# article: Autonomous Vehicles Take YET Another Big Leap



## _Tron_

[HEADING=2]Nuro Gets California's 1st Autonomous Vehicle Permit, Ouster Going Public[/HEADING]
On Thursday, November 19, 2020, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) approved the ability to both launch robotaxi services & autonomous delivery services and to charge for them. The first company to get a permit to do so is Nuro.


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## Jst1dreamr

I won't take an autonomous taxi or except autonomous delivery because it is all designed to put more people out of work in the name of big business greed.


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## goneubering

_Tron_ said:


> [HEADING=2]Nuro Gets California's 1st Autonomous Vehicle Permit, Ouster Going Public[/HEADING]
> On Thursday, November 19, 2020, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) approved the ability to both launch robotaxi services & autonomous delivery services and to charge for them. The first company to get a permit to do so is Nuro.
> 
> 
> View attachment 547789


Good luck. Which cities are they in?


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## tohunt4me

Jst1dreamr said:


> I won't take an autonomous taxi or except autonomous delivery because it is all designed to put more people out of work in the name of big business greed.


I wont use a self checkout counter !


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## Trafficat

I greatly prefer self-checkout. They still usually employ someone to watch over the self-checkout, just it is one person for several stations.

Autonomous cabs? Well, I just want the market to decide and not the government. My fear is that the government wants to ban people from driving cars and force everyone into autonomous vehicles.



Jst1dreamr said:


> I won't take an autonomous taxi or except autonomous delivery because it is all designed to put more people out of work in the name of big business greed.


I don't ascribe to this. This is the "lets dig trenches with spoons instead of tractors" approach. 1 guy with a tractor replaces 20 guys with shovels. But does that mean 19 people are unemployed for life? No, just they end up with some other job title than "digger". If tractors had never been invented, would employment be higher today? We know we'd have more shovel digger jobs, but we'd probably have less phone sales jobs, less auto mechanics, etc.

I love being a driver, but I'm not a 1 dimensional person. I can adapt to something else if rideshare is replaced with autonomous cabs.

Every time technology takes jobs away from people due to natural market forces (as opposed to forced government intervention like minimum wage increases or government mandated use of technology), what it is really doing is making it so that you can accomplish more things with less labor.

What that really means is, society wide, people have to work less to get more products and services. This means that the standard of living gets higher for the average person.

Maybe one day, a person will be able to create as much purchasing power by cleaning autonomous cabs for 4 hours a day as todays drivers make driving for 8 hours a day.

For people who believe in social welfare safety nets too, this really only becomes feasible with enhanced technology that makes it so society can still function when a substantial percentage of the labor force is just idle mouths to feed.


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## Stevie The magic Unicorn

If robots take over most jobs then socialism will step in. Frankly there may very likely come a day when most jobs are done by machine and the only thing left will be creative and design jobs ect. At that point publicisation of industry would be the only way to make sense of the economy.

IE bringing industry from private ownership to being owned by the government of the people.


There is however an interesting thing that would be fighting against mass mechanization of society.


What's more cost effective, building millions worth of robots and paying millions of people welfare because they can't work for the price of a robot, or employing humans and not paying them welfare?

Fascinating debate but it would really only come into play if it gets to the point where a large segment of the population is chronically unemployed due to a systematic lack of jobs.

The government may find that it's easier to tax to the snot out of robots to encourage human labor rather than paying out welfare to a large segment of the population with no hope of a job.


It's interesting to think about but the simple reality is that i suspect that either new types of jobs will come into existence or more and more of the population will come into the welfare system until we hit critical mass and robots get banned.

Fascinating debate but simply if a ban on robot labor fixes a states welfare budget problem it's a win for the government now isn't it?


But they can't write a law doing that?

Guess again, they can write a law doing anything, and make it legal.


