In the beginning of humanity's struggle to survive, everyone needed to hunt or gather to get food. Humans, though, are smart. We decided somewhere along the line that trying to hunt and gather food was too hard. We made tools to make the process easier. From sticks, to plows, to tractors, as a species, we've gone from nearly everyone needing to make food, to almost no one needing to make food. Yet in today’s modern society, we still have abundance.
This trend isn't only in agriculture, however. Humans have built tools of all kinds to help in our work. Whether that work is on a construction site or in a factory, humans have made the job easier with the advent of new technologies to make things better, faster, and more economical to produce.
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These self-driving cars aren’t the future; they’re here now, and they work. One example of these self-driving cars is Google’s driverless car designs; they’ve driven up and down the California coast for hundreds of thousands of miles, with the only accidents being caused by humans.
Google’s self-driving cars don’t need to be perfect, either; they just need to be better than humans. In the United States alone, humans kill over forty-thousand people every year. Self-driving cars don’t text while driving, get sleepy, get stupid, or forget to check their blind spot. They have a 360-degree camera mounted to the top of the vehicle, which gives them view of their entire surroundings. It’s easy to see how self-driving cars can be better than humans, because they already are.
But self-driving cars don’t only have to transport humans. Of course, there are self-driving cars that can transport humans, but tiny self-driving “autos” can work in Amazon’s warehouses. These tiny robots transport packages from shelves, to packaging, to the delivery truck, which is only then sent to your door. Conversely, giant autos can work in coal mines, transporting raw materials from deep in the ground to the
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Extrapolating worldwide, that comes out to around 70 million people. These jobs are gone. Autos is where most people will first see how automation is changing our society.
Transportation isn’t the only industry being revolutionized, however. White-collar work is in danger, too. If your job is in an office, clicking and typing, your job can be automated with a software bot.
These bots are coded from scratch by an automation engineer. An automation engineer is an adept programmer who codes software bots. These software bots go on to replace white-collar jobs. You may think that the best automation engineer couldn’t write a bot to do your job, and perhaps you’re correct. However, the bleeding-edge of programming isn’t super-intelligent programmers writing bots to do jobs, its super-intelligent programmers writing bots that teach themselves how to do the jobs programmers want them to do.
An example of this type of bot is with the stock market. Today, the stock market is largely not a human venture. It’s primarily just software bots trading stocks with other software bots. All of these bots taught themselves how to trade, humans didn’t show them what to do. Only the goal “make money” was given to them, and the bots figured out how to do
Boston Consulting Group predicts that up to a quarter of jobs will be replaced by either smart software or robots by 2025, and a study from Oxford University suggests that 35% of current jobs are in jeopardy of being eliminated by automation in the next 20 years. It is reasonable to believe that machines/robots are unlikely to replace entire jobs, but are likely to take the place of certain roles and specific tasks in different procedures within an
The term autonomous refers to the capability of acting independently, or having the freedom to do so. A self-driving car is an autonomous car, which has the ability to sense its environment and navigating without any human operations. These types of cars are built to make safe and smart decisions on the road. In the past years, automobile companies have begun to introduce advanced driver assistance systems that are capable of parking, switching lanes, and braking in case of an emergency on their own, without the driver’s assistance. Automated vehicles are capable of maneuvering through street traffic, as well as other natural and man-made obstacles along the way. Therefore, this technology might completely change the methods of transportation.
Major incumbent companies expect that the autonomous driving systems will be ready for the market in five years. This may be optimistic, but by 2050, cars that drive themselves could well be major production units for companies like General Motors. GM first revealed in 2010 that it had been working on self-driving cars[1]. Last year, GM demonstrated that the prototypes can follow the pace of traffic, while allowing the driver to have his hands off the steering wheel.
The idea of a self-driving vehicle became widespread to the public after GM’s Futurama exhibit at the 1939 World’s Fair according to Wired.com (2012), the exhibit GM NavLab 5 was equipped with a portable computer, a windshield-mounted camera, a GPS receiver, and other supplementary equipment. The longest drive without human intervention was almost 70 miles. This was a great accomplishment, and showed that sometime soon these cars could be fit for the roadways across America. A similar trip was done by the University Of Parma’s VISLAB in 2010 drove 16,000 kilometers through nine countries in 100 days. They hit a bit of a roadblock in Russia where the car was involved in an accident, but it was caused by human error.
