BlazingSaddles

So here’s the question. We get semi trucks driving across country without a driver, ships moving across the seas without people at the controls and airplanes flying around the world without pilots. Many basic min wage jobs are going bye bye due to automation, factory worker jobs are going away due to automation

1: what happens when/if the gps satellites go down due to failure, hacking/jamming or some typw of solar flare or magnetic pole reversal

2: what exactly do all these people who now have no job/career do for work/money.

At some point all the automation becomes its own death unless a basic income law goes into effect because people can’t afford it because there are no jobs.

FTFFv2

Because tech is evolving rapidly, everything else will evolve rapidly? Your basic argument here fails many logic tests without even getting into the aviation specific example.

The biggest thing you forgot / overlooked / didn’t know about is that nothing moves fast in aviation. ATC is still working on next gen tech which is 20 years behind our iPhone’s tech (Getting a text message uplink is still a big deal in 121). UAV integration will be require a long, drawn out process for implementation not only for ATC reasons but for legal and international ones too. The system isn’t even focusing on anything like that at the moment. Just because the tech is available doesn’t mean the industry is ready, willing, or able.

Aircraft orders (Boeing and Airbus) go into the mid 2020’s. Planes that will be sold in the late 20’s-30’s are on the drawing board right now. I’d imagine manufacturers are starting to consider design features that will make a conversion to the single pilot mod affordable for these future aircraft but it doesn’t seem there is much info suggesting this is the actual case. Nevertheless, youre looking at the 40’s before anything gets tried out for demonstration and into the 50’s until a dedicated single pilot airline size plane makes to the market. Then you start fleet replacement which will carry on into the 60’s and 70’s. Remember, these are 50-100m toys, you can’t just rapidly swap everything out because a single operating cost factor can be reduced.

Autopilot vs manned example: another failed logic argument on your part. Remind us all of the crash rate of drones vs manned aircraft. And you never answered the question, when the AP does fail what is the backup strategy. Your first answer as a drone flyer should have been fail safe protocols used on backup control systems. But when a cargo fire takes most of that out....1 heavy crash into a neighborhood is more expensive than keeping a human onboard.

Agree single pilot is on the horizon, just a little longer than 25 years out imo.

fenix1

Great discussion and thanks to all, particularly esa17 for weighing-in with what's shaped up so far as a minority opinion/conclusion but one based on first-hand experience with unmanned aviation.

whalesurfer

They’ll gladly sign you up.
Except you’ll be doing it all from a couch in your trailer, somewhere in eastern Kentucky. Well, at least for a few years. That’s when they’ll move you to Shenzhen or Almaty..

whalesurfer

“Basic income law”?

Too funny.
Bernie, you act like this is the first time in humankind’s history people have invented and improved things?

BlazingSaddles

Not at all but basically outsourcing of a different form. Believe me I’d rather not see that but if you take this whole automation/driverless machines to the extreme end of it where taxi drivers are not needed sailors are not needed, train engineers are not needed, pilots, cashiers assembly workers and so on at some point you’d have to look around and say well what jobs/industries are there left. I don’t think it’s anywhere remotely close to that nor will it be in my lifetime but if people want to go down the path of “the machines are taking our jobs” then at some point “you’d” have to have the conversation of well what jobs are left that can’t be automated.

aiir

This is a whole different conversation but I suspect that we will become a very hyper-consumer focused society, preoccupied with the superficial, more so than we are today. Virtual reality and simulation world building will evolve to a point where people are going to be able to escape to other worlds of sorts. Social media and the like will continue to expand...basically, most people are going to be useless and if there is no basic income, which I think there will be, most people will make their money hustling like they always have. It's just that the hustle will be different, and will most likely pertain to needs in industries that will evolve out of new things, most will probably very superficial.

On the other end of the spectrum, there will be people with actual jobs and professions, continuing to move the world forward, but as a result of automation, these people will be fewer and highly selected, by their own efforts or the economics of the time. They will do so for the love of whatever they are pursuing since the option to vegetate will always be there.

This can go on indefinitely, or until some meteor hits the earth again and we go back to square one.

Machines, automation, and AI really are game changers with consequences that we have never seen, nor can quite predict. Human populations around the world would also begin to drastically dwindle because up to now the major push for offsprings has been to assist with manual labor, and in some westerns countries, we are already seeing that reverse, with people having fewer children.

I believe that people need a purpose and something to do, I also believe that most people are not intelligent enough to find a purpose. Basic income will only go so far with these people before they become bored and dangerous to society and to themselves. They'll need an escape, drugs or some sort of virtual world where they'll be able to find some purpose... anyway, I'm just throwing darts at a wall, I suppose no one really knows what the future holds.

BlazingSaddles

It is a different discussion but by the time aircraft ever go completely pilotless automobiles and trains would probably have been there already and possibly ships as well. Once/if that happens you’d also have to look at what job opportunities replace those positions and at what income range because then it also becomes a tax revenue issue for the governments and what effect it would have on the economy. It’s all hypothetical what if’s at the moment and I don’t foresee any issues for anyone 30 and above worrying about their careers due to pilotless aircraft but if AI and machines that could replace human ever does become a reality there’s a lot of jobs that could be replaced by it.

Bigapplepilot

With technology increasing at an ever increasing rate, I would say most if not all jobs are subject to change/obsolescence. What can the human brain learn and store that can’t fall to Algorithms and artificial intelligence? In 2030? 2040? 2050? Having a career is a very recent blip on the human experience. Even physicians, financial analysts, accountants, etc etc. Even those that can’t traditionally be automated, may not be necessary with the amount of data and instance collaboration the internet and future technologies provides. Heck, even WIRED magazine has a cover ‘The End of Code.’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

tomgoodman

Frank Herbert (Dune) foresaw one possible outcome: a human vs. machine war he called the Butlerian Jihad.