SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the maybe-they-can-be-tech-support-for-the-cars dept.
India is resisting the push towards driverless cars in order to protect jobs, its transport minister has said.
Nitin Gadkari said the government would "not allow any technology that takes away jobs".
He said India needed to recruit about 22,000 more commercial drivers and would be opening 100 training facilities to address the need.
India's road system and sometimes chaotic traffic makes it a difficult place to develop the technology.
The Hindustan Times reports Mr Gadkari as saying: "We won't allow driverless cars in India. I am very clear on this.
"In a country where you have unemployment, you can't have a technology that ends up taking people's jobs."
Wonder what Mr. Gadkari's position is on the technology that has outsourced jobs in America and Europe to India?
(Score: 5, Funny) by Justin Case on Wednesday July 26 2017, @02:58AM (8 children)
Protecting jobs is just the cover story. India knows a lot about the quality of most software development.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @03:39AM (4 children)
Meh, lame arrogance. Are you just mad that India has politicians who actually will look after their own nation's best interests?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @04:17AM
Yes.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Wednesday July 26 2017, @06:36AM (2 children)
But is it in the nation's best interest? Imagine what would have happened if, back when the car was invented, the government had decided to protect all the jobs in the horse-powered transportation industry.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @06:48AM (1 child)
Some things transition more readily, but self driving cars will eliminate a lit of jobs very rapidly. There are real economic consequences that might need to be addressed. The car was a better horse and crested a large industrial sector. Self driving cars eliminate a lot of jobs without creating all that many new ones.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @01:44PM
Why do people need to work jobs? They need money.
Why doesn't the Indian government simply pay people to dig holes in the morning and fill them up in the afternoon? That's certainly “hard work” and physically exhausting too. However, everybody can plainly see that it's a pointless activity. It's obviously make-work.
Automated cars are labor-saving devices. They perform the same task that we all need, transportation, with less human labor. Another way to say that is that we will get the thing we need, transportation, but we will lose something we don't need: the other guy's job. I have no intrinsic, selfish need for the other guy to have a job. I merely need transportation.
However, given a more enlightened view of self-interest, I may continue to be my naturally selfish self and conclude that it is in my self-interest for the other guy to continue going to Macy's and JC Penny and McDonalds and TGI Fridays. Those are place that I, being a consumer whore (with questionable tastes), would like to stay in business and continue to provide me the things they provide me: clothing with on-site changing rooms so I can instantly know whether that skirt is going to look good with that top and work with the shape of my body to look good. I want that. I want somewhere to go with friends to sit down for a very informal dinner, maybe before seeing a movie. If the other guy can't be a customer of those places, they'll go out of business, and I certainly can't keep those places in business based on showing up once a month or so to enjoy their goods and services!
Long story short: UBI.
Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe it needs to be phased in. Maybe next year we'll enact the “gimme free shit” law and everybody will get a check for some small amount relative to the cost of living for India or the USA once per month or once every two weeks. In the USA, perhaps it would be $10 or $25. Not much at all. Maybe even in 10 or 20 years society doesn't have the excess production to completely support the jobless masses, but we do have excess production right now, today! We need to get that excess production into the hands of the masses in a way that the traditional instrument of capitalism, investment accounts, simply cannot effectively do. Maybe in theory they can, but in theory, practice and theory are the same thing. In practice, practice is totally different from theory, and we can see hypercapitalism in practice, and the masses are hurting and exploited by it.
(You didn't get DJT because of political correctness. You didn't get DJT because of transsexuals or feminists. You didn't get DJT because of black lesbians. You got DJT because the masses know they are hurting and being exploited, and there was no credible alternative. The only thing the other team brought to the table was more of the same, more hypercapitalism, more of this system that only works in theory but does not work in practice.)
My hope is that humans will, in the post-scarcity Star Trek utopian future, want to do product things for no other reason than to do them. People will still innovate because there is something there to be innovated, like climbing a mountain. Why climb the mountain? Because it's there. No other reason.
The social sciences (including especially economics, perhaps the worst, most unscientific of the social “sciences”) provide very little credible guidance for whether the economy can continue to grow, first by replacing human workers with robot workers, and then by exponentially increasing the capability of the robot workers beyond what any amount of human workers could hope to achieve.
Better and better. That's a rule. Stick to it.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @04:53AM
Also, have you seen Indian traffic? It would indeed be the final triumph of any AI.
(Score: 2) by jcross on Wednesday July 26 2017, @12:20PM
I think you're right that it's just a cover story, but for a different reason. Indian politicians get to collect some populist points while outlawing something that's a long way from making economic sense anyway. Because first of all, drivers are really cheap there. If you're in the class that can afford to travel by car at all, you can probably afford a driver. Hell, even if you aren't, you might be able to afford to pay someone to pedal you where you're going, and it's often actually faster for short distances in a city. Add to that the fact that Indian traffic is complex on every level, from bizarre street patterns to constant road work to almost total lack of signals and lane markers to a bewildering mix of vehicles and animals in free-for-all mode. When that can be negotiated by software I'll be impressed. So who's going to pay extra for self-driving car development in such an environment? The only real demand category I can think of is unmarried couples wanting a semiprivate place to make out, but I think social Westernization has created that "problem" and will also "solve" it eventually anyway, by relaxing the traditional restraints. So the politicians are getting points for the moment at no real economic cost.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @03:58PM
Driverless pedicabs?