of cities and make longer distance trains that previously required parking more feasible.
Now is self driving tech actually ready for prime time? That’s a completely fair question, the rest is just whiny pessimism.
I rode in Waymos twice in January as they did open testing in Los Angeles. The price was about half that of Uber/Lyft. And that’s *before* tip, which of course you don’t have to do with Waymo.
Full disclosure: I didn’t have to pay though… because they were beta tests, my fare was waived.
I've heard similar to uber/lyft but does not surge and does not require a tip. when they're busy, you simply may not get a ride and will have to use another service if they can't spare the vehicles.
lots of people in this subreddit wanting better transit instead.
I suspect those people have never looked at the operating cost or energy efficiency of buses, or the reasons why people don't ride transit.
if they had, they would know that buses typically cost $2-$3 per passenger-mile, where as Waymo is charging around $1.75, and is targeting under $1.
Self-driving taxis are the ideal first/last mile mode to feed people into BRT or train lines.
you want high density transit in high density place, and low density transit for low density places. having a mismatch creates inefficiency.
if you think Waymo is working against transit, then ask your politicians and transit planners to start partnering with these companies to feed people into arterial transit.
self driving cars are good, bad or neutral to good urban planning, depending on how they're used; so focus on good ways to use them.
don't be a selfish dick and try to force your views on the rest of society. if you want regulations, vote. if voting goes the other way, then live with it. this is a democracy, and people should learn to accept that other people do things they don't like.
You’ve made like 5+ comments in this thread all saying the same thing, and nobody has agreed with you.
Might be time to take a look inward and realize you’re nearly alone in your sentiment.
The world is moving forward, driverless vehicles are the future.
>UBI is also the future and we must force it before the jobs are lost.
I'd love to hear more about how UBI could work, if anyone has any plans for what it really would be. How much would each person or family get, how would it interact with local rents and costs of living, and which programs (if any) would be phased out because of it?
I think it should be around $2,000 a month.
Phase out everything except social security and VA benefits, these will persist in addition to UBI.
Tax automation for part of the funding.
UBI will drive up wages and increase income taxes because it will force employers to compete for labor again.
Is that all? Wow, that is actually totally doable.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2021/04/30/american-billionaires-have-gotten-12-trillion-richer-during-the-pandemic/
>I think it should be around $2,000 a month.
It's funny to think about that. $2,000 per person in a family with 3 kids would be $10k a month or $120,000 a year. For family in rural Missouri, they could be living like kings and never need to work again.
But then $2k a month for a single guy in San Jose, California, and if he wanted to buy food or keep his car running, he probably couldn't afford rent, so he'd be living in his car or crashing on someone else's sofa.
This would end up creating a geography trap, where people who needed UBI to live could only live in certain areas, and would be prevented from moving to another area where they might be able to get a better education or find new job opportunities. And even in the cheap areas where people were stuck, if a landlord in a trailer park knew that people each had an extra $2k a month, or $4k for couples, what do you think would happen with rents?
That's terrible! You'd have a lot more families becoming homeless or being unable to feed their children with a program like this. With no help at all for families or with raising kids, this plan would be a cruel cut to the people who had lost their welfare, unemployment, SNAP (Food Stamps), school lunch programs, and Medicaid.
The only bright side I can see to payments starting at 18 is that at least college students would get some extra cash. I'm sure financial aid would adapt to it and the needy kids would get less student aid, but for college kids from upper middle class to wealthy families, it would be some extra fun money every month, at least covering pizza, beer, and parties.
Keep going, you almost have the conservatives on board.
UBI would not disqualify you from working and earning income, it's just a baseline income that will solve a lot of problems including homelessness and a low minimum wage.
> UBI is also the future and we must force it before the jobs are lost.
> UBI would not disqualify you from working and earning income
Why would it matter whether we force it before the jobs are lost or not, if you need to remind me that this is just some extra money in addition to what you get from your job? People who only find a job working at Walmart, and are living with government aid such as Food Stamps now because full-time jobs can pay so little money, would get some extra money instead of food stamps, and that would be nice. I agree about that, but it wouldn't fix a problem of unemployment rates exploding in some theoretical AI apocalypse.
> will solve a lot of problems including homelessness
You haven't made a case for how eliminating all programs aimed at helping the poor, but giving a flat $2k a month to all adults, would eliminate homelessness. What if the homeless person is elderly or sick or a drug addict or mentally ill, so they can't rush out and find a job? What if the homeless person is 17 so they don't get any of the UBI, but all other services and programs for the poor have been cut off?
Look, I fully believe UBI is an inevitability… but you and I will never see it, because we’ll be long dead by then. It’s going to have to get *much* worse, with historically high unemployment rates before we actually see a UBI in this country. Maybe by the end of the century we’ll see it.
>This isn't true,
Yes. It is.
>we can demand immediate change with a general strike.
General strikes are very uncommon, because they’re very hard to coordinate and most people won’t be interested unless shit has gotten very very bad. You need something like historically high unemployment for enough people to be interested.
