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Self-Driving Cars: The Road Ahead - KQED QUEST
Self-driving cars are no longer the stuff of science fiction. Google, Tesla, Audi and other companies are taking dozens of prototype vehicles onto the road in California and other states. But before they can take off with consumers, big hurdles need to be overcome.
What is causing this poverty, economic inequality and insecurity?
The changes – and widespread poverty – are being caused by two big and unstoppable forces:
1. Globalization
Globalization is where someone in, say, America or Europe, as an example, who is accustomed to earning $25/hour to $40/hour…
... loses his/her job because it’s now very easy to give that job to someone in China or Vietnam who is willing to do the same job for $1/hour to 2/hour.
In the above example, if you live outside America, you might say, who cares what happens in America? You should care, because it WILL affect you too, as I’ll explain in a moment.
As the jobs move away rapidly, the people losing their jobs hardly have an opportunity to notice what’s happening, and have no time to retool / reeducate themselves.
The changes happen so fast that schools, governments and society have little ability to react, if at all.
Everyone is left feeling overwhelmed. And many are feeling angry.
2. Automation
Automation is where jobs are replaced by software, or robots.
This is happening around us very quickly. For example:
When Skype (with only a few hundred employees) is all that’s left of millions of jobs that once supported long distance telephone companies around the world….
Or when Walmart, using smart centralized “big data” wipes out millions of mom and pop shops…
… only to have Amazon do the same to Walmart...
Or when digital music, distributed over the web, decimates the entire global music industry…
… or e-books wipe out bookstores around the world…
… or millions of travel agents have been replaced by a few dozen travel websites…
… you get the picture. Software and automation are wiping out jobs.
20 years ago, if you predicted these changes would happen this quickly, you would have been laughed out of the room.
But wait. It’s only about to get worse, as the pace accelerates.
The rate of change is increasing.
In the next few years, the effects of automation will be felt in even bigger ways. Need an example?
Let’s take a look at the #1 most popular job in many countries around the world (the job that more people do than any other type of job) -- the U.S. included:
The number one type of job is driving a vehicle. Truck drivers, bus drivers, taxi drivers etc.
As you probably know, self-driving automated (driver-less) cars are on the way.
Massive competition is underway between all the car companies in addition to the tech giants such as Google, Apple, Uber, etc.
In the next decade, most drivers will be replaced by self-driving vehicles.
In fact, it’s easy to predict that, soon after self-driving cars become the norm, in many/most parts of the world, it will slowly but surely become illegal for humans to drive a car on public roads….
… because humans, unlike computers, don’t have hundreds or thousands of sensors like computers can have -- noticing every little movement on the road and talking to all other computerized vehicles in the vicinity at the same time.
It will simply be too dangerous to have humans driving on those same roads.
Did you know that motor vehicle accidents is now the #1 leading cause of death for young people globally.
Source: The World Health Organization
Road traffic injuries is the number 1 cause of adolescent deaths globally, and the second largest cause of illness and disability for them.
Humans will not be able to compete with the safety that automated cars can provide; so driving on most public roads will likely eventually become illegal around the world, in an attempt to drive down road traffic injuries and death.
If you look at most of the other top type of jobs, it’s getting easier to see the same pattern:
Most other jobs too, will be wiped out by automation.
It takes very little imagination to see that eventually most job, from doctors to waiters to teachers to factory workers….
… will be replaced by more efficient, harder working, cheaper and more effective software applications and robots.
Great wealth will be (and IS already being) generated
The companies that bring these technologies to the world will create massive wealth for their founders, major shareholders and a few key employees.
But for everyone else, these technologies will wipe out their jobs; they and their labor will simply no longer be needed.
The result will be unemployment like we have likely never, ever witnessed before – not even in the greatest of depressions.
In the past, when technology replaced workers, the workers eventually found new jobs.
For example, when new technology (such as tractors, fertilizer, etc.) pushed workers out of the farms, those folks moved on to all the new factories that new technology was enabling.
But this time, automation is coming to everything so quickly that the world will hardly be recognizable in just ten or so years.
Summary: Globalization and Automation are about to usher in a new era of unemployment, poverty and inequality.
The effects of widespread and sudden poverty
As if poverty wasn’t a big enough problem by itself, it (poverty) creates another massive problem -- a problem even more damaging than widespread poverty -- which we will discuss in an upcoming post.
In the meantime, we would all love to hear your thoughts…
… on the effects of globalization and automation in your country….
… and related topics.
Automation And The Future Of Work
There is a strange dichotomy at the moment surrounding the future of work. In public, political movements throughout the western world have seen populist campaigners railing against the threat to jobs from low-wage migrants entering a country, and outsourcing to low-cost regions by multinationals.
The future is automated. Here's how we can prepare for it
A good receptionist should have certain characteristics: helpful, friendly, organized. But do they need to be human? Not anymore.
"Surrogates" - Official Trailer [HQ]
Starring Bruce Willis, Radha Mitchell, Rosamund Pike, James Francis Ginty, Boris Kodjoe and Ving Rhames FBI agents (BRUCE WILLIS and RADHA MITCHELL) investigate the mysterious murder of a college student linked to the man who helped create a high-tech surrogate phenomenon that allows people to purchase unflawed robotic versions of themselves - fit, good looking remotely controlled machines that ultimately assume their life roles - enabling people to experience life vicariously from the comfort and safety of their own homes.
The Dark Side of Globalization: Why Seattle's 1999 Protesters Were Right
In 1999, my friend moved to Seattle, where he was hit with rubber bullets, tear-gassed in the face, and nearly arrested by police. He had joined the famous protests of the WTO Ministerial Conference, widely known as the Seattle Protests. The Occupy Wall Street of their time, they focused on globalization rather than the excesses of finance.
The Globalization of Markets
Many companies have become disillusioned with sales in the international marketplace as old markets become saturated and new ones must be found. How can they customize products for the demands of new markets? Which items will consumers want? With wily international competitors breathing down their necks, many organizations think that the game just isn't worth [...]
How Globalization Affects Developed Countries
The phenomenon of globalization began in a primitive form when humans first settled into different areas of the world; however, it has shown a rather steady and rapid progress in recent times and has become an international dynamic which, due to technological advancements, has increased in speed and scale, so that countries in all five continents have been affected and engaged.
Globalization
The tendency of investment funds and businesses to move beyond domestic and national markets to other markets around the globe, thereby increasing the interconnectedness of different markets. Globalization has had the effect of markedly increasing not only international trade, but also cultural exchange.
Globalization
Global Policy Forum is a policy watchdog that follows the work of the United Nations. We promote accountability and citizen participation in decisions on peace and security, social justice and international law.
What Is Globalization? | Globalization101
Globalization is not new, though. For thousands of years, people-and, later, corporations-have been buying from and selling to each other in lands at great distances, such as through the famed Silk Road across Central Asia that connected China and Europe during the Middle Ages.
Globalization - Wikipedia
Globalization or globalisation (see spelling differences) is the process of international integration arising from the interchange of world views, products, ideas, and other aspects of culture. Advances in transportation (such as the steam locomotive, steamship, jet engine, and container ships) and in telecommunications infrastructure (including the rise of the telegraph and its modern offspring, the Internet and mobile phones) have been major factors in globalization, generating further interdependence of economic and cultural activities.
The Pros And Cons Of Globalization
A story in the Washington Post said "20 years ago globalization was pitched as a strategy that would raise all boats in poor and rich countries alike. In the U.S. and Europe consumers would have their pick of inexpensive items made by people thousands of miles away whose pay was [...]
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