15 thoughts on “Unemployment and Self Driving Cars”

1. Unemployment due to machines have taken place in the past, but as new technology is created, so are new jobs. By 2030, 85 percent of all jobs in the workforce do not even exist in our current time (Tencer 2017). This means as we lose older jobs due to automation, such as car and truck drivers, a whole new field of work can exist for these people. I am not worried about a massive unemployment crisis because new technology can open new doors that otherwise did not even exist.
   Sources:
   https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/07/14/85-of-jobs-that-will-exist-in-2030-haven-t-been-invented-yet-d_a_23030098/

2. Few weeks ago, I have read the article that there is actually lots of job is replaced by robots, AI machines, and Internet of Things as the development of artificial techniques. For instance, due to the development of autonomous car, lots of jobs that are related to the driving will be replaced by the new technologies. Moreover, As the increase in use of machines, product line factory worker might lose their jobs. Also, when we go to the market, we can easily find that there is lots of self-check out system that is replacing human jobs. On the other hands, I found the article that AiI will create more and better jobs than now. The reasons that are introduced from the article are, “reorient education and training, removing obstacles for businesses to recruit, encourage business creation” will encourages economic growth and job creation. We should be aware of the development to adapt new changes.

   https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-ai-will-create-more-and-better-jobs-than-it-displaces/

3. I found this topic very interesting due to how many car services there are around at the moment along with their popularity. Because of Uber and Lyft, those jobs have been very helpful actually to people who need to make some extra money or are even doing it as a full-time job. These jobs are very important to a lot of people so with the upcoming technology of self-driving cars along with AI will leave a third of the population unemployed. AI is potentially a very dangerous thing because of how many people will be out of a job and it is something that needs to be thought about and considered if it’s something the world wants to be introduced to because of the negative outcome. With the creation of tesla, this is getting closer and closer to becoming a reality for a lot of people and when the technology eventually completely hits the market it will cause a lot of issues and even mass unemployment all over the world.

   https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5301497/Self-driving-cars-leave-people-unemployed.html

4. In my opinion, self-driving car is popular in the modern society, but there are still a lot of problems with the self-driving car. When the self-driving car is published in the society, a lot of news about crashed self-driving become more and more common. Even self-driving car is convenient for people, since they don’t need human to drive, but the safety problem is a big issue with the self-driving car. What’s more, when the self-driving car causes the accident, who will take the responsibility for the accidents, the user or the producer. Those problems still have to be solved before the popularization of self-driving car, so there will still be plenty of time for people to concern about the unemployment, they will have enough time to find something else to do. Moreover, the current cars’ components can be taken and rebuild the self-driving car, so we don’t need to concern a lot about the recycling of materials.
   The attached website provides the evidence about the problems of self-driving car:
   https://www.wired.com/story/self-driving-car-crashes-rear-endings-why-charts-statistics/

5. Actually, many jobs have already been replaced by robots as the technology development as the technology development. For example, the number of factory workers have experienced a large decline in manufacturing industry. The owners tend to use machines to finish the heavy works with higher efficiency and lower cost. Also, we can notice that half or even more of the cashiers in nearly all of the supermarkets have been replaced by self-service checkouts in recent years. Only one person is needed to help customers finish their check outs.

   Thus, I think replacing drives by self-driving cars is a natural society developing process. Although millions of people will lose their job currently, they will finally find a way to support their lives by learning other strategies, because new jobs will occur as some jobs have been replaced. It only takes time for those people to pass through that period.

   https://home.bt.com/tech-gadgets/future-tech/9-jobs-overtaken-by-robots-11364003046052

6. While it may be a scary thought to have the idea of a complete subset of jobs could be wiped out by self driving vehicles, according to businessinsider.com, it may actually help the overall economy. While previous articles may make the switch to autonomous vehicles sound bad, businessinsider.com says it would only directly impact 4 million jobs while also adding $800 billion to the US economy. However, this change won’t happen until at least 2050, meaning there will be plenty of other changes in technology and jobs that current figures calculated now may be completely off. I think we need to keep moving forward as a society, and the only way to do that is to make technology improvements and inventions, autonomous vehicles being a large player in that field.

   https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/self-driving-cars-could-kill-4-million-jobs-economic-impact-worth-it-2018-6-1026937775