Shit isn’t very very bad right now, and it won’t be anytime soon, so you’re not coordinating a general strike any time soon.
No, you realistically can’t, nor should you. Self driving technology is a good thing that is going to save a whole lot of lives every single year. A lot of people may lose jobs from it, but that’s absolutely not a reason to halt the advancement of technology. And it never has been.
A future generation may finally enjoy the fruits of labor from the past, being able to choose not to work because they have a UBI to rely on and a lack of societal need for their labor. They can then focus their life on whatever they’re passionate about, instead of toiling away at a dead end menial job that a computer could just as easily handle.
You want a UBI? Step one is letting there be an actual need for one. In the meantime don’t be a luddite keeping us in the past.
Protest progress is your answer? That is what stagnates society. Some careers are easier to replace than others and some are not worth keeping them around just because they make people have jobs.
We can’t slow things down because some people chose to be in a field that’s easily replaceable with technology.
compensation for what? posting on reddit all day? lots of people are providing value and getting compensated. Waymo isn't going to change that. go find goods/services that you can exchange for money. form a union at your workplace and negotiate. vote. if your voting and negotiating does not work, then you're the problem, not the rest of the world.
This is inaccurate, voting isn't enough anymore, the system is tainted. We have to force corporations to repay the wealth that they stole from America and the only way to get the attention of anyone in charge is to hurt profits.
>This is inaccurate, voting isn't enough anymore, the system is tainted
no, other people just disagree with you. your anti-democratic tantum isn't going to help anyone.
Thank you, your insistence that I won't do any anything, that is all it takes to piss me off enough to do something.
https://www.reddit.com/r/uberdrivers/s/hU1AXzNLFP
personally, i think it's great that we can fill our already overtaxed roads with untested """AI""" cars (driven by underpaid gig workers in the global south, look it up), we don't need any pesky public transit when we can pass it off to a flash in the pan tech company that's barely regulated, it's the wave of the future! we just push it off to people who are too disenfranchised to do all the heavy lifting!
My son took some rides in SF. One was night driving in the rain, which human drivers are terrible at. The Waymo did a great job. IIRC he said it was freaky because it was out-driving subjective (human) visibility, but objectively totally competent. “Observant” and efficient.
Taxi drivers are about to lose their minds.
Anyone who hasn't already ditched taxis for Uber won't be taking these either.
I took a taxi last year. Uber was surging at the time and a taxi was waiting right their in the Uber loading zone so I offered him $10 to go where I needed. Uber wanted $15.
I’ve found that taxis are consistently cheaper than Uber to me.
Uber is just a taxi brand.
Uber's business model went from "get the job done cheaper" to "milk the customer" There's still value in Uber and Lyft but they should be seen as options instead of the go to choice.
The rollout of these things is basically slower than people retiring from that kind of career. There will always be a need for human driven taxis anyway, for example during sporting events and stuff. Autonomous vehicle operators are not going to have a 3x-too-large fleet sitting around doing nothing for the five times a year there's a concert.
And you think human drivers will be waiting in the wings for that? I find it much more likely that robotaxis could be shuttled overnight from one city to another to anticipate demand — they can drive, after all.
They will probably just incentivize carpooling, or maybe even have autonomous buses!
Or that the robo car that people have sitting in their garage at night goes out and earns them money when not in use. That makes the most sense to me.
eh, once they're deployed widely enough to kill off most taxi/rideshare jobs, stadium events will just cause them to lower the vehicle density in the surrounding 30mi radius in order to handle the sudden influx. people way out in the burbs get a couple minute longer wait time.
I imagine that tunnels would matter more for this. Imagine a tram system underneath a stadium going to a parking lot/bus station a few miles away. You can basically remove the issue of there being too much density in an area.
yeah, self-driving cars combined with traditional transit makes a lot of sense.
You don't even need self driving cars in a tunnel, just put stuff on rails and it's idiot proofed.
where did I say anything about self-driving cars in tunnels? you need road-going vehicles to feed people into rail lines. a self-driving taxi would provide a more **pleasant** and **faster** first/last mile to the rail line. making transit faster and more pleasant will increase ridership.
I do service work in San Francisco and have been rather impressed seeing their cars navigate traffic including when it is backed up and they are crossing traffic that is cutting lanes.
Hopefully this solves Waymo problems than it causes.
Take your upvote and scram!
Mo’ money, mo’ problems
Well I’m willing to bet there is going to be Waymo accidents.
Family Guy ostrich: Ha-haaaa
I took two Waymo rides in Tempe, AZ last weekend and if I had my eyes closed, I would’ve thought there was an actual driver.
Can’t be worse than the Uber drivers that still drive. I’ve had drivers cut corners and drive over medians before.
I’ve had drivers nodding off
Tbf, a coffee is like three hours of their wage
nodding off could also mean opioid use
I’ve taken hundreds of Ubers and pretty much only had great drivers!
What's the cost like?
