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AI Transportation

Small Protest Against Cruise Robotaxis Cites Concerns for Safety - and Displaced Workers (cbsnews.com) 73

Posted by EditorDavid from the labor's-day dept.
Last Monday the U.S. celebrated Labor Day, the federal holiday honoring America's labor movement and the contributions of U.S. workers. On that day a small protest was held outside Cruise's headquarters in San Francisco — featuring taxi drivers and mass transit workers.

CBS News spoke to Edward Escobar, a Bay Area Uber driver and director of the Alliance for Independent Workers. They report that Escobar orchestrated the protest "to convey their concerns about the potential impact of robotaxis on their jobs. "There isn't any dialogue happening. It's pretty much one-sided. It's being dictated by the tech titans, Waymo, which is Google, and General Motors, which is Cruise," Escobar said. "And they're pretty much dictating the terms, and the California Public Utilities Commission is allowing that to happen."

Cruise, however, insists that it is taking steps to protect workers through partnerships with local labor unions. In a statement, the company said, "Cruise was proud to sign industry-first jobs agreements with local labor — IBEW Local 6 and SEIU Local 87 — whose workers will install chargers and support our facilities across San Francisco." Cruise also highlighted its commitment to the community by emphasizing that the construction of a major EV charging facility on Cesar Chavez Street was carried out by 100% Bay Area union labor. It included electricians, carpenters, and ironworkers, representing over 100 jobs.

Despite these efforts, Escobar remains deeply concerned about the future of drivers like himself. "We're looking at automation, self-driving technology in the new age of AI and looking at permanent displacement of many workers. If you look at transport workers alone in the state of California, UC Berkeley came out with a study, and they said approximately 600,000-plus transport workers in California will be displaced."
One local newscast shows only a handful of activists in its video from the protest. The local news anchor summarized the protesters' message as "The robots are taking over and taking your jobs.... [And] making things more dangerous..." "The people of San Francisco, the workers of San Francisco have to take a stand now," said Steve Zeltzer with United Front Committee for Labor Party... The group who rallied Monday also said Cruise's driverless taxis not only violate vehicle codes, but also are not advanced enough to know when to pull over for responding emergency vehicles. Every time they are on the road, they violate the law," Zeltzer said. The speakers at the Labor Day protest said so-called "robo workers" and artificial intelligence are chipping away at jobs. And before we know it, demonstrators claim, a flood of high-tech human replacements will steal the jobs of the masses.

"We're talking about millions, if not billions, of people being displaced," said Edward Escobar with Alliance for Independent Workers. "Not just here locally, but nationally and globally."
The Verge adds: GM's Cruise is "just days away" from regulatory approval to begin mass production of its fully autonomous vehicle without a steering wheel or pedals, the company's CEO, Kyle Vogt, said at an investor conference Thursday...

But Vogt may have spoken too soon. "No agency decision to grant or deny the petition submitted by GM has been reached nor has a deadline been set for such a decision," a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration spokesperson told The Verge.
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Small Protest Against Cruise Robotaxis Cites Concerns for Safety - and Displaced Workers More

Small Protest Against Cruise Robotaxis Cites Concerns for Safety - and Displaced Workers

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  • Is that for real? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by OpenSourced ( 323149 ) on Sunday September 10, 2023 @06:25AM (#63836384) Journal

    fully autonomous vehicle without a steering wheel or pedals

    I'd call that a gross design failure, like an electric door that has no manual way of being opened if there is a power failure. The autopilot tech is faaaaar too young to allow for that kind of removals.Hand cranks for example remained a feature decades after the invention of the electric starter.

    I suppose they will take away the windows too, and you'll need to download an app to connect to the cameras and see what's happening around your car while you travel in it.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      >I suppose they will take away the windows too, and you'll need to download an app to connect to the cameras and see what's happening around your car while you travel in it.

      To be fair, this would save taxi company on cleaning costs from not having to clean human excrement from being scared shitless at what robotaxis occasionally do in traffic.

