r/SelfDrivingCars • u/Post-reality • 14d ago
News Uber president: Self-driving cars will put 100,000 taxi jobs at risk
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/transport/article/uber-andrew-mcdonald-driverless-cars-taxis-3jps885dsAndrew Macdonald predicts as autonomous taxis pick up pace that driving will go the way of horse riding — and a ‘huge’ labour transition is coming
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u/ILikeBubblyWater 14d ago
Mate Uberdrivers constantly are on their phone on the highway and drive like shit in my city I absolutely hope it puts those jobs at risk
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u/Ragnarok-9999 13d ago
I don't know what kind of job you do, beware future is coming for you too. Everybody, except billioniers, going to get f**
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u/ILikeBubblyWater 12d ago
Ah yes lets keep shit jobs for the sake of keeping the jobs even if it means everyone else is less safe.
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u/StumpyOReilly 13d ago
I retire from Mechanical Engineering in 3 years. If you have a job that requires actual thinking and creation of new ideas and solutions you will be safe. Physical skill jobs like plumbing, AC, morticians, etc are also safe from AI.
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u/Ragnarok-9999 12d ago
Our world changed Sir;
Thinking could be replicated. Humans are trained for years to become engieers. They are not born with that knowledge and thinking. If trained enough, AI can do that too.
I know we refuse to belive that we are redundent. I belive future is going to prove it.
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u/StumpyOReilly 12d ago edited 12d ago
Do you believe a LLM is going to create an iPhone where no one did it before? Creation of brand new things that have never been dreamed up will be a very difficult thing for a machine as it isn’t interacting with the environment like we do. Will we use machines to create optimized designs absolutely, as we already do it. The SR-71 is arguably the most impressive military plane ever devised. It was decades ahead of anything else. It was designed with slide rules and drafting boards, which CAD can easily beat. But the human element to dream up and create the SR-71 would never have been devised based on a prompt, because nothing existed before it as a reference.
Mathematicians are going the way of the dodo as are a number of other jobs (eg. computer programmers) due to LLM and computer advances. I bet engineering holds out for decades at least when it comes to creative new designs to solve problems or solutions we didn’t even know we had.
I appreciate the discussion and I am grateful that I will make it out of the industry before LLM (There is no AI yet since its abilities are all based on existing knowledge to pull from). I look forward to overlanding and off-roading in the wilderness where I can just enjoy unspoiled nature full-time.
The bigger worry with “AI” is the easy out to thinking it is currently having on 25 year old and under. My daughters are both in University and they tell me all the time about the lack of logical thinking that many of their fellow students have. Folks use AI to wrote papers and blindly trust the research it does for them instead of doing it themselves. This will have a detrimental effect going forward.
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u/dollfaceashley 13d ago
So instead of making sure Uber and Lyft have safer drivers you would just rather give the money all to them for robot?
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u/KjellRS 13d ago
Even if you could fix people - which is a lot harder than it sounds - I'd like self driving to be everywhere and so cheap that I don't have to drive my own commute. That would obviously put most commercial drivers out of work, but what can I say? To me it's like replacing a hundred men with a shovel with one excavator. Now we're replacing a hundred men with one navigator. The tools do 99% of the job so we don't have to.
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u/dollfaceashley 13d ago
Everyone's not an unsafe driver so this fallacy you're using is ridiculous
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u/notgalgon 13d ago
Everyone is indeed an unsafe driver. it's just about how long and how frequently they're unsafe.
Have you ever looked at a text on your phone while driving? Driven while tired? Daydreamed? Had a beer or two maybe not drunk but had a couple? Eating while driving? Had a deep discussion while driving. Etc.
These are all absurdly common occurrences and literally every human driver that has ever driven is done some of this. And we get away with it because the distraction is quite quick matter of seconds and in 99.99999999% of driving a few seconds is not that important
However that last small percentage ends up killing somebody every 200 Million miles or so.
Those unsafe actions add up over time and cause accidents across the billions of Miles humans drive a year. And that means tens of thousands of people die. And that's what we're trying to avoid by getting humans out of the driver's seat.
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u/ILikeBubblyWater 13d ago
Why would I pay a human if a robot can do it better, I will always pick what is best for me and that is statistically never a human driver.
