Comments by "Digital Nomad" (@digitalnomad9985) on "Robots And AI: The Future Is Automated And Every Job Is At Risk [Automation, Pt. 1] | AJ+ Docs" video.

  1. AI driving is more of a threat for Uber drivers and taxis than for truckers for several reasons. Among them: 1. Trucker's pay may be greater than an uber driver, but the economic volume of the task per vehicle/hour is such that the trucker's pay is a smaller PERCENTAGE of the total bottom line of the respective industries. The same comparison applies to self employed owner/operators in the respective industries. 2. In the case of personal transport, a human (usually accompanied by a pair of intelligently directed hands) is always available to work around any bottlenecks, glitches, or unforeseen problems the AIs stupidity or physical limitations may encounter. Not so in trucking if you eliminate the driver. 3. Trucking involves more in-the-field manual work. 4. A tractor/trailer truck accident often involves more potential for injury, death and property loss than an accident involving a smaller vehicle, and particularly injury for a person involved who is NOT inside the cab. 5. The size of the vehicle is such that provision for a driver does not add that much to the weight, aerodynamics, or cost of the vehicle percentage-wise as is the case in a smaller vehicle. 6. A robot truck would be easier to 'jack. I can see auto-drive being installed in the trucks as an assist, but if jobs are lost to auto-drive, the truckers will be the last to lose theirs. Perhaps, in the forseeable future, autodrive will mean fewer 2 person truck driving crews.
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  2. A lot of things being touted as automation success stories are not automation at all. Wall Mart self checkout kiosks for example, are not an automation advance over the manned cash registers (or point of sale terminals). There is more automation in them than were in the cash registers of the 1950s of course, but almost all of that automation is already present in the modern manned checkout infrastructure. The only part that the kiosk automates and the register does not is counting out and presenting change. They aren't automating the checkout person's job, they are getting the customer to do it. This is not an advance in automation, it is a reduction in service.
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