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## tohunt4me

Stevie The magic Unicorn said:


> If robots take over most jobs then socialism will step in. Frankly there may very likely come a day when most jobs are done by machine and the only thing left will be creative and design jobs ect. At that point publicisation of industry would be the only way to make sense of the economy.
> 
> IE bringing industry from private ownership to being owned by the government of the people.
> 
> There is however an interesting thing that would be fighting against mass mechanization of society.
> 
> What's more cost effective, building millions worth of robots and paying millions of people welfare because they can't work for the price of a robot, or employing humans and not paying them welfare?
> 
> Fascinating debate but it would really only come into play if it gets to the point where a large segment of the population is chronically unemployed due to a systematic lack of jobs.
> 
> The government may find that it's easier to tax to the snot out of robots to encourage human labor rather than paying out welfare to a large segment of the population with no hope of a job.
> 
> It's interesting to think about but the simple reality is that i suspect that either new types of jobs will come into existence or more and more of the population will come into the welfare system until we hit critical mass and robots get banned.
> 
> Fascinating debate but simply if a ban on robot labor fixes a states welfare budget problem it's a win for the government now isn't it?
> 
> But they can't write a law doing that?
> 
> Guess again, they can write a law doing anything, and make it legal.


They WANT to Eliminate 90% of the population.


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## _Tron_

Trafficat said:


> I greatly prefer self-checkout.


Well, I hate the self-checkout machines too, but you are making some thoughtful points about automation. Presidential candidate Andrew Yang floated the idea of the Universal Basic Income in his platform, and that brought the notion more into people's consciousness. A UBI is of course is where this line of _allow automation_ logic ultimately goes.

From a philosophical point of view, can a society function with a broadly adopted UBI? Yes. Perhaps. But not as a Utopia. There would still be an income discrepancy or "wage inequality" among the populace. The people who go to work to design, build, and repair the machines would have to earn more than UBI. Otherwise you eliminate the basic force that drives people to achieve; *incentive*. That is what the experiments in socialism have failed to understand.

From a practical point of view, perhaps if GDP were to rise each year, then perhaps the monetary system, or whatever system put in place to allow the exchange of goods and services, could function without going hyperinfaltionary. There still would need to be some sort of system that "rations" goods and services, because they are finite. Again, this where pure socialism fails.


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## Trafficat

I predict in the future, something akin to UBI will come. Either the government will enact it, or it will come about somewhat naturally just from corporations seeing some benefit in paying people for not doing much.

Facebook makes a lot of money even though users do not pay for it.

In the future, social network platforms might actually pay users to be part of them. Individually, each social network user may not cause profit to the network, but in aggregate, the fact that some will and the network won't be able to predict which ones, might cause the networks to try and pay a lot of people to be on their networks. One of them is going to create that meme that gets everybody watching it, or share the link to a meme with someone, and somehow this will cause the robot fixers to spend their lavish funds on the ads shown, or whatnot.

In the future, people who have very low intelligence might not be able to do much beyond participating in such social networks, but it might be enough for them to get by. But smarter people will always be needed for customer service positions, entertainment, and engineering.

The more automation exists, the less unrealistic it is to support people with UBI or UBI-like schemes.


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## Jst1dreamr

tohunt4me said:


> I wont use a self checkout counter !


I don't either. It is all about keeping people working and corporate greed stopped.



Trafficat said:


> What that really means is, society wide, people have to work less to get more products and services. This means that the standard of living gets higher for the average person.


You don't think this statement is delusional?


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## Trafficat

_Tron_ said:


> From a practical point of view, perhaps if GDP were to rise each year, then perhaps the monetary system, or whatever system put in place to allow the exchange of goods and services, could function without going hyperinfaltionary. There still would need to be some sort of system that "rations" goods and services, because they are finite. Again, this where pure socialism fails.


I think for a government issued fiat currency, it tends to be a matter of when, not if, it will face hyperinflation. But I think we are entering a new era where decentralized monetary systems like bitcoin will put an end to the hyperinflation bubbles that have plagued fiat currency dependent societies. The USD might have to face hyperinflation though first before people will switch to trusting cryptocurrency.



Jst1dreamr said:


> You don't think this statement is delusional?


