10+ years ago, I expected that self-driving trucks would be common on US highways by 2025, and self-driving would be having a large effect on the employment of long-haul truckers.
I expected that long-distance trucking would have overtaken passenger cars as the “face” of self-driving vehicles; the thing that people argue about when they argue whether self-driving vehicles are safe enough, good or bad for society, etc. This has not happened. When people argue about self-driving vehicles, they argue about whether they want Waymo cars in their city.
I expected that the trucking industry would shed a lot of workers, replacing them with self-driving trucks that don’t need sleep, breaks, or drug testing. I expected that this would be an vivid early example of mass job loss to AI; and in turn that this would motivate more political interest in UBI. This, too, has not happened.
(I certainly did not expect that the trucking industry in 2025 would be much more disrupted by anti-immigrant politics than by self-driving technology.)
(I certainly did not expect that the trucking industry in 2025 would be much more disrupted by anti-immigrant politics than by self-driving technology.
I think these may be two separate effects of a shared cause. The demographics of the trucking industry shifted rapidly in the past few years towards immigrants, which provided downward pressure on wages (due to a sharp increase in supply). This, in turn, meant that automation became a much less pressing concern for trucking companies, especially considering that negotiating the regulatory landscape concerning self-driving vehicles is notoriously difficult.
They’re operating on public roads within Texas; e.g. according to this press release.
Company surpasses 100,000 driverless miles on public roads and validates second commercial lane for driverless operations, widening its lead in autonomous trucking
lilkim isn’t speculating about the cause of anti-immigrant politics; he’s saying that there’s less desire to automate truck, driving, because truck-driver wages have decreased in recent years (because lots of people have recently decided to go into truck driving, apparently).
Sure, but it’s not the politics that are making long-haul trucking use less self-driving than taxis. It’s that the technical work is somewhat harder and the customer cares less about employee quality. It’s a temporary phase anyway.
It’s also surprising to me! 10 years ago I was convinced by the case made by a (now out of business) self driving truck company that long-haul trucking is a technically easier problem than city driving. That doesn’t seem to have mattered, and I don’t know why.
I think this issue of “9s” of reliability should update people towards longer timelines. Tesla FSD has basically been able to do everything individually that we would call self-driving for the last ~4 years, but it isn’t 99.99...% reliable. I think LLMs replacing work will, by default, follow the same pattern.
It seems you, at least in 2015, had far more faith than I did and do in Congress’s and other government’s abilities to update laws to enable new technologies in a timely fashion. If someone had had a roughly complete autonomous truck prototype in 2015, it would have taken 3-5 years to start manufacturing, and 3-10 years more to really scale up and get into customer’s plans and procurement processes. It would also be essentially illegal to deploy almost anywhere, and every elected official would know that millions of truckers would hate them if they made any moves to improve the situation. The other side of that equation has a much harder time coordinating around the benefits of automation.
Interestingly, I would have made a prediction analogous to your own, but for trains. I also would have been wrong.
If I am reading Wikipedia right, Since the late 1980′s the Dockland Light Railway has been running completely automated driverless trains. For some reason, basically every other train in the UK (and presumably in most places) has a driver.
I predicted a while ago (probably a over 10 years ago) that this was an unstable situation that would soon change. Trains are cheaper to automate than cars. Train drivers are more expensive to hire than car drivers. I was wrong, I am still not really sure why so many trains still have drivers.
10+ years ago, I expected that self-driving trucks would be common on US highways by 2025, and self-driving would be having a large effect on the employment of long-haul truckers.
In reality, self-driving trucks are still in testing on a limited set of highways and driving conditions. The industry still wants to hire more human long-haul truckers, and is officially expected to keep doing so for some time.
I expected that long-distance trucking would have overtaken passenger cars as the “face” of self-driving vehicles; the thing that people argue about when they argue whether self-driving vehicles are safe enough, good or bad for society, etc. This has not happened. When people argue about self-driving vehicles, they argue about whether they want Waymo cars in their city.
I expected that the trucking industry would shed a lot of workers, replacing them with self-driving trucks that don’t need sleep, breaks, or drug testing. I expected that this would be an vivid early example of mass job loss to AI; and in turn that this would motivate more political interest in UBI. This, too, has not happened.
(I certainly did not expect that the trucking industry in 2025 would be much more disrupted by anti-immigrant politics than by self-driving technology.)
I think these may be two separate effects of a shared cause. The demographics of the trucking industry shifted rapidly in the past few years towards immigrants, which provided downward pressure on wages (due to a sharp increase in supply). This, in turn, meant that automation became a much less pressing concern for trucking companies, especially considering that negotiating the regulatory landscape concerning self-driving vehicles is notoriously difficult.
Populism is too strong for job categories to be wiped out in the U.S. without consumer adoption first. I’d check how it’s going in other countries.
To be clear, self-driving trucks are right now being tested in Texas by these folks. They claim to have paying customers already.
But that’s a long way from taking all the trucker jobs away.
These are private roads right?
They’re operating on public roads within Texas; e.g. according to this press release.
Nah, anti-immigrant politics isn’t about wage economics any more than anti-AI politics is about datacenters using up water.
lilkim isn’t speculating about the cause of anti-immigrant politics; he’s saying that there’s less desire to automate truck, driving, because truck-driver wages have decreased in recent years (because lots of people have recently decided to go into truck driving, apparently).
Sure, but it’s not the politics that are making long-haul trucking use less self-driving than taxis. It’s that the technical work is somewhat harder and the customer cares less about employee quality. It’s a temporary phase anyway.
It’s also surprising to me! 10 years ago I was convinced by the case made by a (now out of business) self driving truck company that long-haul trucking is a technically easier problem than city driving. That doesn’t seem to have mattered, and I don’t know why.
I think this issue of “9s” of reliability should update people towards longer timelines. Tesla FSD has basically been able to do everything individually that we would call self-driving for the last ~4 years, but it isn’t 99.99...% reliable. I think LLMs replacing work will, by default, follow the same pattern.
The difficulty is mostly about long braking distances requiring impractically large sensing ranges, self-driving cars will certainly be adopted earlier that highway trucks: https://kevinchen.co/blog/autonomous-trucking-harder-than-rideshare
It seems you, at least in 2015, had far more faith than I did and do in Congress’s and other government’s abilities to update laws to enable new technologies in a timely fashion. If someone had had a roughly complete autonomous truck prototype in 2015, it would have taken 3-5 years to start manufacturing, and 3-10 years more to really scale up and get into customer’s plans and procurement processes. It would also be essentially illegal to deploy almost anywhere, and every elected official would know that millions of truckers would hate them if they made any moves to improve the situation. The other side of that equation has a much harder time coordinating around the benefits of automation.
Interestingly, I would have made a prediction analogous to your own, but for trains. I also would have been wrong.
If I am reading Wikipedia right, Since the late 1980′s the Dockland Light Railway has been running completely automated driverless trains. For some reason, basically every other train in the UK (and presumably in most places) has a driver.
I predicted a while ago (probably a over 10 years ago) that this was an unstable situation that would soon change. Trains are cheaper to automate than cars. Train drivers are more expensive to hire than car drivers. I was wrong, I am still not really sure why so many trains still have drivers.