Comment by greenyoda | Hacker News Reader

Comment by greenyoda | Hacker News Reader

Some of the human workers that the author sees fit to eliminate actually provide very useful functions that machines can't.

I can envision how driverless buses and trains could work, but in cities like New York where one hears about crime on public transit all the time, I'm not sure I'd like to be the last passenger on an unmanned bus at midnight. It would be a bit creepy.

How would a driverless pizza delivery truck get my pizza to me if I lived on the 18th floor of a high-rise apartment building? If it couldn't deliver to my door, then it would be quickly put out of business by human drivers who could.

Also:

- Can we really envision being able to print construction materials that have the strength of reinforced concrete at anywhere near the cost of concrete? Could you print the foundation of a house? A road? An overpass? Can you economically replace a wooden 2-by-4 with printed plastic? What would happen to the price of oil if you suddenly started making lots of building materials out of plastic?

- Will an air conditioner-sized power generation unit that you own have the reliability of a large power plant? What will you do if it breaks down and you don't have the $10,000 it takes to buy a new one? Doesn't a centralized power structure bring certain economies of scale? There may be a lot of people working in various parts of the power distribution network, but it's not obvious that you could do it more cheaply or with fewer people if everybody owned their own power generation hardware.

- Those 3-D printed shoes certainly don't look like they'd be comfortable to wear, let alone walk in.

I'm very skeptical about these predictions, given that none of them come with any kind of analysis that compares current and future costs. But I guess that would be the domain of engineers, and "futurists" can't be bothered with those pesky details.

I'm not sure I'd like to be the last passenger on an unmanned bus at midnight

What about the last passenger on an empty subway car?

As for reinforced concrete and 2x4s, these are already mass manufactured products. There is no reason to 3d print them.

Also, do the 3d printed shoes look worse than these? http://styloot.com/shop/shop/#/category=54cad3dc-1b9c-11e0-8... (disclaimer: link to my startup)

What about a pizza hotbox sized robot that can climb stairs. In a place where citizens don't break things on the street that would be a pretty quirky and highly plausible restaurant idea. You wouldn't even need incredible driving AI, you could just outsource the delivery jobs to somewhere cheaper.

> How would a driverless pizza delivery truck get my pizza to me if I lived on the 18th floor of a high-rise apartment building?

Since we're talking far-out future anyway, it's not hard to imagine a delivery drone-copter that flies your pizza to you right outside your window.

http://matternet.net/ Point to point delivery may not be such a far fetched idea technologically. Quadcopters are becoming more and more common. But legal and security hurdles may slow down the adoption of such services.

More likely is that you'll be expected to pick up the pizza from the street, instead of having it delivered to your door.

Imagine having the choice of two pizza places - both charge the same price for the pizza, and taste just as good. One uses human drivers who drop it off at your door - but expect to be tipped. The other uses robotic delivery trucks; you have to pick the food up at the street, but you don't have to tip. Which would you choose? Or rather, which would the median pizza purchaser choose?

This is analogous to how a lot of automated or "self-service" services work, such as grocery checkouts[1], or petrol stations[2]. The automated service is often inferior in every way but price...but that's usually enough.

[1]: This is a bit of a special case; in my experience the automated checkouts aren't cheaper, so I only use them when they'll clearly save me time due to shorter lines. Still, time is money, so I think it's still an example of an inferior -but-cheaper service.

[2]: I understand that concerted lobbying has resulted in laws preventing people from pumping their own gas in some US states. For the sake of this post, pretend you live somewhere where self-service stations are the norm, as the are in most of the world.

Flying drones (and thus window-level delivery) would be much easier and more effective to implement for a few reasons:

1) Pathfinding is easier as it doesn't have to concern itself with roads or obstacles for most of it's route. Just fly up to a reasonable altitude (just enough to clear buildings in the way) and all the drone has to worry about is adjusting for wind and "last-mile" (your window) navigation. Once they start hitting critical mass we'd start seeing infrastructure to keep the drones moving; homing beacons and landing pads on your window, and drone towers (either standalone or grafted onto existing skyscrapers) to refuel(/charge) drones and hoist them up to a high altitude, allowing them to rely more on gliding vs. their own power.

2) Less of a chance to run someone over. Again; since it's not in conflict with existing infrastructure, it's less likely to suddenly find a 6-year-old in front of it. The flip side is that it's going to hurt if the drone fails and drops out of the sky; this can be remedied by a fail-safe (such as a parachute that physically breaks open at a certain velocity; independent of the nav systems)

3) Commercial advantages: besides the general advantages of a drone-based delivery; a flying drone doesn't get stuck in traffic as it's skipping roads entirely. Thus, using a flying drone will give you a significant advantage over your ground-based (be they human or drone) competition re: delivery times. If they aren't faster; they're at least going to be far more predictable.

He goes into more detail on flying drones in this post - http://www.futuristspeaker.com/2011/03/the-day-of-the-drone/

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