Cause for concern .. IMO

[Gasser64]

Lots more to the job than just driving. It's a lot of work. It will make you old before your time. Raise your hand if you have ever experienced a problem with a sensor or a computer. If it's man made it will screw up. Nobody is perfect and nothing you ever create or design will be either.

Old technology gets replaced. Its all just a matter of time. Look at what email did to the paper industry. Those automated trucks will have an issue at some point, sure. But what's cheaper? Paying a single technician who services a 30 square area, or an army of drivers? If I'm a trucking co, I'll take the technician please.

[Captain Crawfish]

You can't turn 40 tons of steel loose on a computer wire. You also can't let a 747 fly itself. It will always have to have a human in it to watch and take over if needed. It's just common sense. All warehouses grocery stores etc could be replaced with robots instead of people. Won't happen though. You think the UPS guy is gonna get replaced by a robot? Nope doubt it. Maybe a Robocop! 😎

[Murph Tang]

You can't turn 40 tons of steel loose on a computer wire. You also can't let a 747 fly itself. It will always have to have a human in it to watch and take over if needed. It's just common sense. All warehouses grocery stores etc could be replaced with robots instead of people. Won't happen though. You think the UPS guy is gonna get replaced by a robot? Nope doubt it. Maybe a Robocop! 😎

Agreed. Different if 3k car takes a wrong turn. One time a 80k truck plows through cars stopped for construction. See how that flys

[Gasser64]

You can't turn 40 tons of steel loose on a computer wire. You also can't let a 747 fly itself. It will always have to have a human in it to watch and take over if needed. It's just common sense. All warehouses grocery stores etc could be replaced with robots instead of people. Won't happen though. You think the UPS guy is gonna get replaced by a robot? Nope doubt it. Maybe a Robocop! ��

Interesting discussion. But that's already happening lol. Amazon's tested its first drone delivery recently. They're likely going to keep developing that, until instead of having 10 delivery drivers for a given area, there is now 1 operator guy sitting in a building. Ups is salivating just thinking about being able to get rid of those drivers. Even if the idea didn't take off now, just give it say 15 years, and then it would take off in a big way. Look at the electric car. GM made the EV1 in the early 2000's, but it just wasn't meant to be for a lot of reasons. Then tesla comes along, and now everyone with the scratch can buy an electric car if they want one.

Agreed. Different if 3k car takes a wrong turn. One time a 80k truck plows through cars stopped for construction. See how that flys

I would guess that it will never happen. They'd see that problem from miles off, and give it redundancies out the wazoo. The truck would just roll to a slow stop and it would just sit there obstructing traffic until it was removed. If done right, that's really all just a matter of thoughtful programming. And in the end, its just like google says about their self driving cars: Driver error kills 30k+ people every year in the U.S. They can cut that down to less than 1k with their self driving cars. How many accidents are caused by truck driver's errors?

[lowthreeohz]

I would guess that it will never happen. They'd see that problem from miles off, and give it redundancies out the wazoo. The truck would just roll to a slow stop and it would just sit there obstructing traffic until it was removed. If done right, that's really all just a matter of thoughtful programming.

I work with SW development, and that statement scares me.

[Gasser64]

Yeah but you know they could do it. And when it comes to something like that, the imperative is pretty strong.

[Captain Crawfish]

all in all just about every job in america can be replaced by a robot. computers can help but they will never replace people because they aren't perfect. I doubt any ups guys are worried about losing out to amazons drone....lol. so much crap has to be done to get people their stuff its unreal. R2D2 wont be bringing a gas station its fuel or repowering a fast food restaurant anytime soon either. people keep this country going and they always will

[lowthreeohz]

Yeah but you know they could do it. And when it comes to something like that, the imperative is pretty strong.

Can and will are vastly different in the business world. If there's not money attached to fixing a problem they often go unresolved.

[Broncojohnny]

The automated truck thing will work fine until one of them plows into a group of cars or pedestrians and kills a bunch of people in the right "no win" situation where the AI involved has to pick the lesser of two evils. There will be a court case where some lawyer will ask the programmer why the truck did what it did. The programmer will then go on to explain that in a no win situation the truck decided on its own who it would kill. That will be like opening the check book of the trucking company, the computer programmer, the manufacturer of the truck, etc, etc. The moment someone explains that the automated truck intentionally killed some people instead of killing someone else it will all be over. Right now this situation is blamed on the negligence of the driver which is vastly different, at least in a legal sense, than a situation where a computer decides who should live and who should die.

[Gasser64]

all in all just about every job in america can be replaced by a robot. computers can help but they will never replace people because they aren't perfect. I doubt any ups guys are worried about losing out to amazons drone....lol. so much crap has to be done to get people their stuff its unreal. R2D2 wont be bringing a gas station its fuel or repowering a fast food restaurant anytime soon either. people keep this country going and they always will

The only thing that stays the same, is that change is constant. You can rest assured that there will come a day, that nobody will be driving those trucks. Its only a matter of time. How much time, is debatable for sure. But its going to happen. You may be in the nursing home, but its gonna happen. Then again it may be in 15 years, its hard to tell at this point. I'd keep an eye on Google's self driving cars.

Can and will are vastly different in the business world. If there's not money attached to fixing a problem they often go unresolved.

You don't see money in being able to get rid of thousands of employees in lieu of a machine that doesn't get paid, and never needs a day off? Why does walmart has self checkouts? Why is amazon testing their drone deliveries? And UPS expressing interest. Cause they think its cool looking? Walmart would absolutely love to not have any cashiers. I'm not saying the people will be gone completely. I'm just saying that while nowadays there are 40 or 50 cashiers that work at walkmart, 10 years from now its likely to be 2 or 3. Walmart has a distribution center in my town, that employs several hundred people. My friend works there, and he was telling me about a new distribution center they put up recently, that is nearly completely automated. So the old one is manned, the new one is automated.

[Gasser64]

The automated truck thing will work fine until one of them plows into a group of cars or pedestrians and kills a bunch of people in the right "no win" situation where the AI involved has to pick the lesser of two evils. There will be a court case where some lawyer will ask the programmer why the truck did what it did. The programmer will then go on to explain that in a no win situation the truck decided on its own who it would kill. That will be like opening the check book of the trucking company, the computer programmer, the manufacturer of the truck, etc, etc. The moment someone explains that the automated truck intentionally killed some people instead of killing someone else it will all be over. Right now this situation is blamed on the negligence of the driver which is vastly different, at least in a legal sense, than a situation where a computer decides who should live and who should die.

That would work until they look at the deaths related to driver error. When they see that the automated trucks kill 10 people per year, and the drivers kill 100, I'd wager they'll stick with the automated. Just look at the history of such cases, they always go with whatever is less destructive overall. The fact that a brainless truck killed somebody instead of a human being killing somebody, isn't going to be what they're concerned about. Somebody dies either way, its just that drastically less somebodies die with the computer running the show instead of the error prone human.