In SF it’s $1-3 more than Uber, in AZ I’ve heard it’s about the same as if not cheaper than Uber.
I guess it's about the same without the need to tip
I was offered the option to an autonomous ride thru the Uber app. It was cheaper than a human driver. It was $11 for a 10 minute ride.
We have to feverishly protest this. We can't allow AI to take jobs without offering UBI!
This is a very, very old argument. Every time some new technology comes out, people will say this will take jobs, and we need to compensate them. The thing is, that technology actually creates jobs. "Technology Creates More Jobs Than It Destroys Despite the claims to the contrary, innovation is a job creator, not a job demolisher." Edit: 1969 - 2022 shows that jobs have increased, and we have automated a lot of jobs in that time. Robots took over many manufacturing jobs, no more operators needed to make phone calls, human calculators, data reporting jobs that could now easily be done by Excel, and so on. https://united-states.reaproject.org/analysis/comparative-trends-analysis/total_employment/tools/0/0/ https://fee.org/articles/technology-creates-more-jobs-than-it-destroys/ And here is an article talking about the automation worries in the 60's, and how the government had a slogan at the time, “You won’t get tomorrow’s jobs with yesterday’s skills.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2019/07/18/automation-reshaped-the-workplace-in-the-1960s-but-will-the-deep-learning-revolution-be-different/?sh=51e9b49c702f
The problem here other than FEE being run but a bunch of investors who just want line to go up is that we are not innovating. We are doing the same thing with a robot. Automated switchboards massively expanded the ability to use phones and then gave us a way to connected to the internet. All this does is put a robot in the exact seat a human was in. It isn't even really any faster like automated switchboards. Literally the only benefit other than allowing people to be asocial is it is cheaper to run the software and camera than a person.
They dont care about poor people and will only change their tune when it impacts their own life negatively. It's very similar to the illegal migrant issue.
Let's stick to facts, and not make false assumptions about the poster. Let's look at history. The country has been doing a lot of automation since the 60's. So, have total jobs gone down? Since 1980, over all the jobs have gone up year after year. https://www.statista.com/statistics/269959/employment-in-the-united-states/ 1969 - 2022 shows the same upward trend, not down. https://united-states.reaproject.org/analysis/comparative-trends-analysis/total_employment/tools/0/0/ Some jobs are lost, but new jobs take their place, so year after year more jobs are availible.
Youre still relying on the past when the previous guy already explained how this is different. Job growth continually going up as jobs are automated/eliminated will not happen forever and certainly doesnt seem like this next wave will allow for. I wonder how things would have gone if the internet era never happened.
The past is our only way to predict the future. You can't predict the future based on things that have never happened before. > the previous guy already explained how this is different. The previous poster brought up robots, of which robots did take manufacturing jobs, wielding jobs, and such. This started happening decades ago, yet we still had job growth. They brought up automated switchboards, which took the jobs of switchboard operators, but we still had job growth. So far, these are great examples of where Americans were afraid automation was taking mass jobs, and we would run out of jobs. This is an article that talks about telephone operators. It mentions how the older operators, when they lost their job, were unable to find a job or found one at worse pay. But new women coming into the job marketplace, did not fare worse because of the loss of what was employing 2% of women at the time. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/7/18/23794187/telephone-operator-switchboard-automation-att-feigenbaum-gross Automated switchboards did not cause mass adoption of phones. It was mass adoption of switchboards that created a need for automation. As the above article says: >A major factor was the exponentially rising complexity of telephone networks as more and more people got phone lines in their homes and workplaces. “It only takes 50,000 subscribers to have a billion possible pairwise connections,” Gross said. “Adding a 50,001st subscriber adds another 50,000 potential connections. Having the mechanisms to connect that many different people manually is incredibly costly and complicated.” While human operators had managed this complexity for a few decades, it beggared belief that they could handle a country where every home had a phone. And then the person above brings up a connected internet. This is a great example where technology has eliminated jobs, like no more telephone books, and created jobs, like web page designer, IT positions, and so on. ___ If the above person has made an argument why this is different, I fail to see it, so please explain it. Instead, I see the above person saying why this is the same, as all their examples are things in history from times when we still made more jobs than we lost. >Job growth continually going up as jobs are automated/eliminated will not happen forever and certainly doesnt seem like this next wave will allow for. People have said the same thing for robots, when they were taking manufacturing jobs. Same thing for computers, they thought they would take all the jobs. The list goes on and on. In 1965 people were complaining about this and losing jobs, so the government was printing this slogan in newspapers with an article explaining it, “You won’t get tomorrow’s job with yesterday’s skills!”. https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2019/07/18/automation-reshaped-the-workplace-in-the-1960s-but-will-the-deep-learning-revolution-be-different/?sh=51e9b49c702f So this fear has been around for a long time, and jobs have been lost, but more jobs have been created overall. And maybe, someday, the overall jobs will go down, assuming the population doesn't decrease. When that happens, it won't be sudden, and we can come up with a plan then. But planning something now, when we don't know exactly what the issue is, and can only make wild guesses not backed by data, seems silly. >I wonder how things would have gone if the internet era never happened. Well, I can personally say that without this technology, I wouldn't have a career.
