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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

The welder, the courier, the truck driver, the cab driver, the pilot, the GP, the gardener... I could probably make a really long list of jobs that will be affected, pundits are safe for now (but composers and painters are not), economists are probably safe too if only because they always seem to manage to weather the storm without damage even if they caused the storm and still failed to predict it. Enterprise programmers are safe - for now -, but keep in mind that humans already know how to teach each other stuff, as soon as programming becomes hard to distinguish from teaching by example that enterprise programmer had better watch out.

Let's review this in a decade or so and see what happened.

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Four of those are bets on autonomous navigation and driving/flying. One (welding) has nothing to do with deep learning (that I'm aware of) and everything to do with the base rate of automation.

In terms of level 5 autonomous driving, the most common retort I've seen recently is "well, we're going to need special roads with sensors built in, and then it is a tractable problem." There are more than 4 million miles of road in the US; at any given time maybe 2% are under construction. The US Interstate Highway System was built during a boom and the cold war (where the system learned from Eisenhower's WWII experiences and learning from the Autobahn's military utility.) [1] If we're lucky, maybe the interstates will get sensors. But the complexity of re-doing an exit or interchange, which involves dozens of on-the-fly lane changes and cutovers, seems impractical merely to support self-driving cars.

I would love autonomous vehicles for the sake of my children, but I suspect that at best, maybe my grandchildren will benefit.

[1] https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/interstate/brainiacs/eisenhowerinte...

>The welder, the courier, the truck driver, the cab driver, the pilot

Nobody involved closely with self driving cars thinks we're anywhere close to a level 5 system. Why do you think we are?

Because the rate of change has changed itself. Just like the internet existed for many years before it took off and car phones were around in 1946 there is a point in time where the rate-of-change in either the application or the development of something new changes.

That point in time has definitely come for self driving cars, we're not 'close' but we are much closer than we were even 5 years ago, there is legislation on the books permitting self driving cars from participating in regular traffic instead of on private property only, there is special hardware geared towards such systems and so on.

It's an idea whose time has come, now we have a bunch of engineering problems to solve and they're far from simple but I would not at all be surprised if self driving cars are going to be equal partners in traffic 10 years from now.

Lots of hard work between now but I think we'll see self driving cars long before we will see an operational fusion reactor.

Self driving cars are worth 40+ billion to the economy every year. That quickly pays for quite a bit of work.

Nothing like a large carrot and the feeling that something should be possible to bring out the hounds. if it can be done with present day tech it will be done, if it can't be done with present day tech then we will have a pretty good idea of what the stumbling blocks are and what kind of tech will be required in order to solve them. That's the minimum that will come out of this, possibly a lot of spin-off tech as well for more limited situations.

Well, what do you mean?

I think it's obvious that machines can, for example, weld better than humans can. But machines can't decide what to weld. For now in that arena, things are mostly still human controlled.

I think your argument gets significantly weaker when you push truck, car, and plane driving onto the conversation stack.

Even the best of self-driving AI automation isn't nearly as good as bad human driving. Yet.

But the absolute best human weld joints are no better than the absolute best robotic weld joints.

I think you're talking about two entirely different domains here when you conflate welders and couriers. One of those needs a human decision to place the components to be welded next it in front of a robot that basically does one thing. The other is an actual adaptive AI that's trying to make decisions on it's own.

Yes, it's obvious that the lowest-wage and lowest-skilled workers are going to be displaced by robots the soonest. That's like arguing that the sun is going to rise. And as a society, we need to account for that.

But arguing that the lowest hanging fruit of automation is going to displace taxi drivers and gardeners in the next 10 years is pretty nuts, even for HN.

It is definitely not obvious that machines can weld better than humans can. I think a lot of computer tech people would be surprised by how much welding is still done by hand. Most of the welds on a Boeing 787 are done by humans, for example.

I feel like this fits the description in the comment above:

> When I hear claims on how many jobs will be replaced because of deep learning (in contrast to the base rate of the long, steady slope of automation over the last 175 years), it's often about an abstract and simplified notion of the complexities of jobs outside the claimant's area of expertise.

Machines have nowhere near the flexibility of humans, so obviously they're worse at tasks in environments designed for humans.

But were you optimize the Boeing manufacturing process for machines, the way car factories are optimized, you could utilize strengths of machines while sidestepping their limitations.

(Why this does not happen often is I believe a combination of robots having high initial costs, coupled with products starting as human-assembled prototypes, and companies just optimizing that process incrementally, instead of redesigning it around machines.)

And unions.

And relatively low volumes. If you're going to pump out 3 million cars a year vs 2000 of that plane ever, it changes the equation somewhat.

> Well, what do you mean?

> I think it's obvious that machines can, for example, weld better than humans can.

Ok. That wasn't all that obvious not all that long ago.

> But machines can't decide what to weld. For now in that arena, things are mostly still human controlled.

Yes.

> I think your argument gets significantly weaker when you push truck, car, and plane driving onto the conversation stack.

What's so incredibly special about truck, car or plane driving/piloting that you feel they are immune to automation?

> Even the best of self-driving AI automation isn't nearly as good as bad human driving. Yet.

Precisely. Let's give it 10 years and look again. I wouldn't bet against it.

> But the absolute best human weld joints are no better than the absolute best robotic weld joints.

It's not about 'best'. It is all about repeat accuracy and consistency. That's what makes the robot better. Maybe the best human welds are better than the best robot welds. But to get a human to consistently outperform the robot or to consistently deliver a specific quality level is not going to happen.

> I think you're talking about two entirely different domains here when you conflate welders and couriers.

We consider welding to be a highly skilled job and yet welding robots are a thing. Courier on the other hand 'merely' requires a driving license, something we hand out to 16 year olds after a perfunctory inspection.

> One of those needs a human decision to place the components to be welded next it in front of a robot that basically does one thing.

Which takes a couple of years training for a human.

> The other is an actual adaptive AI that's trying to make decisions on it's own.

Yes, it's a harder problem for a computer. But it was mostly harder because in the past computers could not see the way we can. But deeply layered convolutional neural networks and their descendants have changed that, dramatically. What was SF 5 years ago is now commonplace. And computers now have access to senses that we don't have, such as radar and lidar.

That takes care of one of the harder parts of the problem.

There is still plenty left, but one of the most formidable obstacles to self driving vehicles is now behind us.

> Yes, it's obvious that the lowest-wage and lowest-skilled workers are going to be displaced by robots the soonest. That's like arguing that the sun is going to rise. And as a society, we need to account for that.

Yes. But I wonder if we're going to be ready when the software is ready. In fact I doubt we will be ready. It will be the industrial revolution all over again, only this time it will play out in a decade instead of in 100 years.

> But arguing that the lowest hanging fruit of automation is going to displace taxi drivers and gardeners in the next 10 years is pretty nuts, even for HN.

I don't think that was called for, that's pretty rude, even for HN.

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