Uber CEO Says Robotaxis Could Displace Drivers in 10 To 15 Years and Create 'a Big, Big Societal Question' (businessinsider.com) 101
The rise of self-driving cars could eventually cost many ride-hailing drivers their jobs -- and that's a big problem, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said. From a report: Khosrowshahi spoke about the issue onstage this month at a summit hosted by the "All-In" podcast, which posted a video of the conversation on Wednesday. At the summit, Khosrowshahi was asked about concerns that gig workers, who have played a key role in Uber's development, will eventually lose their jobs as self-driving cars become more prevalent.
The Uber CEO said he expects human drivers to continue working alongside self-driving cars in Uber's network in the coming years. "For the next five to seven years, we're going to have more human drivers and delivery people, just because we're going so quickly," Khosrowshahi said. "But, I think, 10 to 15 years from now, this is going to be a real issue," he said about drivers losing their jobs.
The Uber CEO said he expects human drivers to continue working alongside self-driving cars in Uber's network in the coming years. "For the next five to seven years, we're going to have more human drivers and delivery people, just because we're going so quickly," Khosrowshahi said. "But, I think, 10 to 15 years from now, this is going to be a real issue," he said about drivers losing their jobs.
Cry me a river. (Score:4, Insightful)
Cry me a river.
Lemme translate: "We're concerned self-driving cars are going to do to us what we did to the taxicab industry."
He's not worried about "his" drivers, he's worried about his money.
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Who said anything about this transition being a problem for Uber?
Uber is neck-deep in self-driving cars. https://www.uber.com/us/en/aut... [uber.com] The only people who will be hurt by this, are the current drivers.
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Self-driving cars are a lot more capital intensive, because Über would have to buy them, whereas they don't have to buy the human-driven cars they use at the moment.
also a voyeristic third for sex (Score:2)
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Very insightful. Uber is currently getting a lot of access to "free" equipment (cars) because the cars are purchased and owned by the drivers.
Re:Cry me a river. (Score:4, Interesting)
Self-driving cars are a lot more capital intensive, because Über would have to buy them, whereas they don't have to buy the human-driven cars they use at the moment.
Would they?
As you mentioned, right now, they don't have to pay for the cars. But if self-driving cars become popular, they could use the same business model.
Imagine I have a self-driving car. I have it drive me to work. I walk into the office, pull out my phone, log into Uber and say I'm available. Uber then sends me a notification that someone wants to go from A to B. I say, "OK," and send the car off to A. The person climbs in and I tell the car to go to B. They get out and I tell the car to come back to the office. My car makes me money while I also get paid to sit in a boring meeting. Life is good.
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Even if there are cameras in the vehicle, someone is eventually going to vandalize it somehow.
The only reason that doesn't happen now is because someone is in the front seat?
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Re: Cry me a river. (Score:2)
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They would probably prefer to cut you out of your share of the profit. Capital isn't a problem for a company like Uber anyway - they have an established business, there is a clear return on any investment in self driving cars they buy, so they won't have trouble borrowing the money.
Re: Cry me a river. (Score:2)
Re: Cry me a river. (Score:2)
Not very convenient if you need to keep gear in the car for work or hobbies. For example I like to leave most of my fishing gear in the car so I can go fish whenever i feel like it. That includes 3 camping chairs in case my wife and son decide to join me for an impromptu picnic.
That's even worse for folks who live in an apartment complex where some walking is required before you reach the curb. Overall this model seems to work for NY style folks that live in small apartment and do not use a personal vehicle
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It still makes it a fixed cost rather than a variable cost.
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In my neck of the woods, using Uber often means getting a Waymo vehicle as an option.
Re:Cry me a river. (Score:4, Insightful)
He's not worried about "his" drivers, he's worried about his money.
You are 100% wrong. The Uber business plan has always been to shift to self-driving vehicles ASAP, and to use humans only until that is feasible. He is planning to cause a problem, not to have a problem.
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You are 100% wrong. The Uber business plan has always been to shift to self-driving vehicles ASAP, and to use humans only until that is feasible. He is planning to cause a problem, not to have a problem.