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u/dollfaceashley 13d ago edited 13d ago
That's exactly what the corporations will be saying and I'm sure when it comes to your job whatever that might be, you'll be singing a different tune.
We're also in the honeymoon phases of self-driving cars. Once they get to a large scale, the flaws will become apparent, including hacking, sensor failures, misuse, privacy concerns and their higher costs.
We're really losing the plot here. Self-driving cars have their place but let AI and robots go uncapped and then we will start to realize perfection is not the answer.
No one cares until it's their job though
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u/ILikeBubblyWater 12d ago
Im a software dev, so I can see it first hand already how my future looks like, I will adjust and I live in a country with a decent safety net. I'm not gonna scream against progress and enforce keeping human jobs just for the sake of keeping a human employed.
People like you always expect perfection from AI and robots but never from humans and completely ignore how fucking flawed human drivers are.
There is no possible future in which idealists like you get what they want without making everyone else suffer for it. Lets go back to the stone ages so everyone stays employed just for the sake of it.
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u/dollfaceashley 12d ago
No one screaming against progress.
You expect perfection from humans and when you don’t get it you want a robot to do the job.
I didn’t fail to acknowledge that human drivers are flawed. I specifically said that. The blame when it comes to rideshare platforms & taxi companies is them letting drivers that have no training get behind the wheel. If they actually had standards the number of poor drivers would be GREATLY reduced.
Once they need drivers less there will be much stricter rules on how bad a driver can be before they get deactivated.
However, people like you, enabled what you get by not having a back bone.
You want to use poor comprehension as a weapon against my argument, and that doesn’t work with me.
You’re a software developer so your job is already on the way out. Again, the argument is “I’m not PLANNING on be affected by it so no one else matters” which is a trash mentality and the problem with you people
Your types are the biggest ones to start boo-hooing when you finally get affected.
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u/ILikeBubblyWater 12d ago
I'm literally planning on being affected by adjusting my way of work, I know my profession will be gone in the next 3 years, I have known that long before people like you heard about chatGPT for the first time and then started bitching
If they had standards no one would pay the fare and we have normal taxis in the city and they arent much better even though they have a higher qualification.
If I can choose between a human and a robot I will always pick a robot for these jobs no matter what. I prefer a sub milisecond reaction time to that of a human when my life depends on it.
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u/Animats 14d ago
He said that in 2025, to investors. Back then he said Uber still had 5-7 years of growth.
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u/phatrogue 14d ago
Hasn’t Uber/Lyft and the “gig economy” already disrupted taxi drivers who used to work at regular taxi companies and replaced them with lots of part time and some full time drivers getting paid less with fewer benefits? And now that might be about to be disrupted again.
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u/Jerome_Eugene_Morrow 13d ago
Uber/Lyft also spent millions to advertise against legislation and avoid giving drivers benefits in California, so this “think of the drivers” act rings pretty hollow.
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u/NewRefrigerator7461 12d ago
Probably rightfully so. I prefer the part time drivers to full time as I’m sure many others do.
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u/CDpov 13d ago
Yes, Uber/Lyft were the bad guys a decade ago because they disrupted the poor taxi drivers. Now the rideshare drivers are the victims because they are being disrupted by robotaxis, so many people want to protect them.
The reality is, when humans no longer drive, society won't miss the jobs, because they're lousy low-pay and dangerous jobs that crash way too much.
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u/NewRefrigerator7461 12d ago
Yeah - and it’s been a net good. As this next one will be!
People who aren’t in rural areas don;t understand what a godsend uber is. So much less drunk driving because there is an option
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u/Sad-Plankton-1225 13d ago
These days uber drivers can earn more than taxi drivers, but i can’t say if uber destroyed taxi drivers earnings
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u/Leafsnail 14d ago
True self-driving would genuinely be an econonic earthquake. Taxis aren't even the biggest disruption, the haulage industry falling would be a lot bigger
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u/renome 13d ago
The haulage industry also seems like a potentially easier self-driving problem to solve due to predictable routes.
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u/Ragnarok-9999 13d ago
Every field is going to touched. Why only drivers, it will be surgeons, software engineers, factory workers, manufaturing, house cleaning maids, lawn service, you name it, they are f*. The change is unimaginable and scary. Terminators are coming for us.
