Uber Enters Race to Perfect Driverless Vehicle Technology

As a robot is driving the taxi they are forgetting a vital part of the artificial intelligence, such as the robots views' on immigration as well the actual location of flight MH370.

I can imagine the day when you'll be able to call a driverless taxi and it will take you whereever you want without a driver inside. To us, the first adopters, this will be so eerie.

But our grandkids will wonder:
What? You want to drive a car yourself? Are you crazy?!

A decade ago, the sheer prospect of driverless cars becoming mainstream was a fantasy. A decade from now, we could be looking back and wondering how we ever did without.

This shouldn't surprise anyone, smart move by Uber. They're proving to be a very smart and forward-thinking company, way more than just a cheap taxi alternative.

Exciting times to be alive and witness all of this. I can remember me as a kid, fantasizing about autonomous cars (probably influenced by shows like Knight rider), but I seriously didn't expect it to happen for real, or at least in my lifetime. And we're almost there. It's really happening. Awesome!

But how would Uber's automatic-driving cars fuel up/charge up? Either they have to pass that responsibility onto the customer, or have the car drive back to Uber employees/volunteers to fill up in between rides.

Maybe they can automatically drive to some fill up stations uber make an agreement for filling up and bill to them

I can imagine the day when you'll be able to call a driverless taxi and it will take you whereever you want without a driver inside. To us, the first adopters, this will be so eerie.

But our grandkids will wonder:
What? You want to drive a car yourself? Are you crazy?!

"Are you kidding kid? I preferred it."

Great, now the taxi drivers here in Portugal can beat exclusively the Uber's passenger.

But how would Uber's automatic-driving cars fuel up/charge up? Either they have to pass that responsibility onto the customer, or have the car drive back to Uber employees/volunteers to fill up in between rides.

I suspect Uber won't own any cars. They'll get their 'contractors' to own and maintain the cars, fuelling them up, cleaning them etc. Like it is now.

Uber has announced it is currently testing self-driving car technology with a view to completely remove the need for drivers from its ride-hailing service.

I'm sure their drivers love to hear this. Could you imagine working for a company that was actively working towards a goal of getting rid of about 99% of their workforce? I'm all for progress, but that would make me feel really weird.

According to this quote from the Washington Post ('https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/01/22/now-we-know-many-drivers-uber-has-and-how-much-money-theyre-making%E2%80%8B/'):

The analysis also reveals for the first time the size of Uber’s driver pool in the United States and the rapid rate at which it’s expanding. In December, 162,037 “active drivers” completed at least four or more trips for the service. The number of new drivers signing up has doubled every six months for the past two years.

That's going to be a lot of people to lay off several years down the road, and that's only the tip of the iceberg. According to the website All Trucking ('http://www.alltrucking.com/faq/truck-drivers-in-the-usa/'):

There are approximately 3.5 million professional truck drivers in the United States, according to estimates by the American Trucking Association ('http://www.trucking.org/News_and_Information_Reports_Industry_Data.aspx'). The total number of people employed in the industry, including those in positions that do not entail driving, exceeds 8.7 million.

So that's a lot more people who will be eventually replaced. See this story about semi-autonomous trucks driving across Europe ('https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/07/convoy-self-driving-trucks-completes-first-european-cross-border-trip') to get a glimpse of where things are headed. Then there are other jobs to consider: Postal and package delivery drivers, bus drivers, chauffers, maybe even tow truck drivers and more. Then you have tertiary industries, such as automotive insurance, which could eventually no longer be needed or at least have a very reduced role. That means adjusters, agents, managers, call centers and more jobs would be no longer needed, or have a severe reduction in number of positions. The reduction in accidents would also mean that auto mechanics would have a reduced role in society, especially for collision repair. This also means that fewer auto parts would need to be made, which impacts other industries, and could make auto repair in general more costly. You would also need fewer patrol officers, and cities would get less income from speeding tickets, parking tickets, and more—which is, perhaps surprising to some, a big part of many city budgets.

And I'm not even touching on the job impacts of a move from oil to electric.

To reiterate, I'm all for progress, and am in no way saying that these changes are bad. I'm all for a more efficient system that makes life easier and is better for the environment. But I just hope that organizational think tanks and governing bodies are acting now to research the impacts that this will have on our economy and the employment outlook, because this is going to be a tremendous period of transformation affecting many fundamental aspects of our society. And yet again, I'm not even touching on the privacy aspects revolving around government surveillance, the law aspects for whose fault an unlikely accident would be, and more. That's a whole other can of worms. It's really incredible how much change this will bring. It's an exciting time to be alive, but change can be difficult, especially when it has the potential to be this disruptive. But I'm hopeful our society will eventually benefit greatly from these improvements. The potential to greatly empower the elderly, people with disabilities and more with easy access to transportation will be fantastic, as well as the reduction in automobile deaths and pollution from energy efficient autonomous driving.