I'm not sure why he thinks it will be a problem for drivers. A study a few years ago showed that something like 96% of all Uber drivers quit within the first year. So worldwide, we're talking about only O(350,000) people who will have to find something else to do. The world economy can easily absorb such a tiny number.
Re: Cry me a river. (Score:3)
Long haul, local delivery, taxi, bus, you name a driving job and the ruling class will want to automate it.
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Seriously dudeæ Ãoeruling classÃ. ThatÃ(TM)s a bit much.
No need to be in denial, friend. That's literally how capitalism works. Did you think either "control" or "the means of production" was hyperbole?
CAD did didnÃ(TM)t eliminate architects and engineers
It all but eliminated draftsmen, the drawing is done by the architects and engineers in the CAD software. The draftsmen mostly didn't become architects and engineers. Now take into account that everything becomes more complicated over time and yet also changes faster, and you can see where the problems are. Humans cannot keep up.
Re: Cry me a river. (Score:3)
Re: Cry me a river. (Score:2)
There used to be rooms of them for any significant project. Now their productivity has been multiplied and compared to the amount of drawing being done, they are few. And when the software can do even that job, they will be even fewer.
Re: Cry me a river. (Score:1)
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Then they will do something else. Where does this line of reasoning end, just stopping innovation to preserve raw labor numbers?
Logically, with UBI. You can shut down all the social programs which it supersedes and their administration, take it back from people who don't need it through the IRS without any substantial changes, and pay for it through taxation on the wealthy — thereby creating more money by increasing its velocity.
Yes there were people who were left behind [most notably in agriculture] but on balance humans' quality of life is dramatically better.
Yes, and what I want the system to do instead of encouraging some wealthy people to play a game of increasing some numbers in ways which don't even affect their lives, and they are only doing for bragg
Re: Cry me a river. (Score:1)
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Do you expect autonomous vehicle to have robot drivers that can deliver your pizza to your door? If fat-asses need to walk down to the street and get their pizza out of a car, they are going to start wondering why they don't just go out a get their own pizza for a fraction of the cost.
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Do you expect autonomous vehicle to have robot drivers that can deliver your pizza to your door?
Yes.
If fat-asses need to walk down to the street and get their pizza out of a car, they are going to start wondering why they don't just go out a get their own pizza for a fraction of the cost.
No, they aren't. Going to a delivery vehicle is dramatically less work than going to a pizza place, in every sense of the word.
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On the other hand in a typical Italian city you exit your house and have a couple of pizza restaurants at walking distance. Is some places there are mobile LPG-powered pizza ovens, sometimes bolted on an Ape Piaggio trike and sometimes as trailers, thar go in suburban areas to sell freshly made pizza.
Re: Cry me a river. (Score:2)
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Long haul, local delivery, taxi, bus, you name a driving job and the ruling class will want to automate it.
Oh, absolutely. Most local delivery uses people who already work at the business, and delivery is just a small part of that person's job. So that impact is likely to be close to zero. But that still leaves probably probably around 5 to 10 million taxi drivers and probably three or four million truck drivers.
But taxi and truck drivers won't be replaced overnight. Most taxi drivers and many truck drivers own their own rigs, and although they may eventually replace themselves with robot rigs, they would co
Re: Cry me a river. (Score:2)
"Most taxi drivers and many truck drivers own their own rigs, and although they may eventually replace themselves with robot rigs, they would continue to earn the revenue after doing so. They certainly have no incentive to fire themselves."
They won't be able to afford to replace themselves and will be outcompeted by a company that can afford a fleet.
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They won't be able to afford to replace themselves and will be outcompeted by a company that can afford a fleet.
Why would you think that? Cameras a cheap, and LiDAR prices are coming down, too. As companies build them in larger and larger quantities, economies of scale and competition will drive the price down rather quickly. Best guess is that in five years, self-driving hardware will add about $15k to the price of the vehicle if they use LiDAR, or $6k if they don't. And that's including the cost of stuff that a lot of cars come with already, like the electric steering rack. I'd be shocked if it were significan
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Best guess is that in five years, self-driving hardware will add about $15k to the price of the vehicle if they use LiDAR, or $6k if they don't.