7. Many people are worried that the development of artificial intelligence will eventually lead to a large number of people losing their jobs. I also thought about this problem. But I think this is only a necessary part of our social process. AI also brought a large number of jobs in the process of creating unemployment.
   This concern is not new. Since the Industrial Revolution, fears of unemployment in technological progress have persisted. However, the reality we have observed is exactly the opposite. The more technologically advanced countries, the more widely used high-tech areas, the more demanding the labor force is. At the same time, the wages and average living standards of people in these areas have also greatly improved. One explanation is that technological advances have increased the marginal productivity of the labor force in the industry, which has increased the demand for labor, for example, in some industries that are traditionally labor-intensive, such as the textile industry. After the industrial revolution, the use of textile machines has expanded the demand for textile workers.
   However, artificial intelligence does not fall into this category. This is the most important reason for people who are pessimistic about the development of artificial intelligence. In extreme cases, if a certain industry uses artificial intelligence, the relevant practitioners may be reduced by 90%. Even 95%, what about those who lost their jobs?
   In fact, don’t worry too much. Every era of change will create new opportunities. When the second industrial revolution arrives, when a large number of cars replace rickshaw drivers, many rickshaw drivers take advantage of the trend and invest in new era trends to learn to drive cars and build cars. Wheels and more. Numerous great companies were born in these eras, and so did the era of artificial intelligence. We are now unable to list the new areas brought about by these artificial intelligences. But what we can be sure of is that the changes brought about by new technologies are beyond our imagination.

   https://www.sohu.com/a/233267960_100175901

   http://mini.eastday.com/mobile/190301145024011.html

8. I also worry about the future of society as technology becomes more a part of our daily lives. Self-driving cars are just one example of how we are automating our lives. We want to make our lives easier by making the process more seamless but we don’t think about all of the consequences of doing so. It is hard to say how self-driving cars will impact the labor market. I am more so concerned with how the cars will perform. From being a driver, I know that the journey on the road can be unpredictable. There are a lot of factors to consider when an accident occurs. It doesn’t even have to be your own fault in order to be involved in an accident. With this in mind, there is going to be a lot of people who will not be comfortable with putting their trust in technology on the road. If I can’t guarantee that I am not going to get in an accident when I am driving no matter how skilled I am, why would I put trust in something that can’t account for the unpredictable driving habits of other drivers? Not to mention, there are a lot of cases where these cars have malfunctioned entirely. I am not against self-driving cars, I am just pointing out some concerns that should be answered before they are mass-produced. If you’re currently working in the transportation industry, I don’t think you’re job is in immediate danger. It is going to be a while before these companies come up with solutions to the problems that they encounter with self-driving cars when they first touch the road.

9. In the article, self-driving cars cause the unemployment problem, which is not easy to solve. Self-driving vehicles are developing very quickly and have been in tests. These kinds of cars will bring benefits and dangers as well. Using self-driving cars avoid accidents caused by tiredness, drunk driving, and distraction. Moreover, people will have more free time to do something else and improve efficiency.

   However, its disadvantages are still apparent. Firstly, if the cars program goes wrong and does not detect blocks, it will cause severe crashes and harm to users. During the testing process, it has caused death and received warnings. Secondly, unemployment mentioned in the article is a crisis for the economy.

   In my opinion, self-driving cars will not replace taxi very soon because it still needs to have improvement and complete safety for people. Although self-driving cars are adapted, the process will be slow because changes never happen suddenly. Companies invented self-driving cars also think about social problems such as unemployment.

   Reference:
   https://www.fool.com/investing/what-does-the-future-hold-for-self-driving-cars.aspx

10. This is an interesting thought process of the current state of AI and its potential in the future. One thing that I didn’t even realize was the magnitude of the workforce that relies on driving these vehicles. By introducing these new AI driven vehicles into these workforces could potentially unemploy around 5 million people. This is a substaintial amount of jobs lost, especially as you said for people that depend on these jobs due to their lack of inadequate requirements for higher skill jobs. This may bring more jobs for people having to look after, repair, and possibly control these vehicles, but these jobs are high skill jobs that can’t be filled by the newly unemployed truck drivers. I believe that this would bring a classic example of “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” I wonder how this many people being unemployed would impact the economy as a whole and not just the lower skill demographic. The oil industry is a staple of our economy, possibly one of the driving forces of our economy. This employment of so many electric cars, while being good for the economy could potentially have a large impact on our economy and the world economy as well and possibly our forgein relationships that are based on oil. I think this would be a long process as they would have to design, build, and recall for any updates they need to make. For me personally, I think that introducing AI into these types of fields will take a massive monetary and time consuming effort that may not really have as much benefit as it will hurt. As for now, it’s a future decision as this could take a very long time to make happen.