Not at all. People live with much greater luxury today than in the past due to automation. People talk about it being easier in the 1950s to own a house, but imagine if you never bought a lot of modern things that didn't exist back then. Like don't pay for internet service, netflix or TV services, cellular phone services. Just work at a similar type of factory job as might have existed back then, come home and listen to the radio, whatever is on publicly broadcasted television on a screen no larger than a typical 1950s TV, and read books. (Of course, I don't mean buying antique 1950 stuff as that would drive up the price, I mean, avoiding modern luxuries like the latest 4K 70 inch TVs and Netflix... buy the cheapest TV that can get a signal which will still be lightyears ahead of any 1950 TV). You'll probably find yourself with a surplus of money after buying the bare necessities. I think it isn't too hard to live a "1950's lifestyle" on a modern minimum wage budget. People don't want to live that kind of life, though. People today demand a lot more, because we are used to expecting a lot more.


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## Jst1dreamr

Trafficat said:


> I think for a government issued fiat currency, it tends to be a matter of when, not if, it will face hyperinflation. But I think we are entering a new era where decentralized monetary systems like bitcoin will put an end to the hyperinflation bubbles that have plagued fiat currency dependent societies. The USD might have to face hyperinflation though first before people will switch to trusting cryptocurrency.
> 
> Not at all. People live with much greater luxury today than in the past due to automation. People talk about it being easier in the 1950s to own a house, but imagine if you never bought a lot of modern things that didn't exist back then. Like don't pay for internet service, netflix or TV services, cellular phone services. Just work at a similar type of factory job as might have existed back then, come home and listen to the radio, whatever is on publicly broadcasted television on a screen no larger than a typical 1950s TV, and read books. (Of course, I don't mean buying antique 1950 stuff as that would drive up the price, I mean, avoiding modern luxuries like the latest 4K 70 inch TVs and Netflix... buy the cheapest TV that can get a signal which will still be lightyears ahead of any 1950 TV). You'll probably find yourself with a surplus of money after buying the bare necessities. I think it isn't too hard to live a "1950's lifestyle" on a modern minimum wage budget. People don't want to live that kind of life, though. People today demand a lot more, because we are used to expecting a lot more.


You obviously were not alive in the 1950's, 60's 70's 80's or probably not even most of the 90's. People today just want every thing given to them and they think it is their right to get it for free. But free is off of the sweaty backs of working people.


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## _Tron_

So. speaking of autonomous vehicles....

While just watching The Mandalorian I realized something that is very hopeful for Uber drivers. Even in the technically advanced culture of Star Wars, humans mostly pilot the vehicles.


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## Trafficat

I think humans love to pilot vehicles. I expect it will one day be illegal to pilot a vehicle on city streets, but human-driven recreational vehicles like quad bikes will always have a following simply because there is no fun in autonomous vehicles. 

Autonomous vehicles however, will be capable of traveling much faster and safer and will probably eventually become the primary method of commuting. We're not there yet.


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## _Tron_

And I don't think we will be there for a while. It's the transition that is the key. Once it's all autonomous vehicles the system will work great (as long the cars know to stop when a child runs into the street to retrieve their ball. Government likely will outlaw human driven cars.

But until then, as I've said before, as long as humans are driving the cars, autonomous vehicles will be about as welcome on the highway as droids in a Tatooine jazz bar.


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## Trafficat

_Tron_ said:


> And I don't think we will be there for a while. It's the transition that is the key. Once it's all autonomous vehicles the system will work great (as long the cars know to stop when a child runs into the street to retrieve their ball. Government likely will outlaw human driven cars.
> 
> But until then, as I've said before, as long as humans are driving the cars, autonomous vehicles will be about as welcome on the highway as droids in a Tatooine jazz bar.


Eventually, the auto piloted cars will be far superior at stopping when the child runs in the street. The cars will communicate with each other, and sensors on the roadway. When a child runs into the roadway, the cars will have faster than human reaction times and they won't rear end each other when the front car slams the brakes, because the cars in the back will be slowing down at the exact same time the car nearest to the child is braking because it will have received the child in the roadway signal at the same time, or close to the same time via speed of light communication signals, even though its sensors were not in range to see the child itself.

The only real issue with the children entering the roadway that could cause issues is that the cars themselves might be traveling 200 mph instead of 65 mph. So they can react really fast but still they have a limit on braking so as not to harm the human occupants which can only withstand so much acceleration.