Best guess is that in five years we still won't have level 5 autonomy you can trust. I don't mind being wrong, but I don't think I will be. I certainly don't think it's viable for that kind of money and also achieving the kind of safety I think we should be demanding. Not just "better than human" but essentially infallible. The car can have sensors we don't have, it should be able to be a lot better.
There's no good reason you'd replace a working tractor unit when you can just swap out the steering rack, bolt on cameras, and add some electronics
I think 20k is an optimistic price point, especially if you're hoping that it's going to deflect liability.
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Best guess is that in five years, self-driving hardware will add about $15k to the price of the vehicle if they use LiDAR, or $6k if they don't.
Best guess is that in five years we still won't have level 5 autonomy you can trust. I don't mind being wrong, but I don't think I will be. I certainly don't think it's viable for that kind of money and also achieving the kind of safety I think we should be demanding. Not just "better than human" but essentially infallible. The car can have sensors we don't have, it should be able to be a lot better.
To be clear, I meant the sensor suite and steering rack and support parts, not necessarily that there would be a working brain available to the general public by then. Leaning towards yes, but no guarantees.
There's no good reason you'd replace a working tractor unit when you can just swap out the steering rack, bolt on cameras, and add some electronics
I think 20k is an optimistic price point, especially if you're hoping that it's going to deflect liability.
I'll grant you that the liability issue is a giant question mark.
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Long haul, local delivery, taxi, bus, you name a driving job and the ruling class will want to automate it.
More specifically, people in power want to minimize their costs. This can be done via several means, such as automation, laws, or slavery.
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I do hope you know that O(350,000) is the same as O(1). :)
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I do hope you know that O(350,000) is the same as O(1). :)
Sorry, was thinking orders of magnitude, not orders of complexity. :-)
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He's not worried about "his" drivers, he's worried about his money.
You are 100% wrong. The Uber business plan has always been to shift to self-driving vehicles ASAP, and to use humans only until that is feasible. He is planning to cause a problem, not to have a problem.
However he is also terrified that he won't be able buy those cars for his company in a profitable way. Waymo is it's own company so Uber would be relegated to being a "partner" not a true owner. You'd better believe that terrifies him.
Re: Cry me a river. (Score:2)
Re: Cry me a river. (Score:2)
last time I checked, this was always part of the plan.
I don't remember any of these Uber drivers feeling bad about displacing the taxi driver. taxi drivers who insert cities would pay a half a million to have an officially licensed cab.
The aging population wave vs the automation wave (Score:4, Insightful)
So how come these "threats" are just never spoken about at the same time?
Crisis 1:
Oh no, the population is aging! We will have so many retirees that can't work! There won't be enough working people to perform all the tasks needed!
Crisis 2:
Oh no, we are getting automation! We will have so many robots that can work! There won't be a need for so many working people with all these robots!
99/100 times when people speak about one of these issues, the opposite is nowhere to be seen.
Re:The aging population wave vs the automation wav (Score:5, Interesting)
The crisis is that workers pay taxes and automation does not. All our social systems are pyramid schemes that require an ever growing base of the pyramid. Due to changing social norms over the past 60 years, we're seeing birthrates crater the world round, but the effects are more noticable where women are attaining education.
Men are redundant at this point. Women can now have babies with zero male involvement and they are of course able to work, run businesses, own land, vote, anything that a man can do, a woman can do as well.
More women have realize what a raw deal marriage and childbirth are and have said, "nope". I guess they'd rather travel, see the world, not be burdened with all the housework, all the childcare duties and have to hold a job. So they've ditched the housework and children in exchange for freedom. Hard to argue they shouldn't.
Unfortunately for world governments and everyone's silly socialist ideas, that only works when the tax base continues to expand. With a shrinking population, you have a shrinking tax base and that will directly translate to fewer social services, from healthcare to retirement.
Without forcing women backwards, I don't really see how you turn this around. Maybe enough taxpayer money could influence women to want kids but it would have to be pretty darn generous, enough so that they wouldn't have to work. You won't see that happening.
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I don't think this is necessarily a gender thing. It's more that when childbearing is a choice, a large portion of society decides against it. Most people who do choose to have children still do so as a couple. As a parent myself, I can't imagine how difficult the early years would have been solo. It's also hard to imagine having more than the two kids that I have, and if everyone in the world were like me and had two, the population would continue to shrink.