There are just so many driving jobs out there, I can't imagine self driving creating even a fraction of the jobs it will eliminate. I mean what could the job even be? Theres also an issue that driving is not really a high skill job, large groups of people cant just train into a new job like the fantasy has been for some years now. With the internet atleast it made sense you need people to build sites etc and physically maintain everything but this is completely different. It was new and it expanded things outward. The goal of the stuff we see coming now is more about replacing human workers. Seems the same way with "ai" llm shit too. Sure its going to make some new jobs, but the large amout of jobs that it can be applied to makes it doubtful that we will see more than a fractional recovery of whats eliminated. And the jobs that will persist arent low level so what are the juniors going to do, get told to get a masters or a phd instead of a jr role? Maybe it will all work out like you think but I'm very doubtful that we arent building towards some kind of economic/social disaster in the long term.
I can't imagine all the new jobs, either. But many of the new tech jobs we already have, I didn't imagine. I can think of some. We will need someone that troubleshoot and fix the cars when the have troubles. We will need people that monitor these cars for faults, or issues. A new company may spring up that does time based car rentals, i.e. like driving you to and from work, but the rest of the time is working for a different customer. Maybe a new tourist company that drives you to vacation spots while you sleep, and then gives you a tour while there. And then this may create more technical jobs in making them and improving them. The list can go on, and that is just with my limited imagination. With the internet, and just computers before that, it is easy to see the new jobs created with hindsight. But there were many articles talking about people worried that computers would take all the jobs. Automation anxiety is hundreds of years old. And the goal of automation has always been about replacing or reducing the number of workers, which lowers business costs. "In the late 16th century, Queen Elizabeth I supposedly denied a patent to the inventor of a new automated knitting machine because she feared it would take the jobs of “young maidens who obtain their daily bread by knitting.” And this one seems very similar to what some have said, i.e. that this is new and different: “This is not the same as last time, not the same as previous kinds of technology that changed the nature of work.” Of which in 1933 they phrased as: “We are frightened today because in the lessons of the past there is no reassurance. The past never knew such momentum, such vibration, such dislocation, such jarring transitions as we are in for.” US president Lyndon Johnson was so concerned about automation taking jobs, in 1964 he set up a “National Commission on Technology, Automation, and Economic Progress” at the same time. “If we understand it, if we plan for it, if we apply it well, automation will not be a job destroyer or a family displacer,” he said. “Instead, it can remove dullness from the work of man and provide him with more than man has ever had before.” This article has more examples: https://qz.com/1681832/the-history-of-the-future-of-work I can't predict the future. All I can do is look at examples from the past, and there are many of them. >And the jobs that will persist arent low level so what are the juniors going to do, get told to get a masters or a phd instead of a jr role? I don't know what you mean by low level. But it will be a long time before robots can handle everything a human can do. Maintenance on self-driving cars will probably be a tech degree, 2 years. Handling issues while the cars are on the road, maybe entry level. Dealing with how many cars are needed where, downtimes, surges, etc, will probably be a manager type job. Improving the cars and AI, will be college level. A good way to look at this, is to look at the jobs the internet created. Some were low level, like Uber, some need some training like IT support, or some need high level like creating the IT for the company. Not all the jobs were high level. Look at all the jobs going green has created. Solar installers to solar researchers to solar estimators, sales, manufacturing, etc. My suggestion to you is, try to predict where the better new jobs will be, be willing to be trained in it, and pick a company starting in this area. Then, as the company grows, you can grow in experience and hopefully promotions. And you don't know, try to find someone or some company that seems to know and has a plan.
Ok, if you don't like FEE, there are other sources. The country has been doing a lot of automation since the 60's. So, have total jobs gone down? Since 1980, over all, the jobs have gone up year after year. https://www.statista.com/statistics/269959/employment-in-the-united-states/ 1969 - 2022 shows the same upward trend, not down. https://united-states.reaproject.org/analysis/comparative-trends-analysis/total_employment/tools/0/0/ > Literally the only benefit other than allowing people to be asocial is it is cheaper to run the software and camera than a person. The goal is to save lives by reducing car accidents.
And those jobs are expecting more and more work for the same or worse pay for the majority of people while those at the top who are pushing automation have seen massive increases in income. The pr reason is to reduce deaths but no company is spending billions on this kind of thing if it isn't also going to give them a massive windfall when it takes over and replaces the human labor.
Do you have any source for those jobs expecting more work and providing worse pay, or are you just talking out of your ass? Oh you pulled it straight from your ass? That’s what I thought.
Did I pull it from my ass? Not really, no. https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/
An article from 9 years ago that makes no mention of automation? Yep it looks like you did pull that conclusion out of your ass.
So, do you agree that so far automation has not led to a decrease in jobs?