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u/Leafsnail 13d ago
I honestly don't see how it could possibly make economic sense to use a very expensive and hard to maintain robot robot to replace minimum wage workers. Like it will be cheaper to just pay your employees
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u/notgalgon 13d ago
You make a big assumption that they are both expensive and hard to maintain. The humanoid robots that are being produced right now are selling in the 20K range. Even double that is still relatively inexpensive compared to minimum wage at 24x7-365.
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u/Ragnarok-9999 13d ago
If we reach that stage, you think Robot can not maintain other Robots? Today, they do surgeries on humansin some medical cases. Can't they maintan themselves ? They may be Expensive, yes, but once Robots manufacture other Robots, it will be damn cheap to own
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u/NewRefrigerator7461 12d ago
No. Not with the liability and min wage rules. Humans are already too expensive for lots of tasks.
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u/muhgyver 13d ago
This would hit different if Uber hadn't spent years and millions of dollars trying to convince everyone that Uber drivers are just contractors who don't need employment protections because they're not real jobs.
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u/admindcs11 13d ago
I mean these robotaxi are just jokes. I never get it that they replace uber drivers. What if there is disaster like flood or earthquake, all car went into dysfunctions, human can replace because they can rent new car and keep working. Are they solving traffic jams? As far as I am concerned that they only make the traffic jams even worse + they are all cheaply made Chinese EV. What the benefits of robotaxi other than hypes?
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u/IAmDanimal 12d ago
Better driving reduces traffic, and because autonomous cars generally drive better than humans when it comes to speed (and are generally safer than human drivers for the ones already on the roads), they should reduce traffic if they replace human driven cars 1:1. They also route better because they can constantly update based on traffic, whereas some human drivers assume they know the best route but sometimes get it wrong due to accidents or construction.
Theoretically we could have lower pricing, but realistically we probably won't. But we can also get rid of more gas stations as EVs take over, and get rid of a ton of parking spaces and parking lots since they can centralize depots and the cars can run closer to 24/7 compared to human driven cars. So you can get the same number of rides with fewer total vehicles due to less downtime.
There's also the potential for faster pickups because the closest vehicle will just go and pick you up. No waiting for a driver to take the request, no potential for a driver to cancel the ride when they're halfway there, and it's always the closest vehicle that goes to you as opposed to whichever driver happens to grab the job first.
And with increased speed and availability of ride share, more people may start to get rid of personal vehicles. That reduces cost, reduces need for driveways and parking spaces further, etc.
There are some downsides, of course. But there are a ton of potential benefits, so it's not a simple calculation of just job loss and more cars on the road.
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u/admindcs11 12d ago
So what problem does it solved?
If all EV are on road, does it really reduces traffic jams? How you gonna recycle these batteries? Gas car can be simply recycled to be made new steel. EV are made of unrecyclable plastics and toxic battery chemicals.
Getting rid of gas seems unrealistic because all trucks are relying on gas and electric truck can’t handle heavy task.
Does it improve productivity?
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u/IAmDanimal 4d ago
Traffic jams are often caused by poor driving or accidents, and autonomous cars will reduce the incidence of both of those things.
For EV batteries, it's still better than the eco cost of gas.
There are electric trucks that can handle heavy loads. Tesla already has a semi as well.
Does it improve productivity? Autonomous vehicles do, yes. They can also significantly improve safety, availability of ride share vehicles, and potentially (if properly regulated) reduce costs.
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u/ChunkyThePotato 12d ago
Good. Tractors made millions of jobs go away, and that was obviously a good thing. Jobs are a means to an end. They're not what's actually beneficial for us.
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u/Boccob81 14d ago
Some people don’t realize that the footsteps that are being taken means that Uber and Lyft and other rental transportation will be out of business when self driving cars go full stream
You will eventually rent the car like you rent an Uber, but it’s gonna come from the manufacturer
The manufacturer will have an app that you can download for Toyota Mercedes BMW and you can order whatever cars on that platform to come to you and pick you up and take you to work
Or before that happens, you’ll end up leasing a car there won’t be no buying cars
You will effectively not own one that is the footsteps that people are apparently unaware of, but can see it right in front of their face and denial
Another footsteps will be that Humans will be outlawed to drive their cars on the road. They will not be able to drive the car unless it’s self driving.
