A little more than a week ago, in my hometown of Pittsburgh, Uber unveiled their revolutionary fleet of self-driving cars for commercial use. We’ve seen autonomous cars on a smaller scale before. Innovations like automatic parking and brake assist have dipped our toes into the uncharted waters of letting go of the wheel and having the machine do the work. Tesla, which has frequently been on the cutting edge of automobile innovation, has already created technology that lets their cars drive themselves on the highway. Cars that drive themselves aren’t science fiction anymore; they are quickly becoming a reality we can’t avoid. Uber plans to replace all 1.5 million of their drivers with self-driving cars, and Pittsburgh is their test run. It remains to be seen what will happen for society if the big car companies begin seriously moving toward switching over their car line-ups to the newly dubbed "autos."
I’m wary about the new technology and what it means, and not for the reasons that you might think. Many people have voiced concerns about taking our hands off the wheel and trusting our lives to software and hardware. But humans are far more dangerous behind the wheel than a computer. We get distracted, make mistakes and drive recklessly, to name only a few reasons. Autos don’t do this. They can't drive home drunk, and best of all they won’t make little mistakes in driving, such as rubbernecking, which causes the majority of traffic on the road. I don’t think giving up control is dangerous.
No, the reason I have anxiety about autos is the effect that it will undoubtedly have on our economy. Trucking, public transit and taxiing services, including Uber itself, are only the immediate industries that will be affected by the looming threat of autos. The trucking industry alone employs around 3.5 million people, which is about 7 percent of the total labor force in the whole of the U.S.
If implemented, this technology will flood the American market with millions of unemployed people who have suddenly found their jobs obsolete. Trucks without drivers are cheaper, more efficient and can run 24 hours a day, seven days a week without having to make the regular stops a human driver would have to make. In the short run, we might see a shift from drivers to monitors of the system driving the vehicle, as is the case with Uber now. But this is only a temporary fix to a long-term problem. Automation is quickly becoming a bigger threat to American jobs than off-shoring. We need to be prepared for the robot revolution sooner rather than later, or lines to buy the new model of iPhone will turn into lines for unemployment benefits.