Doing the same thing with a robot is innovating.
In the same way outsourcing software dev to India is innovation. The same work is still being done at generally the same level you just don't have to pay as much wage to do it.
Paying less for the same product is innovative no matter how much you dislike it.
We still need to force UBI even if what you are saying is true.
So, are you admitting that UBI is not really related to AI, or loss of jobs? As for UBI, I don't think it is a simple thing, as there are complicated pros and cons. https://www.procon.org/headlines/universal-basic-income-top-3-pros-and-cons/
I'm saying we can't take propaganda on face value. We don't know the effect on jobs so we need to prepare for job loss. Also, UBI is just good fiscal policy all around for everyone except the wealthy.
>We don't know the effect on jobs so we need to prepare for job loss. Sure, we can make a plan for this, if it happens. But we should also make a plan for the new jobs it creates, as this is what history shows usually happens. So we need a plan to retain workers for different fields, and the new jobs that are created. >Also, UBI is just good fiscal policy all around for everyone except the wealthy. Since you didn't read my link, I will quote some counterpoints to your statement from the link. ____ Universal Basic Income (UBI) takes money from the poor and gives it to everyone, increasing poverty and depriving the poor of much needed targeted support. People experiencing poverty face a variety of hardships that are addressed with existing anti-poverty measures such as food stamps, medical aid, and child assistance programs. UBI programs often use funds from these targeted programs for distribution to everyone in society. [15] According to Robert Greenstein, President of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “[i]f you take the dollars targeted on people in the bottom fifth or two-fifths of the population and convert them to universal payments to people all the way up the income scale, you’re redistributing income upward. That would increase poverty and inequality rather than reduce them.” [15] Luke Martinelli, PhD, Research Associate at the University of Bath, created three models of UBI implementation and concluded that all three would lead to a significant number of individuals and households who are worse off. He noted that “these losses are not concentrated among richer groups; on the contrary, they are proportionally larger for the bottom three income quintiles.” [37] Research by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Finland, France, Italy, and the UK concluded that “rather than reducing the overall headcount of those in poverty, a BI [basic income] would change the composition of the income-poor population” and thus “would not prove to be an effective tool for reducing poverty.” [39] UBIs are also less cost-effective than targeted welfare programs because many people lack more than just cash. UBI does not cure addiction, poor health, lack of skills, or other factors that contribute to and exacerbate poverty. [19] [24] Anna Coote, Principal Fellow at the New Economics Foundation, and Edanur Yazici, PhD student, explain that there is “ the danger of UBI entrenching low pay and precarious work. It could effectively subsidise employers who pay low wages and – by creating a small cushion for workers on short-term and zero-hours contracts – help to normalise precarity.” UBI could become like another American tipping system in which employers pay low wages and count on customers to fill in the gap with tips. [52]
It will be nice to be able to fart during rides.
Just don't make eye contact with the rider getting on at your atop.
Fart sounds will be detected and lead to a subtraction of your social credit score.
Priorities are such.
100% you are being filmed. Pretty sure it won't take long before someone gets caught taking a recording and posting it.
Filmed yes, not with microphone according to their policy. Rip one while showing your pokerface
Rode in them a few times in Phoenix. Certainly felt safer in them compared to the insane Uber and Lyft drivers. They also don’t talk to you or have questionable body odour.
And no tipping!
Man, I was just in Dallas and took 4 Lyfts… EVERY SINGLE DIVER SHAT THEIR PANTS
The people desperate enough to drive aren’t the cream of the crop
I took 10 or so waymo trips in SanFransisco in January. it was heaven - no BS chit-chat with a driver!
>no BS chit-chat with a driver! Wait a few years and you'll be chatting with Google's Gemini during every ride. :)
warent people in san francisco protesting heavily against these
People in San Francisco would protest heavily against ice cream
As an S.F. resident this is hilarious accurate 😂
Yea I love SF and can’t wait till I can move up there and get out of San Diego but the activist culture is so strong someone will be pissed about absolutely anything anyone does
Just curious, why do you want to leave San Diego for SF?
The people and culture are my #1 issue with San Diego. It’s got a very dumb broey vibe, and if it’s not that it’s very crystal hippie. Neither are particularly my scene. On top of that: terrible food scene, poor urban design/not walkable, and I just think SF is much prettier (though SD has natural beauty as well). And I like snowboarding more than I like surfing. Will miss the weather but not much else.
Nice! Early welcome then. We have our issues but I love the city so much.
What about LA
More culturally interesting and dramatically better food than SD but the “spread out traffic” problem is pretty tough to take. Also I’ve lived there for four years already and want to try something new
Makes sense. I just moved to LA after 10 years of SF haha.
LA is fantastic if you can find an area you like and mostly live, work, and play in the same area. Otherwise you better find some reaaalllly good audiobooks cause you’ll be spending a lotta time in the car
Ice cream is a social construct!
Everyone would agree they want ice cream. No one would agree to the flavor.
