India wants to ban self-driving cars to prevent job losses

[midian182]

The fear of technology replacing human workers has been around since the industrial revolution – some would say earlier – but in today’s world of AI and automation, the threat of machines taking what are traditionally human jobs feels larger than ever, especially with the development of self-driving cars. But at least one country - India – is seeking to protect its workers by banning the vehicles.

As nations around the world look to introduce regulations in preparation for autonomous cars hitting the roads, India won’t be welcoming the technology. The country's minister for Road Transport, Highways, and Shipping, Nitin Gadkari, said: "We won't allow driverless cars in India. I am very clear on this."

"We won't allow any technology that takes away jobs. In a country where you have unemployment, you can't have a technology that ends up taking people's jobs," Gadkari added.

The minister said there was currently a demand in India for 22,000 commercial drivers, and that the government was opening 100 driver institutes across the country to get 5000 people jobs over the next five years.

The worldwide rollout of autonomous cars will be a slow one; the vehicles aren’t expected to become a common sight on the roads for at least another ten years, if not more. Right now, many companies are concentrating on self-driving “assistants,” such as Tesla’s autopilot mode and the one found in Audi’s A8 luxury sedan – the first production vehicle with Level 3 autonomy.

With its huge population, congested roads, and drivers that don’t always obey the rules, Indian companies that are testing self-driving tech have found prototype vehicles struggle to cope with the conditions. Both former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick and Google CEO Sundar Pichai have said not to expect autonomous cars to arrive in the country anytime soon. Now, it looks like they might never appear.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/70296-india-wants-ban-self-driving-cars-prevent-job.html

 

[VitalyT]

Trying to improve life by stalling the progress is the dumbest idea. The history teaches us that it never works.

 

[Uncle Al]

Hardly dumb .... with the excess population, maintaining "opportunity" for the masses is a far smarter practice. If our automotive plants, mills, and similar industries had not modernized there would be far less unemployment in lesser educated sections of the population. Drug use would be much lower as would be crime and other associated problems. Technology certainly does not solve all social ills by any means .....

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

Hardly dumb .... with the excess population, maintaining "opportunity" for the masses is a far smarter practice. If our automotive plants, mills, and similar industries had not modernized there would be far less unemployment in lesser educated sections of the population. Drug use would be much lower as would be crime and other associated problems. Technology certainly does not solve all social ills by any means .....

Partly true but self driving tech is without any shadow of a doubt the future. Nobody can stop progress. Maybe India should encourage the use of prophylactics more aggressively... or revert back to horse and cart.

 

[Adhmuz]

"The minister said there was currently a demand in India for 22,000 commercial drivers, and that the government was opening 100 driver institutes across the country to get 5000 people jobs over the next five years."

In a country with over a billion people I hardly see 5000 people making a difference over a 5 year period.

The real problem is the general lack of maintenance of infrastructure, none existent infrastructure and most importantly too many people who don't obey what little rules there are on the roads. It's amazing there aren't more fatalities on the roads in India to begin with, right now it's only one every 4 minutes.

 

[treetops]

Why stop there, just make everyone use 1 hand, bam job explosion.....

 

[ChrisH1]

Trying to improve life by stalling the progress is the dumbest idea.

Progress that makes life >better< is usually a good thing. However, often, the problem with progress is that it doesn't make things >better<, it just makes them >cheaper<, by getting things done by machines rather than people. And that only makes things better in a very localized way: the company gets greater profits, and some of those may be passed on to customers.

But if it's done on a large scale, by lots of companies, you get a lot of people displaced from their jobs. They might find other jobs, in which case all is well. But, if they can't, hey guess what: they still have to be paid, anyway. By the government, from taxes, if not from anywhere else. And those taxes will have to come from taxing the now more profitable businesses, and if the people are paid only subsistence level, then eventually when there are enough of them there will be social upheaval.

 

[psycros]

What people forget is when an industry becomes obsolete the number of jobs that are created by *new* industries is nearly always smaller that the amount that were eliminated. As technology advances one its primary goals is "labor saving", I.e. increased efficiency and production. That usually means jobs being eliminated..the only questions are typically how many jobs are lost and how quickly. Automation was already taking away jobs before most families had replaced their first Model T. Typically the only time that machines *create* jobs is when they allow us to do things we couldn't do before even with massive labor forces, such as building skyscrapers, modern highways or airplanes. Those are a few examples of entire industries being born thanks to the advances in science and engineering. The problem is that computers have changed everything. Most of the production process in heavy industry is now automated with very little input from a small number of human workers. Most light industrial jobs have been offshored to coutries with cheap labor and lax environmental laws, just as customer service was over the last two decades. Now we're seeing this same thing happen with jobs in the field as AI controlled remotely managed devices take over. Right now most of those remote operator jobs are within the borders of developed nations but it won't be long before that drone delivering your pizza is manned by someone in Bangladesh. A few years after that the pizza will be made by a machine that takes up the entire space where people used to do it. When everything we buy is made by machines that only require a small number of people to maintain them, what happens to the middle class? The US already has 12% unemployment and half the population pays no taxes..and the birth rate of the dependent class is the only one that's increasing.