    • Maybe an operator can plug in a controller somewhere, in case it has to be manually driven.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by jhoegl ( 638955 )
        PlayStation controller.

        Just make sure it doesnt go under water.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
        Usb-C or Bluetooth?

      • While certainly not a universal solution - the "universal" solution being a tow truck, I've long figured an appropriately sized pool of professional* drivers who can operate the car using controls remotely using a cellular or even satellite connection is a possible thing.

        If you're worrying about lag, remember that we can operate rovers on mars remotely.

        Anyways, I see three paths for this:
        1. The machine itself throws an "oh shit I don't know what to do" flag and is connected to a human.
        2. Somebody hits the

        • That's how it is already done. They have an office where remote operators can help the car out of a jam.

          I'm sure sooner or later somebody will write a story in the tone of an expose about how the cars are a big sham because they're "actually" remote operated (a small part of the time).

          OK here you go, here's one from 5 years ago

          https://www.wired.com/story/ph... [wired.com]

          • There have been recent reports (such as this one [theguardian.com]) where cars have blocked emergency vehicles, yet I've never seen remote drivers mentioned.
            • Most articles are crafted as cheaply-crafted clickbait, not to give you the whole picture.

              Your link is about Cruise. Here's a recent article [thedrive.com] on them

              Self-Driving Cars May Always Need Human Attention, Cruise CEO Says

              Cruise, General Motor's self-driving research wing and autonomous taxi provider in San Francisco, was the first company to be allowed to offer fully autonomous taxi services in America. Cruise's CEO Kyle Vogt was asked if he could see a point where remote human oversight could be removed from

          • > That's how it is already done. They have an office where remote operators can help the car out of a jam.

            Right, there's a lot more involved than the car itself.

            Not only the cost of these cars and the onboard equipment, but also the cost of maintaining them (software, parts, insurance, permits, etc) and of the cost of the monitoring staff required to keep them running are all way more expensive (pun intended) than most people realize.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by BranMan ( 29917 )

          I would worry about lag. We operate rovers on Mars - that have covered a couple of kilometers over the span of YEARS. With no traffic. No emergency vehicles. No pedestrians. No pets. No possibly hostile actors to contend with.

          Lag is a thing. Lag can kill someone. Worry about lag.

    • Technology advances, very quickly. Having these robotaxi's on the real road is the best way to get them to advance much quicker. Let's not forget, human drivers are way more dangerous as any driverless car.
    • Don't worry. If your robotaxi happens to crash, your mind will be uploaded to the cloud, and you will be able to get a new body from a hotdog company. Just ask Amazon.
    • The difference being that we didn't have mobile IP connectivity pushing last known location constantly to a dispatch center who could rapidly deploy not just service, but another vehicle to complete the original journey.

      I wonder what American car owners do now that you can't fit the needed tools to service the cars behind the seats. I used to build tool boxes that fit under my seats for when I had to fix my car. Then I started buying Japanese and saved tons of money on tools

  • You're not victims, you're executing the plan. The self-driving takeover wouldn't have worked with the cabs. These people have strong unions. You busted that up for a pittance and now you think you're the victims. You're the "fake it till you make it" mechanical turks for companies who always saw drivers as an expensive nuisance to be automated away. Fucking morons.

    • Re:Goddammit you idiots are enabling this (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Sunday September 10, 2023 @11:50AM (#63836852)

      The self-driving takeover wouldn't have worked with the cabs. These people have strong unions.

      Actually, most taxi drivers are independent contractors and don't belong to a union.

      The NTWA represents about a third of cab drivers, but it's a weird quasi-union since there is no "employer" on the other side of the table. They mainly work on lobbying the government.

      You're also mistaking Uber/Lyft as drop-in replacements for taxis. That isn't true. Uber has grown three times faster than taxi revenue has fallen. Most people use Uber as a replacement for driving their own car, renting a car, or taking public transit, rather than using a taxi.