To stop population decline, you'd need to get rid
Re:The aging population wave vs the automation wav (Score:4, Insightful)
That's one take on the situation - and granted I do agree that many people fall into that camp.
But as someone who actually enjoys having kids, and who has been a stay at home parent for the last few years (due to wife out earning me), there are other pressures involved. The biggest one is that, basically, by having kids we went from having ZERO money issues, to suddenly living on the edge. It's almost comically absurd how bad the situation has been.
We went from two very decent incomes and having the world as our oyster, to suddenly having all these insane costs forced upon us. We were quite happy before in a CBD studio flat to reduce our commute time, and because we wanted to save money. But you can't live in a studio flat with kids, so we had to get a bigger flat, which was fine, except that then those became insanely expensive post COVID while our incomes didn't grow. So we had to chase the 'commuting cost vs rent' equation along with the hordes of other workers (hint, you can't really win). Then suddenly you have to think about schools as well, so not only do you need to get another bedroom, you have to get one within the catchment of a decent school.
The whole process is insanity and extremely expensive. I have always thought people who just pissed away money on pointless things to be idiots, but now I'm the idiot who just hands over my credit card to anyone who wants to clip the ticket when Im trying to get my tired kid home to see their grandparents for Christmas, or trying to get a campsite to stay in during a school holiday.
We can barely afford to do anything fun now, we are shoved back into a precipitous housing situation, and the cost of living crisis is squeezing us like never before. I then look at our friends who didn't have kids and for whom the 'cost of living crisis' is having to cut back on premium economy flights so they can continue to eat out four times a week and I feel a bit dumb.
Ultimately we really do enjoy having kids, but it is not compatible with our short term precariate economy where you are expected to bounce around and continually reinvent yourself in pursuit of 'market forces'. What hacks me off with all this as well, is the whole 'shouldn't have had kids if you can't afford them' - well, yeah, we could afford them when we had them, but the COVID stupidity now means we barely can. How am I supposed to know that my situation will be stable for the next 20 years at the point I have kids. It's just idiot ivory tower thinking from the people who, sadly, are in charge of our economic system.
You must've skipped biology class (Score:1)
Zero male involvement? Unless some amazing advance in genetics has occurred today I'm pretty sure sperm is still required for a woman to get pregnant whether it's on the spot or donated.
As for doing everything men can do , guess you've drunk the kool aid. Mentally sure, physically - nope. Not only are they considerably physically weaker in raw strength but their monthly cycles screw with what strength and endurance they do have.
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Plenty of sperm has been donated at this point. We could very likely clone that DNA as well. We may not be there completely yet, but its coming.
As far as raw physical strength? LOL, who cares about that. We have long since moved past physical strength making any difference in our modern economy. We have female soldiers, female divers, female high voltage line techs. The list goes on and none of it remotely requires people be "strong". Most men are all that strong either and pretty sure the people most succe
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"As far as raw physical strength? LOL, who cares about that. We have long since moved past physical strength making any difference in our modern economy"
Says someone who's never worked on a farm. Machinery can't do everything.
" We have female soldiers"
Not frontline or special ops. There's a reason for that.
" I mean, how much do you think Elon or Gates can bench at their best? Yeah, no one cares."
In undeveloped rural economies it can be a big deal. But I wouldn't expect a brainwashed yank to understand.
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Oh sure, in theory they *could* be frontline but none of them ever pass the strict physicals so they tend to be back at basecamp on guard duty.
abolish retirement (Score:2)
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All our social systems are pyramid schemes that require an ever growing base of the pyramid.
Social Security was NOT a ponzi scheme until after 1978 when they (Congress) permitted the government to trade cash for bonds.
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Without forcing women backwards, I don't really see how you turn this around. Maybe enough taxpayer money could influence women to want kids but it would have to be pretty darn generous, enough so that they wouldn't have to work. You won't see that happening.
Ummm, you do not recall the years of slavery very well do you...
Women, if you produce 12 kids for Uncle Sam, you can retire with a house and a pension.
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we're seeing birthrates crater the world round
So what? The Earth already has too many people to be sustained. If birth rates stabilize or even decline, that's probably good for the long-term viability of humans living on Earth.