11. This is an interesting topic and has been portrayed in video games and movies a lot.

    With the current trend, all low skill and repetitive jobs will eventually be replaced by machines at some point, there is actually a video game that talks about the future where smart AI and androids taking over human jobs called “Detroit: Called Human” about this whole situation.

    So what exactly can humans do to avoid unemployment? In my opinion, if you want to make sure you will still have a job with this trend of fast technological innovation, it is required to know some technical knowledge or a service that cannot be easily replace by humans, low skill jobs such as waiters, drivers and factory workers can easily be replaced and does not offer longetivity in a career.

12. I think I disagree with this take on the emergence of new technologies. I believe that as humans, we need to be proactive and grow as technology does. After all, humans are the ones creating all of this technology.
    In my opinion, while some jobs will be lost, these are lower-level, simple jobs. While there is nothing wrong with this, I think it would actually boost the economy. With new technology will come new jobs as more and more people re needed to create and expand on them. As taxi and bus drivers are no longer needed, jobs for working on developing Uber and other platforms will rise. These jobs are higher level, and in turn more likely to be higher paying. This allows the advancement of technology to lead to the advancement of humans as well.
    For example, on Monday, Uber, announced, “the formation of a new division called Uber Money to house its efforts, which include a digital wallet and upgraded debit and credit cards”. This new division will require a lot of development, and along with that will come new jobs.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/28/uber-announces-deeper-push-into-financial-services-with-uber-money.html

13. I think I disagree with this take on the emergence of new technologies. I believe that as humans, we need to be proactive and grow as technology does. After all, humans are the ones creating all of this technology.
    In my opinion, while some jobs will be lost, these are lower-level, simple jobs. While there is nothing wrong with this, I think it would actually boost the economy. With new technology will come new jobs as more and more people re needed to create and expand on them. As taxi and bus drivers are no longer needed, jobs for working on developing Uber and other platforms will rise. These jobs are higher level, and in turn more likely to be higher paying. This allows the advancement of technology to lead to the advancement of humans as well.
    For example, on Monday, Uber, announced, “the formation of a new division called Uber Money to house its efforts, which include a digital wallet and upgraded debit and credit cards”. This new division will require a lot of development, and along with that will come new jobs.

14. Unemployment will be a major issue in the very near future due to technological advances, especially autonomous vehicles. These workers will be forced out of their jobs and left with not many choices for jobs. This will cause an increase in the stress of the nation, which has serious implications in areas like poverty, crime rates, and financial factors. It might seem like this future is far away, but it is coming within the decade. What will these workers do? Most likely, they will turn to manufacturing jobs and/or have to learn a trade skill. The manufacturing jobs will not sustain either, due to robots doing the jobs more efficiently and safer. Democratic candidate Andrew Yang is running on the platform of easing the blow to the workers when this technological change comes. He is proposing the ‘Freedom Dividend’, which will give every adult in the nation, ages 18+, $1,000 a month. This will be greatly beneficial to those people who live week to week on their paycheck, as it will lessen the threat of that person getting their lights or water shutoff, or even lose their home. While these displaced workers are looking for a new job, or learning a trade, there will be some sort of income to help them and their families stay afloat. I think this is a great idea, because change is coming; it is now a matter of if we will be prepared for it, or too late.

    Source:https://evonomics.com/what-will-happen-to-truck-drivers-ask-factory-workers-andrew-yang/

15. This is really interesting to look at all the unemployment that could possibly come with this new technology. It seems that unemployment could be an unintended consequence similar to ethical implications that we discussed in class with autonomous vehicles.

    I found a really interesting article that talks about more unintended consequences of self-driving cars. In my opinion, it is just a matter of time before self-driving cars are the norm; however, it is definitely important to think about these issues. Other unintended consequences, other than unemployment include: hackers taking control over cars, a crushed auto industry, auto insurance industry, and health concerns like car sickness.

    According to a study from the University of Michigan, twelve percent of American passengers in driverless cars will experience motion sickness and more as passengers in these vehicles. This is due to the fact, that they will engaging in other activities like reading since they are not responsible for driving the vehicle anymore.

    Source: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/090215/unintended-consequences-selfdriving-cars.asp