 

[erickmendes]

Totally agree with psycros... India could become the number one supplier of parts for autonomous systems... Instead, they choose to ban technology...

Tibet did something like it in the past... It had a profecy that a foreigner would one day bring doom to Tibet, so they've spent long time closed to outsiders... When China decided to take over Tibet, they had no allies to go for, so Dalai Lama undestood that the only way Tibet could survive was to bring the world attention to what they were having to endure...

Any society that choose to isolate itself from the rest of the world in some form is accepting the risk of becoming dominated.

 

[Kibaruk]

I quoted and called someone racist while adding more into the topic and that got MY post deleted? Geez... thanks guys.

 

[captaincranky]

I quoted and called someone racist while adding more into the topic and that got MY post deleted? Geez... thanks guys.

You''ll get used to it, I certainly have..

Besides, my post and pretty much about half the thread is gone. War is hell, bro! Consider yourself a "civilian casualty".

To add to that, if the post you're quoting gets pulled, then yours does as well. That shouldn't be so hard to figure out.

There's nobody's post left to call "racist", get over it.

 

[Kibaruk]

To add to that, if the post you're quoting gets pulled, then yours does as well.

How do you think people would react if this happened in something like Reddit? If the quoted post gets deleted, replace said post with a "Deleted" stamp, or just add a mod comment saying "Content Deleted".

That shouldn't be so hard to figure out.

Yup, I would certainly agree that logic always wins, it's simply not well implemented yet.

 

[captaincranky]

How do you think people would react if this happened in something like Reddit? If the quoted post gets deleted, replace said post with a "Deleted" stamp, or just add a mod comment saying "Content Deleted"....[ ]....

OK, you simply have to grin and bear the deletions. Our mods don't have an unlimited amount of time to coddle us, or "get in touch with our feelings".

We, (at least the rest of you, not including myself), are assumed to be intelligent and responsible adults. Surely you must be aware, BEFORE POSTING IN RESPONSE TO CERTAIN CONTENT, that the content against which you are about to rail, is likely to be yanked.

In the case of this thread, the entire string of replies were not suitable to display in a worldwide context, and ostensibly, could damage Techspot's image on the world stage.

Using your suggested "Reddit-esque" methodology, this thread could have resulted in an extended string of "deleted content" stamps, which, (IMHO) are worse than simply allowing our membership a "do-over". (Or save for this sidebar, an opportunity to reflect on the worth of continuing with the topic).

So, intelligent individuals also generally tend to be extremely competitive, possessing a desire to win at all costs. You really do have to get comfortable with the concept of, "winning through disqualification of competitor".

I get horrible emails now and then, informing me exactly what kind of, (expletive>******< deleted), someone thinks I am. Do I chaff at my bit, yes! Do I sometimes even kick the sides of my stall, of course. Would I enjoy responding in kind, perhaps. At some point, you have to come to grips with the fact there are only a limited amount of English colloquial pejoratives, and you don't want to run out of them first, because that's an automatic win for the other guy.

Good talk! (y)

 

[ddferrari]

I feel that an intelligent but irrelevant debate has taken place here, as the picture clearly shows that a self-driving vehicle wouldn't last 30 minutes in India, and would likely choose the "self-destruct" option

 

[ChrisH1]

I feel that an intelligent but irrelevant debate has taken place here, as the picture clearly shows that a self-driving vehicle wouldn't last 30 minutes in India, and would likely choose the "self-destruct" option

Too true! And while I love the idea of autonomous cars, I can't help thinking of a couple of situations: kid holding a bit of cardboard - 'My dad says slow down there's an accident over the hill'. Policeman blows a whistle and says 'no left turn!' Sign says 'Listen for oncoming trains'. Sign says 'poles show depth of water on road'. And so on. Unless you have true AI, they're not going to be able to cope. Many people can't cope today.

 

[AQUATARKUS]

I think 30 mins is a bit optimistic, I have driven in India and its absolute chaos, aside from the might is right policy, u have to contend with a host of other autonomous vehicles, cows, stray dogs, chickens, street performers, elephants and whatever happens to be using the road at any given time.
Then there's the baksheesh seeking policeman, how will the car deal with them?
Most fun I ever had driving, was in India.