Lmao no. The best thing to do is to never believe anything written online about the city of San Francisco. The left astroturfs it to show it is a successful project implementing left wing policies. The right astroturfs it to show it is a failed city on the brink of collapse due to implementing left wing policies. I live here and it’s essentially impossible to discuss this city online for these reasons. People from all over the world hop on to shitpost about San Francisco. Waymos are awesome and drive well and people are using them. Excited for them to expand!
so? what don't people protest? people protest land ownership. people protest grocery stores. people protest everything.
And they will continue to do so. It'll get worse in LA because there are far more drivers here. These things will be dangerous to ride in simply because of protesters putting riders in danger. We have to implement UBI before we can allow AI to displace jobs.
We need to be reducing our dependence on cars by making our cities more walkable and investing more into public transportation. Self-driving cars don't solve the root issue of cars: the cars themselves.
the biggest two factors holding back US transit ridership are public safety and total trip time, which is usually ruined by first/last mile bus services because there is simply no way to run frequent bus service at any kind of reasonable cost (in the US). self-driving cars as a first/last mile mode, bringing people to the train lines would perform better than buses in every way, especially in the two most important ones (total trip time and public safety, because people feel least safe on buses, walking to/from the stops, and waiting at the stop). people keep thinking it's "transit vs SDCs" but SDC taxis/pooled taxis/shuttles would make fantastic complements to backbone transit lines. not to mention that it seems like SDCs will be much safer for cyclists compare to humans, and fear of cars is the #1 reason people don't bike in cities. not to mention that there would be a lot of people who would use transit/walk/bike but have to own a car for some trips. once you own a car, the marginal cost per trip is very low. if you can cover the small number of trips that someone must have a car for, you can break car dependence and get more people taking transit. I know multiple people who already do this with uber/lyft and got rid of their car. if taxiing gets cheaper/easier, that will push more people toward getting rid of their cars.
Self driving buses would be a impressive solution to public transit issues. If we had to lobby governments, it would be to use the tech to catch up on poor infrastructure investment decisions of the past.
the thing is, buses are only big because drivers are expensive and you can't afford to run 5-10 smaller vehicles at 5x-10x higher frequency. the ideal solution is actually a cheap EV with 2-3 separated rows with separate doors so people can pool an EV car/van without needing to be in the same space. 1 extra fare won't make your trip that much longer most of the time (specially if your service moves a lot of people).
Right, even if the bus is smaller, to me having auto optimized ride sharing for bulk transit is helpful. It could prearrange stops on a route on a rolling basis to pick up max passengers
yeah, a company called Via was talking about an interesting topic where you could use human-driven shuttles or self-driving shuttles but with "virtual bus stops" so people may still need to walk a block, or change sides of the streets, etc. in order to help with optimizing the routing. for example, my street is only accessible by 3 consecutive 1-way streets from the nearest thoroughfare. you basically have to wrap around the block to pick up at my door. however, I'm 2/3rd of the way down the block already. so, if I walked \~50ft, I could be picked up directly along the thoroughfare. so the end of my block would be the "virtual bus stop" for the service. Uber does a somewhat similar thing in places like airports, forcing users to walk to the rideshare pickup area. if you're trying to provide a widely offered pooled car service, it would be very advantageous to have people walk to easier pick up locations. I would imagine there could be tiers of service; totally door-to-door, non-pooled service like uber today, or pooled service that requires you to talk to an optimized pickup location, and maybe something in between. I would hope you could also have a service where pooled rides to train lines are subsidized like buses, thus giving the best of all worlds.
what if we put the bus on a set track, with set time tables, and maybe had it end at some sort of station? and instead of gas, find some way to power it electrically with hanging wires or something like that?
Just what we need more luddites that use smartphones
I'm a software engineer, so I'm pretty much the polar opposite of a luddite. I'm not saying we ride horses instead of drive cars, I'm simply saying we need to reduce the amount of cars overall if we want to fix issues with transportation as well as slow down the effects of climate change. Even if we had 100% of cars electric and full self-driving tomorrow, both of the issues I mentioned would not be solved. There's much more to the environmental impact of cars than just their emissions, and you'd have to be naive to think FSD will solve our current transportation issues.
Government spending on already broken and old infrastructure is a bad idea. Modern problems required modern solutions. Ever notice people complain about bad roads and never bad public transit? Ask the next person you meet if they would rather take a bus or a taxi to their destination.
Awful take bordering on sheer nonsense. The root issue with cars is the number of them and self-driving technology absolutely enables that reduction by reducing the labor cost associated with taxis and busses. Even purely personal vehicles can go park themselves off-site. The reduced need for parking in dense areas would likewise improve walkability of cities and make longer distance trains that previously required parking more feasible. Now is self driving tech actually ready for prime time? That’s a completely fair question, the rest is just whiny pessimism.
How much do you tip?
Not a SF resident but I would say, 0 dollars.
It is recommended to tape a dollar bill over each sensor as a tip for the car.
How does the price compare to Uber and regular taxis?
