Most Government Workers Could Be Replaced By Robots, New Study Finds
- Thread starter GURPS
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Larry Gude
Strung Out
The car crash business is about a trillion a year. More jobs that go away.
Larry Gude
Strung Out
It's here, now, more and more and accelerating. We either stick our heads in the sand or begin to deal with it; most of us will not be needed to work. How to balance the economy to deal with that?
This_person
Well-Known Member
Based on accidents/mile, the self-driving will not cost the car crash business a single job.
Larry Gude
Strung Out
Well, What I found says auto cars will be something like 95% less accidents. Only makes sense.
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer...ess-cars-are-safer-than-human-driven-vehicles
This_person
Well-Known Member
I read similar reports that the ACA will lower healthcare insurance costs, too. Then I used my common sense, and realized the report is not so great.
Larry Gude
Strung Out
Totally unrelated. As implemented, the ACA only made matters worse. The concept, that if everyone, especially the young who don't use much healthcare, are at least paying basic premiums, there would be more total dollars for, essentially, the same level of needs. That's not what was implemented.
How do you compare that to an ongoing, known such as the date that shows 95% human error to be typical be it aircraft or hamburgers? AI driven cars are well on their way and simply will reduce accident rates, massively. :shrug:
This_person
Well-Known Member
The way it is related is what you are saying - actual implementation vs. theory.
Ever had to reboot your computer? Ever had a glitch that held up an action you took? Ever had a sensor fail? Ever had a computer be able to look ahead to problems you can see but it can not?
Theoretically, we should all be under the rule of nice computers, because they make the best decisions. In reality, not so much.
Clem72
Well-Known Member
I'm not entirely convinced you're not a trolling robot.
And how are they supposed to train a robot to know how to tailor a contract to favor a company their congressman has stock in, or the company owned by retired admiral Yahoo. How will the robot know which rules/laws can be broken without anyone knowing or bothering to follow-up, which are expected to be ignored outright without being explicitly told (can robots infer when it's expected for them to do something illegal)? What happens when rules that are only legal because they aren't quantified (like EEO) are put into actual numbers the computer can process (you must hire the African American robot if it is more than 70% as qualified as the white robot). How will the robot postal worker know exactly which of my parcels is the most valuable and crush it, or which is the most time sensitive and needs re-routing through Albuquerque?
Larry Gude
Strung Out
That's a great question and the answer, an answer, is to reach a point where we all have a vested interest. If Too Big To Fail is to come, and it's already here, then, to have a societal interest in, say, a given contractor where it's the employees and the the customers, the users, who have the primary vested interest in quality and service and not disinterested bureaucracies with boxes to check and investors who could not care less about employees or end users as long as their making money on the thing. 'We' can share collectively, a shareholding public but those interests are subordinate to the people directly involved; the people who do the work and the people who use the products and services. We kid ourselves that that is what we have now but when there are a handful of major choices and they are, effectively, too big to fail and the profits are drive towards those without direct involvement, you get what we have now; a system that does not care where the workers come from our how cheap they are had nor do they care about the products as long as they are licenses and regulated so that they are, essentially, protected interests and the profits go out.
Much less then I used to have to in the past. Technology has advanced more rapidly in the last 100 years than the previous 200,000 years before that. Modern humans have been around for 200,000 years (give or take), the electric motor was invented around the 1820's, the first programmable electric binary computer was invented around 1937, first desktop computer in 1973, first laptop computer in 1981, and so on and so forth to the point we have computers that fit in the palm of our hand that contains an unbelievable amount of memory and processing speed. When I was young I had a Commodore 64 which could store a whopping 100 Kb formatted. Fast forward 30 years and I have a tiny removable drive with a 2Tb capacity. I will agree I would not want to buy the first driverless car or flying car or any other technology that could kill me if it malfunctions but it won’t take long and they will work out the bugs to make it safer and faster and more reliable. Every idea has to start some ware and I can't wait to see what they come up with next.