    • Funny how all the Uber/Lyft drivers are complaining but they don't care what they did to the Taxi drivers. In a lot of "big" cities Taxi cabs are actually regulated - and drivers end up spending a fortune on a Taxi Medallion - which is what allows them to be licensed and operate. Uber/Lyft showed up and made that worthless -- and a lot of taxi drivers ended up losing their livelyhood. The Uber/Lyft drivers didn't have to have any special skills, their vehicles didn't have to pass any inspections, and whe

      • We introduced 'private hire cars' which were only to booked via a phone call. Substantially undercut the 'hail on the street' taxis, but both still exist. But this meant that Uber/Lyft had an existing pattern of regulation into which they fitted - though cutting out the telephone operator has been profitable for them. Meanwhile Uber fits the taxi niche far more accurately - you hail an uber from your phone and a floater turns up; our taxi drivers have lost out a lot.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by kmahan ( 80459 )

          Didn't UK (at least London) Taxi Drivers have to study and pass "The Knowledge" (or whatever) -- some super-extensive test about the roads/history/etc? I vaguely remember seeing a story about it and how hard it was.

          • However private hire car drivers don't need it. Uber has made such private hires vastly more accessible to the ordinary punter, depriving taxi drivers of their premium. But at least that money used to go to Taxi Drivers; the fact that the owners of medallions in New York made a killing from their ownership for doing nothing is one of the most spectacular pieces of private corruption in the USA. The collapse in their value is sad for the working taxi drivers, I agree. It would be interesting to know how many

  • That's the logic of those kicking up a storm about the threat to jobs. Yet we're also being told that we are facing a demographic crisis with a shortage of workers.

    Funny that

    • Abolish airlines, bring back the stage coach

      Actually, that sounds kind of fun.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rossdee ( 243626 )

        Well in the end airlines won't be possible because they burn carbon based fuels.
        Electric planes could only go short distances.

        Maybe hydrogen power is possible.

        • Hydrogen seems even less likely than electric for airliners tbh - it requires storage to be as close to spherical as possible, meaning the wings are a bad location. The only medium term âoesolutionsâ to airliners I see are much more efficient engines (like the proposed open fan, and ultra fans; plus a requirement put on the airline industry to do a massive amount of carbon capture.

          • It requires a lot more fuel tank, but for liquid H2 tanks the shape doesn't matter all that much. Liquid hydrogen transport uses cylinders just fine and for planes you can twist the form more than that, it's low pressure and the insulation only needs to keep it cool for one flight.

            • Fuel tanks for liquid H2 storage are heavy though, and that contradicts putting them on a plane. Even rockets are moving away from hydrogen towards methane.

              That said, it's not like we can't generate actual hydrocarbons for the relatively limited amount of jet fuel we'd need. Especially if we go electric propellor for the shorter flights. Taking off is the most energy intensive, which is why I've seen proposals that basically amount to huge catapults to give planes a good bit of that energy while taking o

        • Hydrogen powered sounds great!

          It's totally green, abundant, lighter than air, doesn't destroy the ozone layer.

          We could hmmm, I know! Fill huge dirigibles with hydrogen and carry hundreds of passengers at a time in luxury!

          We could call the first one something catchy... like... the Hindenburg!

          1... Fill big flying thing with hydrogen
          2... stuff
          3... Profit!

        • Their engines will be replaced by mice running on treadmills. Until, of course, PETA gets hold of them.

    • The worker shortage is a lie. The evidence is that real wages are not increasing in general.

      • The worker shortage is very real, it's just companies that stomp their feet like petulant kids and don't want to face the music.

        The ones that smell the java first will be the ones to survive.

    • Abolish airplanes and fossil fuel-powered ships. Travel the seas only by sailboat. /sarcasm

  • Is this just the companies trying to drive up their share price or are these protestors really misinformed about the capabilities of self-traffic-blocking vehicles?