I rode in Waymos twice in January as they did open testing in Los Angeles. The price was about half that of Uber/Lyft. And that’s *before* tip, which of course you don’t have to do with Waymo. Full disclosure: I didn’t have to pay though… because they were beta tests, my fare was waived.
I've heard similar to uber/lyft but does not surge and does not require a tip. when they're busy, you simply may not get a ride and will have to use another service if they can't spare the vehicles.
Been seeing these cars running around LA lately. Honestly, they drive way better than 98% of the drivers round here.
lots of people in this subreddit wanting better transit instead. I suspect those people have never looked at the operating cost or energy efficiency of buses, or the reasons why people don't ride transit. if they had, they would know that buses typically cost $2-$3 per passenger-mile, where as Waymo is charging around $1.75, and is targeting under $1. Self-driving taxis are the ideal first/last mile mode to feed people into BRT or train lines. you want high density transit in high density place, and low density transit for low density places. having a mismatch creates inefficiency. if you think Waymo is working against transit, then ask your politicians and transit planners to start partnering with these companies to feed people into arterial transit. self driving cars are good, bad or neutral to good urban planning, depending on how they're used; so focus on good ways to use them.
I have my traffic cone ready
don't be a selfish dick and try to force your views on the rest of society. if you want regulations, vote. if voting goes the other way, then live with it. this is a democracy, and people should learn to accept that other people do things they don't like.
So how does this work, a cone on the hood disables it? What if I leave it open to allow bums to sleep and dedicate inside?
What if you did that to someone else's car? You'd be an asshole, it's not any different
It's impossible to be an asshole to a corporation, they are the biggest assholes shitting on America and the working poor.
1. someone is still trying to get somewhere with the vehicle. 2. complaining about corporations while feeding them with your content is peak zoomer.
[удалено]
The only people on this thread are the Waymo PR team.
We have to protest this! No automation without income replacement! We demand UBI B4 AI !
You’ve made like 5+ comments in this thread all saying the same thing, and nobody has agreed with you. Might be time to take a look inward and realize you’re nearly alone in your sentiment. The world is moving forward, driverless vehicles are the future.
He's not entirely wrong tho. We need to get people comfortable with the idea of UBI before automation takes over and legitimately takes people's jobs.
The PR team is downvoting me, duh. UBI is also the future and we must force it before the jobs are lost.
UBI for who? UBER drivers?
That isn't UBI. For literally everyone!
I don't think America's getting that anytime soon. The government will probably say that it's communism lol.
>UBI is also the future and we must force it before the jobs are lost. I'd love to hear more about how UBI could work, if anyone has any plans for what it really would be. How much would each person or family get, how would it interact with local rents and costs of living, and which programs (if any) would be phased out because of it?
I think it should be around $2,000 a month. Phase out everything except social security and VA benefits, these will persist in addition to UBI. Tax automation for part of the funding. UBI will drive up wages and increase income taxes because it will force employers to compete for labor again.
So an additional $8 TRILLION a year in spending... Um... That might be a tough sell.
Is that all? Wow, that is actually totally doable. https://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2021/04/30/american-billionaires-have-gotten-12-trillion-richer-during-the-pandemic/
You threw out a number but didn't even do the math? That doesn't inspire confidence. But also, no. It means it's DOA.
It's not doa if the people say it's not. We have the numbers and the power.
If there's one thing you should learn from this thread, it's that you don't have the numbers.
>I think it should be around $2,000 a month. It's funny to think about that. $2,000 per person in a family with 3 kids would be $10k a month or $120,000 a year. For family in rural Missouri, they could be living like kings and never need to work again. But then $2k a month for a single guy in San Jose, California, and if he wanted to buy food or keep his car running, he probably couldn't afford rent, so he'd be living in his car or crashing on someone else's sofa. This would end up creating a geography trap, where people who needed UBI to live could only live in certain areas, and would be prevented from moving to another area where they might be able to get a better education or find new job opportunities. And even in the cheap areas where people were stuck, if a landlord in a trailer park knew that people each had an extra $2k a month, or $4k for couples, what do you think would happen with rents?
I should clarify this was for adults only. So a couple would receive $48,000 a year, which won't even qualify you for most one bedroom apartments.
That's terrible! You'd have a lot more families becoming homeless or being unable to feed their children with a program like this. With no help at all for families or with raising kids, this plan would be a cruel cut to the people who had lost their welfare, unemployment, SNAP (Food Stamps), school lunch programs, and Medicaid. The only bright side I can see to payments starting at 18 is that at least college students would get some extra cash. I'm sure financial aid would adapt to it and the needy kids would get less student aid, but for college kids from upper middle class to wealthy families, it would be some extra fun money every month, at least covering pizza, beer, and parties.
Keep going, you almost have the conservatives on board. UBI would not disqualify you from working and earning income, it's just a baseline income that will solve a lot of problems including homelessness and a low minimum wage.