Machine learning and automation has played a large role in the ever changing labor market with new industries gaining momentum and old industries becoming obsolete. With the increasing amount of research and improvements in automation, feelings of anxiety and disdain towards automation have become normal for workers. Jobs are lost to machines due to the convenience and efficiency that machines offer, however, not all types of jobs are replaced. In a study done by a professor of economics at MIT, David Autor, the impact of automation has actually shown to complement labor by increasing the demand for other jobs that require the use of a computer (Autor). The common anxiety and fear of total job loss is a clear misconception;
The goals behind self-driving cars are to decrease collisions, traffic jams and the use of gas and harmful pollutants. The autonomous automobile is able to maneuver around objects and create swift lines of cars on roadways (How Google’s self-Driving Car Works, 2011). The autonomous vehicle can react faster than humans can, meaning less accidents and the potential to save thousands of lives. Another purpose and vision for these cars is that vehicles would become a shared resource. When someone needed a car, he or she could just use his or her Smartphone and a self-sufficient car would drive up and pick him or her up.
Let’s look at the millions of Starbucks employees worldwide. Coffee bots are already swooping in, and despite the fact that maybe your guy makes your pumpkin spice latte just right, most people don’t care and just want their cup of Joe. Let’s look at grocery stores. While they’re annoying and always ask you to wait for an attendant, those automated checkout machines are still replacing humans. Now, why is this?
Companies like Google, Tesla and Nissan, among others, have announced over the past few years that their companies are trying to develop self-driving or autonomous cars [Ref. 1 and 2]. Self-driving cars can provide many benefits to the average consumer. Studies have shown that because computers can react and process information many times faster than a human being, crashes on streets and roads can be decreased with quick and consistent evasion maneuvers by the autonomous car. They can also help maximize fuel economy by calculating the most direct and fastest routes. When the driving of an autonomous car demonstrates that the computer can safely and reliably transport the passengers to their destination, this frees up the passengers to do other things that they would not normally be able to do if they were driving the car manually. For this reason, self-driving cars can help maximize productivity of their passengers.
Autonomous Cars Hit the Road Recent headlines have been awash with news of unmanned and self-driven vehicles. Even a year ago, the idea of autonomous cars roaming on the streets was deemed to be farfetched. Google’s self-driving’ cars and Tesla’s autopilot system are examples of emerging prevalence of auto-driving. Nevertheless, moving from drawing board to the streets, there is considerable progress towards innovation within the automotive field has created cleaner, safer, and more affordable cars.
Today’s cars can already come with several self driving features. Automated features in cars are becoming quite normal, some of which features include automatic opening trunk with sensoring technology, lane centering, self parking, and blind spot detection. The technology enables a car to be safer because the car can “see” it’s surroundings (Shelley, 2013). These features have been installed in cars for about a decade now and the costs of the features are decreasing every year. Self driving cars are circulating all over the world, Tesla for example has been on the rise in 2017 because they have become more affordable.
Self-driving cars are the wave of the future. There is much debate regarding the impact a self-driving car will have on our society and economy. Some experts believe fully autonomous vehicles will be on the road in the next 5-10 years (Anderson). This means a vehicle will be able to drive on the road without a driver or any passengers. Like any groundbreaking technology, there is a fear of the unforeseen problems. Therefore, there will need to be extensive testing before anyone can feel safe with a vehicle of this style on the road. It will also take time for this type of technology to become financially accessible to the masses, but again alike any technology with time it should be possible. Once the safety concern has been fully addressed
People around the world are constantly moving from place to place. Whether that place is work, a restaurant, or home, people require a means of transportation in order to arrive at a desired destination safely and efficiently. One of the most used means of transportation today are cars. Cars play an important role in the world’s economy by transporting goods and people. Automobiles have come a long way since Ford’s first Model T, and the auto industry plans to further enhance the technology and capabilities of the cars that drive on our roads. New technological advancements like rear-view camera, self parking, and auto braking have greatly improved the overall safety of cars today. However, one of the most talked about ideas are autonomous
The World Fair in New York in 1939 was one of the first times man conceived the notion of self-driving cars. Slowly but surely enhancements added to vehicles since then such as power windows and keyless entry, indicate that we are moving in the right direction to making it a reality. Three-quarters of a century later several different companies are all in the testing the phases of each respective autonomous automobile. Body
Take for example in 1900 over forty one percent of the United States workforce was employed in agriculture. By 2000 that number had fallen to under 2% (Autor). The most heavily affected industries in today's market where we see the highest number of people being replaced by robotic are the textile and automotive industries(McAfee). In the last thirty years we have seen over eight million manufacturing jobs vanish, with the automotive and textile industries hit the hardest(McAfee). These robots replaced jobs that involved repetitive task in a predictable environment such as putting a door on a car.
Technology is evolving faster than ever these days, however there is one technology that could revolutionize the transportation industry. This technology is called autonomous cars, also known as self-driving cars. Autonomous cars can be defined as a vehicle that is capable of sensing its environment, and navigating without human input. Using different techniques such as GPS and radar, autonomous cars can detect surroundings, thus removing the human element in driving. This would have a positive effect in more ways than we could ever imagine. Research suggests that self-driving cars will become more abundant in the future because they will be more cost-effective, enhance safety, and decrease traffic congestion.