According to the news self driving trucks are about to hit the road with no driver on board.
But according to this book that is not going to happen. The author says that the real purpose is to get rid of the skilled drivers and replace them with underpaid button pushers.
Will they really do that? What’s going to be the situation few years from now?
Likely skilled labour in the beginning so they can intervene and drive/manoeuvre if necessary, and as the tech matures just “button pushers” in the truck, then remote with a single person managing several trucks.
The tricky part is that a truck is an incredibly expensive piece of equipment, and it needs a lot of maintenance.
Professional truckers drive, yes.
But they also inspect the inside and outside of the truck before and after each trip. Many of them deter theft and vandalism by often sleeping in the truck. Many of them can fix blown tire or a failed spark plug it more without outside assistance.
It’ll be lovely not to have to do the actual driving, but owners who think that’s the only skill that a professional trucker brings are in for a nasty shock if they immediately swap to untrained staff.
Once the trucks can drive themselves, a lot of the rest of what a trucker does can probably be done by fewer people, with the right coordination, resources and planning. But that’s going to take a lot of effort, and it’s going to have to be effort from actual truckers who know that they’re doing.
Source: I automate other people’s jobs, for a living. It’s a long slow process, and there’s invariably parts of their job that simply cannot be replaced by current technology.
I’ve seen executives conclude “I don’t need anyone with XYZ skill set anymore, because the computer is magic”, and then get fired a year later. The ones who listen to me avoided this, but I’m just a nerd, not a savvy synergistic business man. So what do I know?
inspect the inside and outside of the truck before and after each trip.
This could easily be a full time job for a team of people who working an ordinary 9-5 job inspecting one truck after another all day, basically the way taxis and other car fleets are maintained.
I’d argue that’s an improvement over driving a truck. Truck mechanics are paid slightly better than truck drivers, and they work far better hours.
Many of them can fix blown tire or a failed spark plug
Trucks have 18 wheels. A tire doesn’t have to be fixed immediately. And I can’t remember the last time I encountered a failed spark plug… but even if it were to happen one cylinder being out of action will just reduce your horsepower by 12%. You’d fix it after delivering the cargo.
But again, roadside mechanics are a thing. And they’re paid even better than workshop mechanics.
deter theft and vandalism by often sleeping in the truck
Human truck drivers are only allowed to drive 60 hours a week. Which means for at least 108 hours a week, the truck is parked somewhere. A self driving truck would have no such limit, and would almost always park at a safe location.
I mean you could do that remotely, but there is a an assurance that someone is putting some meat on the line.
But eventually i think we are going to reach Onicron: Nomads Soul, territory. Where you rent a car service on call, there’s no parking and the cars are always running, and cycled out for cleaning and bullet hole filling.
IMO:
Bare bones skeleton crews, similar to Railroad workers. They will try to strike but then gov’t will make it illegal to do so ASAP.
Staying hopeful though, keep learning and teaching, while being involved at your local community!
The future of our jobs is not a mystery. It is the result of a transformation that started a long time ago. It is obvious, clearly understandable, but well hidden behind of curtain of confusion. This book starts from the most asked question: “will AI take over our jobs?” In order to show how misleading it is. Misleading are also all the alarms raised over the power AI, but the real dangers could have even more deleterious consequences, leading to an era where the masses could be trapped in jobs that are alienating, mind numbing and underpaid. Exposing the arguments in a manner understandable by the layman, The Age of the Button Pushers goes trough the fields of computer science, economics and media communication. The whole picture will be reconstructed taking into account the lessons from the past with the changes brought by the industrial revolution, the present with the consequences of automation, the near future with the risk of an economy dominated by monopolistic giants. Part of the book will be dedicated to all the fabricated stories that dominate the current narrative on the media, highlighting the flaws and the inconsistencies, showing how altogether these stories paint a picture that makes absolutely no sense.
It will likely be a mix. E.g. you might have 10 trucks on a particular run. You put a driver in the lead truck, as a human-in-the-loop safety. The rest play duckling to the mother duck.
What it will do is lower the skill level needed, and lower the stress. A driver having a nap isn’t a problem anymore. They just need to be able to get involved either if the autopilot has issues and has to stop, or if they need to fill out paperwork at the destination.
The duck-duckling model would probably work okay on the highway, but not so well once you arrive in a town or city. You can’t reliably get ten semis through a set of lights in traffic without getting split up. I guess they could have a depot outside of town where human drivers would meet the ducklings for the final leg of the journey.
My bet, fully automated with localized maintenance workers who can travel around and perform repairs to fix the trucks stuck in their areas.
They’ll keep someone in the truck for maintenance purposes. A self driving truck wouldn’t be able to change a flat tire for example and it would be more efficient to have the human driver change it than wait for someone to come out and change the flat.