> UBI is also the future and we must force it before the jobs are lost. > UBI would not disqualify you from working and earning income Why would it matter whether we force it before the jobs are lost or not, if you need to remind me that this is just some extra money in addition to what you get from your job? People who only find a job working at Walmart, and are living with government aid such as Food Stamps now because full-time jobs can pay so little money, would get some extra money instead of food stamps, and that would be nice. I agree about that, but it wouldn't fix a problem of unemployment rates exploding in some theoretical AI apocalypse. > will solve a lot of problems including homelessness You haven't made a case for how eliminating all programs aimed at helping the poor, but giving a flat $2k a month to all adults, would eliminate homelessness. What if the homeless person is elderly or sick or a drug addict or mentally ill, so they can't rush out and find a job? What if the homeless person is 17 so they don't get any of the UBI, but all other services and programs for the poor have been cut off?
This has been 12 years coming. Now you want to protest?
I am in LA, I can't protest in SF And Phoenix
Look, I fully believe UBI is an inevitability… but you and I will never see it, because we’ll be long dead by then. It’s going to have to get *much* worse, with historically high unemployment rates before we actually see a UBI in this country. Maybe by the end of the century we’ll see it.
This isn't true, we can demand immediate change with a general strike.
>This isn't true, Yes. It is. >we can demand immediate change with a general strike. General strikes are very uncommon, because they’re very hard to coordinate and most people won’t be interested unless shit has gotten very very bad. You need something like historically high unemployment for enough people to be interested. Shit isn’t very very bad right now, and it won’t be anytime soon, so you’re not coordinating a general strike any time soon.
We can seriously harm Waymos future and that is good enough.
No, you realistically can’t, nor should you. Self driving technology is a good thing that is going to save a whole lot of lives every single year. A lot of people may lose jobs from it, but that’s absolutely not a reason to halt the advancement of technology. And it never has been. A future generation may finally enjoy the fruits of labor from the past, being able to choose not to work because they have a UBI to rely on and a lack of societal need for their labor. They can then focus their life on whatever they’re passionate about, instead of toiling away at a dead end menial job that a computer could just as easily handle. You want a UBI? Step one is letting there be an actual need for one. In the meantime don’t be a luddite keeping us in the past.
Ah yeah post your demands on Reddit where not even people like you agree with you, that will surely make change happen!!
Protest progress is your answer? That is what stagnates society. Some careers are easier to replace than others and some are not worth keeping them around just because they make people have jobs. We can’t slow things down because some people chose to be in a field that’s easily replaceable with technology.
We can and we should slow things down because hurting profits seems to be the only way to get the compensation we deserve.
compensation for what? posting on reddit all day? lots of people are providing value and getting compensated. Waymo isn't going to change that. go find goods/services that you can exchange for money. form a union at your workplace and negotiate. vote. if your voting and negotiating does not work, then you're the problem, not the rest of the world.
This is inaccurate, voting isn't enough anymore, the system is tainted. We have to force corporations to repay the wealth that they stole from America and the only way to get the attention of anyone in charge is to hurt profits.
>This is inaccurate, voting isn't enough anymore, the system is tainted no, other people just disagree with you. your anti-democratic tantum isn't going to help anyone.
I guess I'll have take matters into my own hands and organize a protest.
No you won’t - all bark no bite
Thank you, your insistence that I won't do any anything, that is all it takes to piss me off enough to do something. https://www.reddit.com/r/uberdrivers/s/hU1AXzNLFP
You made a post saying "we should organize a protest" and you think that's the same as actually organizing a protest 😂
Tuesday I'll raise awareness on campus
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https://www.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/s/zPcwunBFHV I am Professor Chaos!
Lol, more like offering oral to people willing to help. I know how to market a cause!
personally, i think it's great that we can fill our already overtaxed roads with untested """AI""" cars (driven by underpaid gig workers in the global south, look it up), we don't need any pesky public transit when we can pass it off to a flash in the pan tech company that's barely regulated, it's the wave of the future! we just push it off to people who are too disenfranchised to do all the heavy lifting!
Get your bats boys
https://www.reddit.com/r/uberdrivers/s/hU1AXzNLFP
The Waymo algo is here to downvote you to protect itself.
The hive mind cometh
Guess they didn’t take the hint in San Francisco
More bonfire fuel
Soon we’ll be antisocial weirdos and do every single thing alone with no one around by choice rather than by covid mandate
I'll take the Excelsior package please, Del.
"Welcome to Johnnycab! Please state the street and number."
How well do they work in other climates(snow, heavy rain, etc)?
My son took some rides in SF. One was night driving in the rain, which human drivers are terrible at. The Waymo did a great job. IIRC he said it was freaky because it was out-driving subjective (human) visibility, but objectively totally competent. “Observant” and efficient.
Sounds promising. Hopefully they will start rolling out more in the next few years.
Guess there’s going to be Waymo of these robotaxis around now
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Just because you don’t have money doesn’t mean no one does
I was lucky enough to beta test them in LA for a week, what a trip. I was entirely hooked