Ask HN: Are there any on HN skeptical of the predictions regarding automation?
This feeds into the wider theme of AI , the singularity and people like Elon Musk donating money to prevent an AI apocalypse.
The past shows that it is dangerous to bet against technological progress , so here I would like to say that I am only expressing skepticism on how long it would take for these things to play out.
Reading HN or /r/futurology would have you think that we're just 2 or 5 years away from significant adoption of self driving cars and just 20 years or so before we start feeling severe dislocations in the labour markets.
I don't see how the regulatory and technological hurdles can be overcome in such a short period of time.
Considering the state of tech , it could be 5 - 8 years before we have truly self driving cars , and years more before governments and the public start accepting being around them.
Another thing is that in Africa,India etc humans will continue to be cheaper for a long time. There will also be significant opposition in these countries if it gets good enough.
But I still don't get how we could have fully autonomous trucks barelling down our free ways , carrying produce farmed by autonomous tractors , to retail stores with automated check out and shelf stacking robots.
This is a degree of AI that simply doesn't exist today. There's a long gulf between identifying objects in a picture (the state of the art today) and actually doing stuff like farming or cooking.
On the other hand , if we are actually on the cusp of something like this its truly mind boggling. We could have products made from metals mined autonomously , shipped to autonomous factories , assembled by robots and shipped via self driving trucks and delivery drones to our door steps.