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## _Tron_

That's a good reason for getting _all_ passengers the hell out of the car! Then we would have truly safe roads.


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## kingcorey321

Blaaa. Those will NOT work here in my city . There is zero gps or cell reception in some areas here.
Airports .Q wait . Sorry it will not work. Drive into a tunnel zero gps signals . 200 passengers standing around .
I cant see it working . And some people know there taking jobs away cancel !
And in detroit they will get stolen .lmao.
Also people will do brake checks or make it crash into them.
Too sue the company . 
Lets say in 100 years they have these up and running .
Well all the jobs are automated . No jobs ! Well everybody will be out of work .
Soon a law will be passed banning these automated devices .
If you cant find a job you have no choice but to turn to the life of drugs crime .
Automated . Its a dream for some companies . It will never be more .


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## Alemus

_Tron_ said:


> [HEADING=2]Nuro Gets California's 1st Autonomous Vehicle Permit, Ouster Going Public[/HEADING]
> On Thursday, November 19, 2020, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) approved the ability to both launch robotaxi services & autonomous delivery services and to charge for them. The first company to get a permit to do so is Nuro.
> 
> 
> View attachment 547789


Lets see the autonomous vehicle get their passenger to their apt and not the front gate. or get through the security gate. Lets see itdrive on shitty roads with barely there lane markers. Let's see it handle closed roads at a concert event or new construction. Let's see it handle a minor, or a no car seat or a victim of trafficking. Let's see it handle a passenger who falls asleep or passes out. Will it have a puke/garbage sensor?


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## SHalester

Trafficat said:


> I expect it will one day be illegal to pilot a vehicle on city streets,


in 25 years?¿ Until then, only in movies.


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## Trafficat

SHalester said:


> in 25 years?¿ Until then, only in movies.


25 years might be a bit optimistic. We'll see.


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## SHalester

Trafficat said:


> 25 years might be a bit optimistic


I was going to say it won't happen in the next century, but didn't want anybody's head to explode.

Until we have true AI, it ain't happening. Period.


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## JaysUberman

Self driving cars work fine in closed environments. May even work fine if point A to point B is a straight line road in nice weather.

The biggest issue will be scalability. An environment of 25 or 50% percent self driving and 25 or 50% human driven will be inherently unstable. If would be much better if or when the technology all human driven vehicles were removed from the road all together at the same time.

But this cannot happen. The reason driving and road construction and all the rest is tolerated today is because it is largely a democratized process. Almost everybody can afford a $1000 beater and a tank of gas. Not everybody is going to be able to afford a $50000 or higher self driving electric vehicle. If the process of democratic motoring is disrupted then the largely agreed upon socially paid for infrastructure to support motoring becomes threatened. And the cost of the infrastructure to support motoring, the highways, the EV recharging network that needs to be installed, the incredible costs of increased GPS and sensors required for a self driving reality are going to be absolutely astronomical.

So a long twilight of self driving and human vehicles lays ahead. Probably not self driving as the fanatics dream of but at best a while fleet of human minders like conductors on trains today. Maybe that means uber doesn't pay driver an average of $25 (or whatever) an hour but a set minimum wage.


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## JeanOcelot0

tohunt4me said:


> I wont use a self checkout counter !


A self-checkout counter is not really that; it's actually a self-serve counter where the customer has to move the item across the barcode reader. If it worked well, I wouldn't mind doing it, but it never seems to work well for me , so I almost always go to a human-checkout counter. And I can tell that the local Wal-Mart is trying as best as it can to get folks to use these; yesterday there was only the counter for liquor that was manned, even though there were 5 customers in line while the self-checkout counter was empty.


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## Stevie The magic Unicorn

Speaking of self checkout counters,

once i saw someone swipe all their items load them into bags, pull a receipt out of her purse, and walk out of the self checkout area.