Women can now have babies with zero male involvement and they are of course able to work, run businesses, own land, vote, anything that a man can do, a woman can do as well
Women technically always had the capacity to do those things, it's just that men wouldn't let them. I don't get why this is a "problem"?
silly socialist ideas, that only works when the tax base continues to expand
If you have fewer people, why do you need a forever-expanding tax base? If machines can increasingly take over the mundane tasks, such as food production, energy production, and transportation, t
Wait. I'm confused... (Score:2)
Wasn't this the goal the entire time? To get your name out there, flout taxi laws and eventually push out autonomous taxis with zero workers?
CEO estimates are always WAY low (Score:3)
Waymo has been a thing since 2009. It took them 15 years to reach 1/1000 of the market share of Uber. https://www.thedriverlessdiges... [thedriverlessdigest.com] Maybe Uber can grow its self-driving fleet faster than that, but it will still be a long, hard slog. Automation is extremely difficult and expensive.
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Also, someone flinging guesstimated 10-15 year estimates is the same as no idea at all. There is as implied assumption of some sort of eventuality, but without reasoning.
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Very true. A good estimate is always built up from individual tasks, off-the-cuff estimates from the top down, are always just SWAGs.
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Also, someone flinging guesstimated 10-15 year estimates is the same as no idea at all. There is as implied assumption of some sort of eventuality, but without reasoning.
Uber guy saying 10-15 years has the same confidence interval as Elon saying imminent. Of course, they don't need to state their confidence interval because they're not engineers or technologists so much as salespeople.
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While true, the manner in which Uber is obtaining the technology, doesn't help speed up the timeline in the least.
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Waymo is still very much in testing/pilot stages with service only in limited geofenced areas. When it has the technical capability to be general-purpose, it's likely to grow quickly.
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The thing about very large projects, such as deploying self-driving cars, is that there is NEVER a point at which they will be able to say "OK, it's good now, we can move out of beta and call it generally available." That process will indefinitely be a process of testing and development, as the cars encounter more, different conditions, traffic patterns, road structures, and so on. The possibilities for issues are endless.
Uber is way behind Waymo in terms of their progress through their "beta" phase. It wil
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Indeed. The cars can already accommodate many special cases. But construction zones in San Francisco look different than construction zones in other states. And neither San Francisco nor phoenix deal with heavy snowfall and ice. And in both cities, Waymo doesn't support rides out into rural areas, places with things like dirt roads and low water bridges, where there is always (or usually) water flowing over the roadway. There are many, many edge cases that haven't been handled yet.
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They are getting there, and combining forces. Austin and Atlanta, if one goes for an Uber, there is a good chance a Waymo vehicle will come.
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So how does this combination of forces relate to the time estimate?
Say what? (Score:2)
"I don't know the answer to this problem, but we're working hard on making it worse."
Mass Unemployment / Economic Death Spiral (Score:1)
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You mean 6.1 million, right?
https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+truck+drivers+in+us [google.com]
https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+uber+and+lyft+drivers+in+us [google.com]
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Baloney. There will be always be things for them to do. At least until AGI robots, that are probably about 100 years away.
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When you tally Uber / Lyft drivers plus OTR Over The Road and Local Route truck drivers you end up with a number that is by far the largest source of employment in the United States, dwarfing the second largest category, K-12 public school teachers by a few million more jobs.
That second largest category could also be automated. I wonder when that will begin?
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Local Route truck drivers
Who is going to unload the trucks?
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Robots.
Luddites would want to half advances (Score:2, Flamebait)
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Robotaxis - honestly most of the places they would operate efficiently, society would be better off with increased investment in mass transportation.
Humanity will find a way (Score:2)
Don't underestimate the ability of humans to sabotage the autonomous vehicles.
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Yet we still need truck drivers (Score:1)
Semis aren't going to be automated anytime soon, it's time that cab drivers go back to school and get a CDL.
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If we can automate cars, trucks are even easier as they mostly navigate highways.
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These will be the last to be fully automated due to safety and maneuverability. Even if you automate the highway portion, the last mile delivery and docking still needs human assistance.
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Semis aren't going to be automated anytime soon, it's time that cab drivers go back to school and get a CDL.
