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Will self driving trucks hit the roads with nobody on board or will they keep a human supervisor? (self.technology)

submitted 7 months ago by FortuneMisteller to c/technology

45 comments fedilink hide all child comments

According to the news self driving trucks are about to hit the road with no driver on board.

But according to this book that is not going to happen. The author says that the real purpose is to get rid of the skilled drivers and replace them with underpaid button pushers.

Will they really do that? What's going to be the situation few years from now?

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[–] abhibeckert 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

This tech advances very slowly.

Historically, anything that reduces cost of transporting goods has advanced extremely quickly. The best comparison, I think, is the shipping container.

It took about ten years for shipping containers to go from an invention nobody had heard of to one that was being used in every major seaport in the world and about another ten years for virtually all shipping used that method.

The New York docks for example, dramatically increased activity (as in, handled several times more cargo per day) while also reducing the workforce by two thirds. I think self driving trucks will do the same thing - companies/cities/highways that adopt AI will grow rapidly and any company/city/highway that doesn't support self driving trucks will suddenly stop being used almost entirely.

Shipping containers were not a simple transition. New ships and new docks had to be built to take advantage of it. A lot of new trucks and trains were also built. Just 20 years to replace nearly all the infrastructure in one of the biggest and most important industries in the world.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

I don't disagree with you. There will be a rapid rate of adoption.

But how long before it's capable enough to be adopted? We (as in anybody) don't know. We just know that it's been many many years and they're still not there yet, and just because a few driverless vehicles are operating (in extremely ideal scenarios with lots of help) doesn't mean it's ready for the kind of hockey stick curve that the industry is looking forward to.

It will happen eventually, sure. My prediction was in regards to the OP's question of what will things look like in a few years. I don't think the tech will be ready for mass adoption in just a few years, neither does the author of the article linked.