  • 9% of US Workers (Score:3)

    by chill ( 34294 ) on Sunday September 10, 2023 @08:33AM (#63836488) Journal

    About 9.1% of workers in the US are employed in transportation and transportation-related businesses. That has been on a slow decline since at least 1990. Of those, about 1/3 or 3.6 million people [bts.gov], drive for a living. Taxis are just one of those categories. Gig work is not included in those statistics.

    Once self-driving gets good enough, expect a major and rapid shift to automation in everything from taxis and limousines, to short- and long-haul trucking, and airline pilots. The only real reason I don't see this as being a major blow to employment is most of the people in those industries are older and nearing retirement already. The surge of retirements during the pandemic gave us a taste of that. Drivers just won't be replaced with younger workers, they'll be automated.

    Between driverless and warehouse automation, I'd expect that 9.1% to keep falling to 1-2% over the next 20 years. Protests and unionization aren't going to do a thing to slow this down. It is buggy whips and slide rules all over again. Anyone planning on driving for a living should have an exit plan, or not enter the field at all.

    • Once self driving gets good enough we will have true AI and will be in the singularity.

      • Once self driving gets good enough we will have true AI and will be in the singularity.

        Self-driving is a much easier problem than AGI.

        We're already past the point where SDVs have fewer accidents than humans, and we are nowhere near achieving AGI.

    • Long haul trucking will get replaced first. Driving long stretches on a highway is probably one thing that current automation technology can do reliably well. The thing is this is that even though it will replace long haul truckers, it might increase the need for short haul trucking as the transportation for the long haul becomes less expensive and more things are shipped that way as a result.

      If we end up seeing fleets of robo-taxis and more people start using them because they're less expensive then we'

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by chill ( 34294 )

        One of the articles I've read points out great strides in short- and medium-haul, point-to-point trucking. That is, routes that don't vary. Think port to warehouse, warehouse to distribution center, and back again. There are a couple of companies focusing exclusively on that type of driverless, and I believe there is extensive on-road testing in the Southwest.

        • If that becomes entirely automated, it will be interesting to see how they "secure" the trucks. What's to prevent someone from driving in front of one and slowing down to a stop, then people hop out, break into the truck and steal whatever they want? A team of multiple vehicles could probably steal a lot of stuff.

          Imagine, you have the initial car that will stop the truck and then the next vehicle is a large truck. The large truck pulls up, people break into the trailer and offload what they want, then drive

  • I don't get it (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Sunday September 10, 2023 @08:34AM (#63836490)

    Why are these cars allowed on the road at all at this point? Humans are not great at driving according to the rules of the road consistently... but we happen to be savants at handling unusual situations. Computers can't do that at all.

    Put me in a white-out and I can still navigate (though slowly). Put me in a torrential downpour and I can figure out where the road is, my safe braking distance, anticipate where hydroplaning may be an issue, understand the difficulties of trying to safely pass a transport truck, etc. Close lanes due to an accident and I can zipper into the remaining lanes - or even onto a shoulder - to get around it. Put me on a freshly paved road without lines and I can still figure out where my car should be.

    Right now, computers should be limited to ABS, traction control, adaptive cruise control, and alerting drivers of lane drift. There's not even any point in autopilot since a human should always be on active standby in case the computer screws up - I think autopilot features ought to be illegal.

    Figuring out how to get a computer to drive as well as a human ought to be done in simulators until they can be demonstrated to be safer than humans in realistic scenarios. We are not there yet, and 'stop and wait for the environment to change' is not a practical solution for every time a computer gets confused.

    • If something goes wrong, hopefully the bot and/or the passenger could contact a remote human driver to handle a contingency.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by JBMcB ( 73720 )

      Why are these cars allowed on the road at all at this point? Humans are not great at driving according to the rules of the road consistently... but we happen to be savants at handling unusual situations.

      No we aren't. I know a person who was driving up a treacherous bluff road from their cabin. Being in a woodsy area, a spider had crawled into their car and fell on their lap. They freaked out and drove off the side of the bluff and into a tree.