Not true. Self-driving semis are on the way [archive.is]
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Self-driving semi + low-trust society == semi sitting at the side of the road with someone standing in front of it while their friends loot the cargo.
Crooks know the truck will stop rather than hit them and the cops won't arrive for a while after it sends an alarm to warn that it's being robbed. Unless you're going to fit it with automated machineguns to shoot thieves it's going to be an easy target for them.
None of these tech-utopia ideas work in a low-trust society. They only work in Star Trek.
Re:Yet we still need truck drivers (vs lethal AI) (Score:2)
Self-driving semi + low-trust society == semi sitting at the side of the road with someone standing in front of it while their friends loot the cargo.
Crooks know the truck will stop rather than hit them and the cops won't arrive for a while after it sends an alarm to warn that it's being robbed. Unless you're going to fit it with automated machineguns to shoot thieves it's going to be an easy target for them.
None of these tech-utopia ideas work in a low-trust society. They only work in Star Trek.
Hmmm. So do you really think that oligarchs and corporate leaders will keep truck drivers (who can and do also steal) that are in oligarch reality non-player characters (NPCs) anyway? Versus deploying enough automated systems to protect their cargo from thieves. Of course, that would be after some small changes in law that allow robot or automated defenses to be lethal which will be easy. After all currently, private guard services can use lethal force, so "more discerning reliable robot systems (it was o
is your robot insurance paid up? (Score:2)
Delivery drivers? (Score:2)
Does he mean fast food? Good luck getting people to come outside the house to get fast food, let alone a package from amazon.
The businesses I deliver to (office supplies) will NEVER has someone who's job it is to collect deliveries, they don't even have a receptionist half the time.
Some "instant gratification" type deliveries, sure, but deliveries in general are unlikely to be affected for a long time, too many variables (and laziness)
Johnny Cab? (Score:2)
loved that performance in Total Recall.
So this is where we're headed? Fail to pay them and they explode?
the biggest societal question is.. (Score:2)
Where are robotaxis going to loiter when they don't have a passenger? Are they going to just chill out in public spaces or what?
Capability, Liability, Trust, and Cost (Score:5, Insightful)
I pretty much ignore all statements about the impending revolution of autonomous vehicles because we're honestly still not that close to them "rolling out" to all areas. For that, they need:
Capability
The vehicles need to operate independent of human interaction *beyond* just driving a route safely. They need to be able to respond to commands from law enforcement and first responders. They need to act to protect their passengers when someone outside the vehicle attempts to harm a passenger. They need to break the law only when absolutely necessary (ex. accelerate beyond the speed limit to legally pass a slow vehicle). They need to be able to travel on ALL legal roads, driveways, parking lots, and parking structures. It needs to be "Level 5".
Imagine what you would expect from the "perfect" driver... that's what they need because...
Liability
The liability puzzle is yet to be solved. Massively centralized liability will obliterate a dominant manufacturer of autonomous vehicles if the vehicles aren't operating close to perfectly. Let's consider actual numbers:
1. In the US, there are approx. 42,000 road deaths per year.
2. Imagine that 100% AVs reduce road deaths by 95% resulting in only 2,100 deaths per year.
3. Remember: You don't get any credit for NOT killing anyone. You WILL get punished for everyone you DO kill.
4. Which company can survive the litigation of regularly and directly killing so many people?
Trust
People still don't trust autonomous vehicles because the general population has only seen little bits of it. Lane assist, pedestrian warnings, Tesla's Level 2 autopilot, etc. Given that most American vehicle shave a 12-year life, most people have vehicles without any AV-style features outside of cruise control which almost no one uses. As mainstream vehicles continue to integrate more AV features, though, the general public will soften up to the idea.
Cost
A genuine level 4 AV (Waymo) is incredibly expensive (around the price of a Mercedes Maybach) and requires remote employees (more cost) to take control as necessary. No one (company, person, or government) has the funds to deck out their local roads with level 4 AVs to meet the vehicle demand of their cities.
The real news in AVs is when there's progress in these areas. If it doesn't fit into one of these buckets, then it's not getting us closer to general AV readiness.
Not to mention (Score:2)
..that if they are not needed, why study arts first' :-)
Oh nos!! (Score:2)
Not convinced (Score:2)