This_person
Well-Known Member
It really is an interesting idea - one that drunks and sleepy people and generally bad drivers have been hoping would happen for a long time. I am wondering how it handles heavy rain, or slippery roads, or harsh winds, or snow, or data-signal loss, or a myriad of other things. Surely someone will come on here and explain how it knows the difference between spinning tires in mud and on snow, or that it is safer when looking for someone not stopping at the red light ahead, or it can anticipate when the firetruck will turn on a red light.....but I'll just drive myself, thanks.
SamSpade
Well-Known Member
Not really getting it either, because if they out and out fired all of us - the money saved on payroll would be a pittance compared to the rest of the cost of government.
The government's budget will be 4 some trillion this year - to pay the entire federal workforce costs about 6%-8% of that. If you slashed the entire force by say, a tenth - it would be a drop in the bucket.
If you want to save money - look at government PROGRAMS that need to be retired. Many agencies only exist to put out grants and subsidies.
PeoplesElbow
Well-Known Member
I think they will only be able to have certain roads where this works, something like an Eisenhower designated highway. When you look at the variability of the roads even in perfect weather they vary greatly, not to mention construction zones.
Clem72
Well-Known Member
Well at the recent auto show INVIDIA already showed how construction zones and offroad detours (that were not programmed into the car's route) could already be handled.
I see some of the bigger issues being recognizing routing or yielding to authority. Knowing for instance if you are being flagged down by an officer in plain clothes holding a badge vs being flagged down by a thug with a gun, or knowing when to ignore rules of the road (do you have to yield to a vagrant in the street? What about a protestor? A rioter? A terrorist?).
For adverse road conditions (rain, snow, mud) autonomous vehicles are ALREADY better than humans (who can't see in every direction, or use radar to penetrate fog/rain, or react in 1/1000 of a second). Even level 2 vehicles like Google/Waymo cars are now only stopping for driver intervention once every 5000 miles or less. These are over courses/roadways meant to test adverse conditions though, not situations that require advanced AI.
Did not vote for trump, I think he and Hilary were the worst kind of joke and we all ended up being the punchline. As for putting people out of work I mentioned earlier that the government and economists are already working on a plan if that happens. We will just have to evolve into something different. Think about it, if robots take over every job then they can be responsible for growing the crops, tending the livestock, building the buildings, performing surgeries, building cars, and on and on and on. Everything will be done at incredible speeds and efficiency so the costs of items will plummet. At that point it might make sense for everything to be just given to everyone or everyone gets the same subsidy from the government. There are multiple options for people to survive and thrive in a world without jobs and like always we will adapt. If this happens it should make the democrats happy, everyone will finally be the same, make the same, and at the same class as everyone else. Only the 1% upper-class who can afford to build and own the robots will be different. They will also be the ones that face huge taxes to cover the subsidies the government is giving out. Everyone always freaks out when something is automated that will make human jobs obsolete. In the end the people who are motivated have always found ways to make a living.
PeoplesElbow
Well-Known Member
Yea I am thinking just the many different ways that roads are built etc. The house I grew up in was on the corner at the end of town, the side road was asphalt (ant too narrow for two vehicles to pass) while my street was concrete, people parked on both sides of the road occasionally so you had to snake through parked cars some times. In addition kids drew all over the road with chalk, there were grass clippings on the road often when I would mow the grass, kids playing in the street (it was a block long with 13 houses). Lately there is mud in the street from trucks coming from the final lot on the street built on after almost 40 years.
My street here is very wide, no lines etc, it is wide enough for vehicles to be parked on both sides of the street and two cars to pass each other still. Will the AI think its a 4 lane road?
The vast differences in streets makes me think that roads will have to be designated auto-drive roads that meet certain standards.
Larry Gude
Strung Out
Of course but it's gonna be a transitional thing that WILL, and rather soon, reach the point where cars are totally self driving.