      The other factor is distracted or impaired driving, which is the cause of the vast majority of accidents. Computers just don't do that. One of the two accident's I've ever been involved in was being rear-ended in stop-and-go rush hour traffic. I immediately looked in

      • As always, the exception proves the rule. Your anecdotes demonstrate the opposite of what you believe.

        Humans are distracted _all the fucking time_ yet relatively speaking have very few avoidable accidents.

        None of these systems stands a chance in any of the situations the person you're replying to mentioned. You conveniently ignored everything he said and talked about one chick freaking out from one spider one time.

        Hey, you know what? I've had a spider crawl across my lap and I HATE spiders. They fucking

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Firethorn ( 177587 )

        Indeed.
        I had an aunt killed by a distracted driver.
        Another aunt ended like 8 foot up stuck between two trees. Due to the serious injuries, her short term memory never got written to long term, so to this day, nobody really knows what happened. This was well before cell phones, by the way, and on a remote road. No cameras.
        My brother was rear ended by a vehicle this year after picking up a new work truck to bring back to the shop
        My mother was on a bus when a woman t-boned it and then claimed she never saw

    • Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)

      by dvice ( 6309704 ) on Sunday September 10, 2023 @09:40AM (#63836570)

      > we happen to be savants at handling unusual situations

      When unusual things happen, many panic or freeze, quite many misses the thing completely. But unusual events are not what causes accidents. Here is a list of top 5 reasons:
              Distracted driving
              Drunk and drugged driving
              Poor weather
              Reckless driving and road rage
              Speeding

      We don't need a computer that can handle unusual events. If it can just drive normally in normal conditions, we have already avoided majority of accidents.

      > Figuring out how to get a computer to drive as well as a human ought to be done in simulators

      Waymo has driven 20 billion miles in simulation. They also build their own city to test the cars by throwing boxes at the cars etc. They are already far better than human on average driving. Only problem is that in unusual conditions they stop moving. I suspect that they could make the car to drive in those situations also, but they want to avoid accidents the best they can, and stopping is the safest reaction when you are not sure.

      • > we happen to be savants at handling unusual situations

        When unusual things happen, many panic or freeze, quite many misses the thing completely. But unusual events are not what causes accidents. Here is a list of top 5 reasons:

        Distracted driving

        Drunk and drugged driving

        Poor weather

        Reckless driving and road rage

        Speeding

        We don't need a computer that can handle unusual events. If it can just drive normally in normal conditions, we have already avoided majority of accidents.

        I kinda agree with you here.

        In order to be safer AV's don't need to be better drivers than humans, they just need to be barely adequate drivers, and not do really stupid stuff. (though it's kinda hard for them to fix the weather).

        But they haven't reached that bar yet.

        > Figuring out how to get a computer to drive as well as a human ought to be done in simulators

        Waymo has driven 20 billion miles in simulation. They also build their own city to test the cars by throwing boxes at the cars etc. They are already far better than human on average driving.

        Waymo certainly seems better than Cruise (who keeps making the news for the wrong reasons) but I'm not sure there's evidence to say they're better than human. "Average driving" contains a lot of special cases. Just yesterday part of the highway

    • Why are these cars allowed on the road at all at this point? Humans are not great at driving according to the rules of the road consistently... but we happen to be savants at handling unusual situations.

      Wrong. Correctly stated: some happen to be savants at handling unusual situations.
      But others, not so good.

      Computers can't do that at all. Put me in a white-out and I can still navigate (though slowly).

      OK, you give one example. The 232,999,999 other human drivers in America remain to be examined.

      ... and, believing that one can handle it in a white-out is exactly the problem. When people think this, incorrectly, that is what causes crashes. 93% of Americans think that their driving skills are above average. [smithlawco.com]

      Put me in a torrential downpour and I can figure out where the road is, my safe braking distance, anticipate where hydroplaning may be an issue, understand the difficulties of trying to safely pass a transport truck, etc. Close lanes due to an accident and I can zipper into the remaining lanes - or even onto a shoulder - to get around it. Put me on a freshly paved road without lines and I can still figure out where my car should be.