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## JeanOcelot0

JaysUberman said:


> The reason driving and road construction and all the rest is tolerated today is because it is largely a democratized process. Almost everybody can afford a $1000 beater and a tank of gas. Not everybody is going to be able to afford a $50000 or higher self driving electric vehicle. If the process of democratic motoring is disrupted then the largely agreed upon socially paid for infrastructure to support motoring becomes threatened. And the cost of the infrastructure to support motoring, the highways, the EV recharging network that needs to be installed, the incredible costs of increased GPS and sensors required for a self driving reality are going to be absolutely astronomical.
> 
> So a long twilight of self driving and human vehicles lays ahead. Probably not self driving as the fanatics dream of but at best a while fleet of human minders like conductors on trains today. Maybe that means uber doesn't pay driver an average of $25 (or whatever) an hour but a set minimum wage.


As someone whose ride has a wholesale value of $413 (I just checked it, LOL), I understand driving a beater. However, there is still insurance, and I pay more in insurance for a year than the wholesale value, and there are repair & regular maintenance costs - I myself and trying to ride out (pun NOT intended) not having to do the 40K maintenance and especially the timing belt job, the cost of which is probably 2X the wholesale value, LOL.

As for the high cost of the driverless car, the key is that the driverless taxi will take care of the "last mile" problem with transit, so that on a regular trip, a taxi could be taken to first get to some central transit location that is only a few miles from the starting point, and from that central transit location there could be a bus/train/van - perhaps even driven by an ant - to go to another central transit location, and from which another taxi could be taken to get to the final destination. The reason that transit is not used as much as it could be is that folks need a car for these "last mile" legs, and once someone has a car, it's not so expensive to simply use it for the transit leg. The driverless taxi drastically changes the incentives since the "last mile" is easy and cheap to do. And throw in that government will be throwing incentives to have this transit so as to save energy/carbon, and I could see the cost of transit be almost free, with regularly scheduled trips. U/L has somewhat made this possible, but since there are times when ants need to get a higher rate to serve the ride, it's not quite there.


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## JaysUberman

Toronto tested the futuristic self-driving shuttle and people were excited


People came out to see Toronto's self-driving, West Rouge Automated Shuttle during a test run recently and the micro shuttle proved popular. A &quo...




www.blogto.com





The self driving conundrum in a nutshell. This is about a less than road speed shuttle service that has two stops in a straight line. The article makes it clear there will ALWAYS be a human minder present.

Despite the optimistic this is NOT the futuristic self driving world people have been saying for years is just around the corner


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## Diamondraider

_Tron_ said:


> Well, I hate the self-checkout machines too, but you are making some thoughtful points about automation. Presidential candidate Andrew Yang floated the idea of the Universal Basic Income in his platform, and that brought the notion more into people's consciousness. A UBI is of course is where this line of _allow automation_ logic ultimately goes.
> 
> From a philosophical point of view, can a society function with a broadly adopted UBI? Yes. Perhaps. But not as a Utopia. There would still be an income discrepancy or "wage inequality" among the populace. The people who go to work to design, build, and repair the machines would have to earn more than UBI. Otherwise you eliminate the basic force that drives people to achieve; *incentive*. That is what the experiments in socialism have failed to understand.
> 
> From a practical point of view, perhaps if GDP were to rise each year, then perhaps the monetary system, or whatever system put in place to allow the exchange of goods and services, could function without going hyperinfaltionary. There still would need to be some sort of system that "rations" goods and services, because they are finite. Again, this where pure socialism fails.


Instead of UBI, eliminate all wage payments. Everything is free and everyone will work together for the good of the community. 

I’m sure we will all thrive and own several homes Brandon and his bro, Bernie.


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## Diamondraider

Stevie The magic Unicorn said:


> Speaking of self checkout counters,
> 
> once i saw someone swipe all their items load them into bags, pull a receipt out of her purse, and walk out of the self checkout area.


I love it!


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## goneubering

JaysUberman said:


> Toronto tested the futuristic self-driving shuttle and people were excited
> 
> 
> People came out to see Toronto's self-driving, West Rouge Automated Shuttle during a test run recently and the micro shuttle proved popular. A &quo...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.blogto.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The self driving conundrum in a nutshell. This is about a less than road speed shuttle service that has two stops in a straight line. The article makes it clear there will ALWAYS be a human minder present.
> 
> Despite the optimistic this is NOT the futuristic self driving world people have been saying for years is just around the corner


Somewhere a lonely Tomato is crying.


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