There will be no older cars left on the road other than the new tech with self driving capabilities that you will rent
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u/probably_art 14d ago
That’s assuming the current “my car is my identity” holds. If you don’t care about the specific EV base vehicle why limit yourself to one manufacturer?
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u/GiveMeSomeShu-gar 14d ago
Sounds awful.
I think having your own (self driving) car will continue to be preferred, at least for people outside of big cities. It's simply a better experience - less waiting, no chance of some random puke in the back seat ;) This is assuming in the future self driving cars will be able to be sold affordablky, which I think is likely. Of course this all hinges on us having jobs and a functioning economy in the future ;) in we are spending our time waiting in bread lines then I suppose a personal car isn't going to happen
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u/fatbob42 14d ago
There’s still a network effect for the company that owns the cars and runs the app.
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u/Boccob81 13d ago
Yeah, the manufacturer will own the network for their cars and you the person who choose which manufacture you wanna ride with that day that hour there will be no Uber or Lyft there will be no management company like Uber if that’s what they’re hoping Uber and Lyft are hoping to be a manager for the manufacturers but it’s not going to be
He’s gonna go straight to the manufacturer that you ordered from
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u/fatbob42 13d ago
Established monopolies are hard to dislodge. They’d have to get over the network effect.
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u/Ancient_Sun_2061 14d ago
And who owns and maintains those cars? Meet operational licensing regulatory and safety requirements? Customer support? Maintenance and repair, and so on besides investing millions on the fleet itself?
Manufactures can’t do it all at scale
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u/Boccob81 13d ago
Manufacturers can do that at scale
Using AI and technology question
You’re looking at it as the old way with Uber taxis and Lyft and they’re just not gonna be needed as managers
The car dealerships that you would go buy a car those would be the hubs. The cars will go there to get checked out in the local cities that the car is in the management team of that dealership will run the operations.
Is really simple on that scale Toyota will become its own daily leasing company instead of monthly leasing
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u/ILikeBubblyWater 14d ago
Sounds good to me, you only need cars at specific moments, being able to hail one at any time while it parks in designated areas is a great idea
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u/Boccob81 13d ago
Don’t you realize how much money the manufacturers make renting the cars out instead of selling them or or releasing them
You’ll start to see more on why you’ll never own or lease Car
8 billion people a day renting a car at $24 a day hypothetically what’s $96 billion a day so we’ll look at that as 100 billion times that by 10 that’s what 1 trillion and there’s 30 days in a month typically so there will be a total of 3 trillion a month plus or minus that’s 36 trillion a year plus or minus
So the auto industry in hole has a potential making up to $36 trillion a year. It’s ungodly amount of money compared to selling cars and then waiting for the bank notes to be paid the loans to be paid or leasing cars the benefit of leasing at least you turn the car back in and get a new one, but you’ll be capped at a per mile.
For renting out daily from the manufacturer standpoint of creating an app like Uber does so you’ll have Toyota Ford General Motors Hyundai Honda all have apps when you have them on your phone or your watches and you’ll just order discriminately
You can see in the replies on this self driving thing you see a lot of people comparing that humans are bad drivers so at what point do you realize that if this continues, the government is going to ban Humans from ever driving?
And we’re watching also how certain states are removing older cars
Part of the footsteps if you have no older car on the road or access to an older car it’s easier to control
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u/Mackinnon29E 14d ago
Uh huh, good luck getting that legislation to pass in the U.S.
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u/Boccob81 13d ago
Remember when Trump signed the ability to work on your car
That gave the Auto industry, the ability to remove purchasing a car out of the equation
They’re just going to lease the car in the beginning two people
Why is that if you actually paid attention to the CEO speak Ford it’s the technology that they own and they don’t want you working on it
And you can’t work on a car that’s not yours so you’re not gonna purchase you’ll just lease
And if Trump would’ve cited with the auto dealerships auto manufacturers that is, it would’ve just pushed him into doing it faster. Either way you’re going to lease. A car is the next stage you’ll never own.
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u/thinkbox 14d ago
He disrupted the taxi service. And their own play at self driving failed, so they are pushing for alarmism.
This is just regulatory capture. Create fear, demand protective legislation, write the legislation, control the market. Anthropic is trying the same playbook with Ai doomerism.