      So, your syllogism is "one human being (me) is good at driving in complex situations.Therefore a

    • Here's a recent article [arstechnica.com] about it. It concludes that Waymo is already much safer than most human drivers. Cruise isn't as good as Waymo yet, but it isn't obviously worse than a human. That's based on the accidents that happened over several million miles driven without a human driver in the car.

  • Amazing disconnect from reality (Score:5, Interesting)

    by smoot123 ( 1027084 ) on Sunday September 10, 2023 @10:44AM (#63836722)

    This is odd. I was listening to a podcast yesterday which pointed out that San Francisco uses a surprisingly tiny number of taxis compared to other cities. Something like 1% of rides are for hire (although I don't know the number in, say, Manhattan).

    I also find it breathtaking that the head of the ride share driver organization, a job which didn't exist 15 years ago, has the balls to object that his job isn't secure. Cry me an ocean, and cry one for cable TV installers, Blockbuster clerks, and car mechanics who know how to adjust a carburetor.

    He's also missing who's ultimately running the show: customers. Tech titans can't make people get in robotaxies if they don't want to. Customers want cheap, safe, comfortable, and rapid transportation from point A to point B. If you and your compatriots can't find a way to provide it, someone else will. Either figure it out of find another job but don't go whining about how you need government force to make people do what you want.

    I'll tell you why I have little sympathy. I'm a programmer. I spent years getting good at what I do. I'm also staring down the barrel of Copilot and Codium trying to automate my job away. And I'm not worried because I know there are a bazillion things we haven't coded yet because it's never been worth the programmer time. Now it is. The lesson is, technology automates away some jobs and in the process, opens possibilities for new jobs we couldn't afford before. That's been the lesson of the last 400 years and I see no reason to believe now is any different.

  • Coming from Uber? (Score:3)

    by SoftwareArtist ( 1472499 ) on Sunday September 10, 2023 @12:35PM (#63836972)

    CBS News spoke to Edward Escobar, a Bay Area Uber driver... "There isn't any dialogue happening. It's pretty much one-sided. It's being dictated by the tech titans

    That's so ironic. Just a few years ago people were saying the same thing about Uber. There was no dialog. It was one sided. A big tech company came in and dictated what would happen, ignored all the laws about licensing taxi drivers, and just did what they wanted. Now a few years later they're the establishment suddenly angry about the newest technology threatening their business the same way they threatened taxis.

  • Robotaxi's is progress, and it sadly will cost jobs, just like I'm already afraid for my job as developer due to advancements in AI, it won't be a decade before most developers won't be needed. Society should already had plans to change for when this advancement was going to happen. Robotics will get much better, AI will get much better as humans, but we still are too slow to catch up for society to deal with so many people out of jobs and having no money to pay for housing, food and healthcare (last should

  • "We're talking about millions, if not billions, of people being displaced," said Edward Escobar with Alliance for Independent Workers. "Not just here locally, but nationally and globally."

    Just as calculators (a job title for those who usually sat in bullpens doing calculations instructed by engineers and scientists) were largely replaced by calculators (instruments) and computers. Or just as switchboard operators were largely replaced by automated switching systems. Or just as vacuum tube assembly workers w

  • Not long ago - it was necessary to have people who could type 60 words a minute. It was often part of the job requirement. People who were typists needed to know when to carriage return. Make virtually NO mistakes while typing. Be good with using whiteout. We have these things called "Word Processors" now? The typists are gone.

  • "CBS News spoke to Edward Escobar, a Bay Area Uber driver..."

    How ironic that it is an Uber driver being interviewed. This list of concerns could have been copy/pasted to the protests *AGAINST* Uber drivers, less than 4-5 years ago.

  • It an improvement for society so get over it and get a new career
    But also, we're 20 years out from AI driving actually working. It's insanely glitchy and dangerous.
    But also, it's SF which is a failed state liberal hellhole run by an idiot so who cares?

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