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Comment by narrowrail | Hacker News Reader

>within 5 years alone we'll have taxi drivers and hauliers without jobs.

I'm going to continue objecting to this idea. Maybe by 2050, but I'd bet $10,000 that this will not happen in 5 years.

Yeah, any large-scale self-driving car automation is going to take at least a decade to have a large effect, possibly more. Between the inevitable hiccups, upgrade/replacement costs and safety/labor regulations, it's not going to happen overnight. Even that White House study that said those jobs were going to disappear gave no time frame.

These things are predicted to cost less than 2 years salary making the transition rapid and only really limited by manufacturing. However, the important thing is not if it's 7 or 10 years, but the fact shrinking job markets mean everyone laid off is going to be unable to find a job in the sector.

Do you realise you are betting against the entirety - literally - of the automotive industry?

Most of the auto industry is not acting as if there is a 5 year timeline to self driving. More like 20 years.

Seriously? Tesla, Mercedes, BMW, and Uber are all aiming for "a year or so". Volkswagen and Volvo seem to be about a year behind that. Don't get me wrong, I think there are significant challenges to overcome, but this "self-driving is always 20 years away" view doesn't mesh with most credible projections.

That depends on if you're talking about level 3, 4, or 5 autonomy, on what kind of roads, and under what kind of weather conditions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car#Classification

I don't think anyone says level 5 autonomy in bad weather is close.

https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/20/bmw-to-open-a-new-autonomo...

https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/04/nvidia-and-audi-aim-to-bri...

That's just the first few stories, and autonomous driving is already in the works - don't expect these companies are starting from zero.

The automotive industry is only one piece of the puzzle. And narrowrail disagrees (as do I) that the change will happen in 5 years. That's less than the average age of all vehicles being used!

Average age doesn't matter. 95 percent of the time a car sits unused.

You don't need to replace 100 percent of the cars. You only need to replace 5 percent of them.

I don't know about you, but I seem to need to get around at about the same time as a lot of other people (and usually in the same direction).

Taxis are replaced roughly every two years because they are driven so hard. Passenger vehicles changing to autonomous won't affect jobs, but taxis going autonomous will.

Voice recognition still doesn't work. How long has that been just around the corner?

https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.05256

Uh. Sure it does.

By 2050, we'll have AI Luddites, who'll be able to predict that this time, no really this time for real you guys, automation is going to put everybody out of work and crash the economy.

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