Driverless taxis

asredastheycome said:
Why apart from profit is it the way forward. Taxis have worked perfectly well since 1903 when London cabs began to use combustion engines and even before that going back to the reign of Queen Elizabeth 1. Why do we have to automate everything.
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Well safety for one, or to eliminate boring / manual work, there's another.

Why in 1903 did they start to use the combustion engine if horses worked perfectly well?

The fact that I'll no longer have to listen to a barely disguised racist West Ham fan regale me with tales of Sadiq Khan and near misses with cyclists , in between snippets of Talksport, whilst he takes me across town is reason enough for me to welcome our robot overlords.
 
SilentProf said:
All of those jobs can and will be done by machines eventually.
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Certainly not in our life time, and you're never going to eliminate the human element from it.

Who's going to check for bias or hallucinations on a GenAI solution, who's going to prioritise new use cases and determine the business value of one against another etc etc.

Given most businesses are still propped up in parts by a combination of manual processes, Excel spreadsheets and multi person meetings, the days of us all sat in the yard whilst robots do everything we do today at work are a long way off. Besides which, who's going to post on this board if all our jobs are taken by bots ?
 
The_Lizards_Jumpers said:
Certainly not in our life time, and you're never going to eliminate the human element from it.

Who's going to check for bias or hallucinations on a GenAI solution, who's going to prioritise new use cases and determine the business value of one against another etc etc.
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The AI will
The_Lizards_Jumpers said:
Given most businesses are still propped up in parts by a combination of manual processes, Excel spreadsheets and multi person meetings, the days of us all sat in the yard whilst robots do everything we do today at work are a long way off. Besides which, who's going to post on this board if all our jobs are taken by bots ?
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Are you sure all our posters are human? I have my doubts about a few.
 
JackG said:
The AI will
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We're a million miles away from that, and there's no way AI can do certain things like prioritise business cases and value against strategy, it can make recommendations of course, but there's still going to be a human element to it - unless you're talking about a world where AI runs every single aspect of the corporate world, and the most valuable companies are those where the AI functions makes the best automated decisions and come up with the best most innovative ideas?
 
asredastheycome said:
Why apart from profit is it the way forward. Taxis have worked perfectly well since 1903 when London cabs began to use combustion engines and even before that going back to the reign of Queen Elizabeth 1. Why do we have to automate everything.
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And horses worked perfectly well before them. And, in Roman times, the sandals were perfect for the daily commute
 
ThatFragranceGuy said:
You can't halt advancement with this argument. Innovation is and needs to be constant to drive improvements. Most people alive today will be doing a job that someone did previously with older technology or in a much more laborious fashion.

Millions of workers will either retrain or the various UBI schemes will have to come to fruition, burners going to happen one way or another and workers doing a menial task that can be automated won't stand in the way of it being done, cold as it sounds.
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So millions of workers will either retrain or they will live their life under a UBI scheme. Do you think that will keep them anywhere but around the poverty line. Its not going to be much higher so they may not want to live like that and the millions of jobs have disappeared. Some will obviously get different jobs but on the scale you are talking about it will be impossible for most.
 
As much as some taxi drivers talk shight, I wouldn't be comfortable being drove by ai, its probably gonna happen though.
 
asredastheycome said:
So millions of workers will either retrain or they will live their life under a UBI scheme. Do you think that will keep them anywhere but around the poverty line. Its not going to be much higher so they may not want to live like that and the millions of jobs have disappeared. Some will obviously get different jobs but on the scale you are talking about it will be impossible for most.
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As said above we've been through this journey many times and come out on the other side

My job has been sent offshore twice before I got into what I do now. Was never bitter about it, if it hadn't happened I wouldn't be doing what I do now and making what I make now.

Most people can sit and think about the job they do and it will be built on innovations that put people out of work.

Two basic examples; people used to be employed to walk round and set fire to the oil/gas lampposts at night, and people were employed to knock on your window with a big stick so you didn't sleep in for work. Electricity and alarm clocks got rid of those - do you feel sad about those people when your phone wakes you up? Or as you walk down the street? Would those be jobs you'd want for your kids?
 
GibbosEmpire said:
Not to mention millions of taxi drivers would be out of a job? Also what if the customer collapses and has a heart attack and there's nobody there to intervene? Also what if you're stuck in traffic and you want to get out to walk the rest? And is the car locked so you can't get out till you arrive at your destination? And how boring would it be to be in a driverless taxi?
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Imagine to the current youngest and future generations, a screen and on board wifi will take care of the boredom.😕
 
Surely most jobs are progress/change/ evolution from a previous job.

Can't be many that are as they were 200 years ago. I can see my job being replaced by tech and I need to future proof but I know it's unlikely I can stop it.
 
Having used a driverless taxi in San Francisco, my experience was that it felt much safer than a human driver and drove much better - smoother, faster, etc. To answer some of the questions raised here: there is a STOP button you can push to end the ride and get out. Security is high - they record all sound ands "allegedly" don't record video. They are all app driven so there is no issue with struggles paying by card. There is no cash option. The "putting people out of work" issue is important, but thats a more general societal/economic issue than just taxis. FWIW it seems like we are a long way from driven taxis being banned. So there are likely to be human taxi drivers around for a while yet. Also - its not for everybody. I know some people who find the whole seeing of watching the steering wheel turn on its own to be very disturbing...
 
Imagine the power struggle in Teesside if Boro taxis didn't have an influence?
Be like several series of ' The wire' combined
 
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