Wol

We need to separate what is current and what may be the case in the future. (Emphasis on "may".)
Looking at civil aviation there has been a remarkable increase in the percentage of accidents over the last decade or so for which the "Probable cause" (Accident investigation branches never make a definitive statement, but they mean "the cause") is pilot error, but which is a result of the automation being involved in the chain.
The Airbus into the trees, the Airbus into the hills in a snowstorm, the Airbus into the Atlantic, the Airbus into the Med, the -777 into the San Francisco seawall and others. All pilot error but initiated by the automation either starting the problem, being too complex to correct in the time available or - in the case of the -777, part of airline policy dictating reliance on the automation at the expense of human experience and handling.

That's the problem: introduction of too much automation before it's autonomous enough to handle ALL eventualities. Same with autonomous cars - until dedicated roads are commonplace they will struggle to achieve real autonomy. Until they can be licenced without steering wheels they cannot be called self-driving except by politicians who are in thrall to the hype.

GarryP

Here is the GM demo car that they are looking to demo in 2019 and roll out in 2021.



https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/12/1...auto-show-2018

And today they have been looking to recruit 150 engineers in Australia. Hey Beoz, actual real new automations jobs! In Australia! In Melbourne even !

https://reneweconomy.com.au/gm-holde...ehicles-94100/

Charismatic

Automation has made job much better. When I took over there where numerous reports, scorecards, evaluations etc. that had been compiled manually. What I very quickly realised was I could build some SharePoints to do that half of my job and leave me free to actually concentrate on the parts that where actually economically valuable.

In my bias and uneducated view (why should that stop me from venturing an opinion? ) the world is filled with guys who just want to leave university with an undergraduate degree, follow the established rules, glide along on their good looks and charm, collect the pay cheque at the end of the month etc. but those jobs are largely going or gone. What businesses actually need are people who can think, learn new skills, self-manage and have the initiative to grow business.

Everyone can and should participate in future economic growth (including associated productivity and wage growth) but we need to be really honest that for most of us we will need to keep growing and changing throughout our careers. If you want a job that required no learning, standing on a production line stamping out sheet metal parts or pushing paper across a desk, you’ll need to move to a developing country and take a pay cut.

Amazulu

Shard

Technology goes hand and hand with economic development and growth, so it's meaningless to say it has been creator of human jobs. People require "little upfront investment" because their unique skills have already been automated away. There's very little that intelligent machines and intelligent systems will not be able to do in the coming decades, surely you agree with that? This idea that there will always be masses of work for those willing and able is pie in the sky? Humans were able to utilise technological advances 19th and 20th century as the machines were essentially 'dumb' physical tools. Now we're entering an era where machines can independently assess, learn, see, hear, and to a limited but growing ability understand and speak. It's different in this century, and that's why it's different. Where do you seen unemployment (typically 5-10% in developed countries) in 30 years time? It's a crapshoot, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were at 50% and rising, and that is the problem.

Shard

To be fair, most university grads can learn new skills, self-manage and do have initiative. They have some education, and most importantly youth on their side. What they need is opportunity, and that's the unfortunate by-product of increasing automation, that the simple entry-level jobs are falling away, making it harder to gain the experience/contacts necessary for more senior or specialist roles. Not so much the case in the tech industry, which innovates so quickly that there can be an inverse relationship between current knowledge and experience, but elsewhere the need for armies of bright young minds is being challenged by bright fast and economic machines.

Shard

Topical. Technology always creates jobs.

Chatbots displacing humans

Wol

>>The safety report excludes certain information, like the the number of times that human safety drivers were forced to take control of their driverless vehicles, or the number of accidents in which GM’s cars were involved. (Cruise Automation, GM’s self-driving unit, told California regulators that its cars were in six crashes in September 2017 alone. Under state law, companies with a license to test autonomous vehicles are required to disclose all accidents, even when they are not at fault.)<<

I will be very interested in the results!

The various Tesla groups' posts are also interesting: as a fan club for Tesla they show quite a variety of manual takeovers. In the context of fully driverless cars the manual takeovers of similar, but controls-equipped, cars the number of manual "saves" is a critical figure.

Beoz

Water is the basis for all life on earth so its meaningless to say we can't live without water.

ok

Beoz

This article is a bit dumb. Call centre staff have been on the decline for a long time now due customer interaction through websites. BBC creating drama as per usual.

GarryP

I wonder, how often does a driving instruction take control whilst teaching a learner, relative to how often a 'safety driver' takes control - per mile travelled? And how often would an accident have resulted?

If the automation does better than the typical learner driver ......

Beoz

It would be assumed an automated driver is safer as they are governed by a set of rules in their algorithms that enhance safety.

However safety is not the point. Humans like driving. They like independance, and the technology is so far away from being ready.

https://youtu.be/RASBcc4yOOo

PS mods. Paste in the image widget doesn't work on my Note. Can you get it fixed?

Wol

Garry: I can respect alternative thoughts and opinions in this sort of discussion, so I'm not being dogmatic so much as concerned about the way that the proven statistics about crashes due to driver error seem to be put against largely theoretical benefits of autonomous cars.

I've just used driverless trains at two airports in the last week: I have no problem with them. In the same way I would have few concerns with vehicles on dedicated roads/tracks. What does worry me is that for all the hype surrounding autonomous cars, owned by ordinary people (the same ones, presumably, who cause the above crashes), maintained by your average garage mechanics, programmed by the same sort of people who wrote Windows Ten and driven over ordinary roads with all the issues that arise every minute, there's an awful lot of "ifs", "perhaps", "predicted" etc coming into it.

It's not just the safety aspect: we all drive on congested, poorly maintained and confusing roads filled with other fallible drivers. Unlike in the sky, where aircraft have a rigidly controlled environment, strict safety levels, regulated maintenance, hard licencing and so on the political thinking seems to be that firms such as Google and Facebook will automatically be safer than the present. That might - might - be true at present with a few on being tested on specific roads, but I can't see it being so if there are millions of these things driving themselves on our road systems as they are now.

Autonomous driving is arguably far more difficult than airport trains and aircraft operations.

Just my thoughts, anyway.

GarryP

Although I get painted as gung-ho about autonomous vehicles, what I'm actually doing is looking at the money and what they were doing in the DARPA challenges over a decade ago. A packed commuter road is a hard scenario, but in the end there are very few options as to actions you can take (turn, speed up, slow down) and the competition is pretty bad at doing these. Beating the human is perfectly possible.

I agree that there will be accidents with automation - but

• the vehicles will be covered in cameras, and every accident will be full recorded, no debates. And I think most will come down to either other human drivers stuffing up, or poor road design (which the big companies will have the lawyers to pin on the councils)
• that will fairly rapidly push to deal with the problem on the roads - human drivers. When the first city bans human drivers and the accident rate falls, it's game over
• those circumstances where the automation screws up will be dealt with quietly and the stats will be fudged
• everyone gets to benefit from autonomous vehicles, except the drivers (who don't have a legal army and are going to get stomped).

Now, maybe the first pilots that roll out next year will be quickly followed by wider rollouts in 2021, or maybe it will be slower to 2025, but either way, it's in the medium term planning horizon (or should be) of every business because it's going to be a landrush. When you look at the ramifications of this, and the opportunities to make money, it's going to be over bar the shouting within the decade.

Shard

It's a circular argument.