Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future (29 page)

Google hopes to smash the prevailing owner-operator model for the automobile. In the future, you’ll simply reach for your smart phone or other connected device and call for a self-driving car whenever you need it. Rather than spending 90 percent or more of their time parked, cars will see much higher utilization rates. That change alone would unleash a real-estate revolution in cities. Vast stretches of space now earmarked for parking would become available for other uses. To be sure, self-driving cars would still need to be stored somewhere when not in use, but there would be no need for random egress; the cars could be packed end-to-end. If you call for a car,
and there isn’t already one on the road close to your location, you’ll simply get the next vehicle in line.

There are, of course, some reasons to be skeptical that urban cars will ultimately evolve into public resources. For one thing, it would be directly at odds with the goals of the automotive industry, which would like each household to own at least one car. For another, in order for this model to work, commuters would have to share the cars at peak times; otherwise they might be so scarce and expensive during busy periods that many people couldn’t afford a ride. A related problem is safety in a shared car. Even if the vehicle’s software is able to solve the logistics issues and provide efficient and timely service, a small car is, after all, a much more intimate space to share with complete strangers than a bus or train. It’s easy to imagine solutions to this problem, however. For example, cars designed to be shared by solo travelers could simply be divided into compartments. You wouldn’t even need to see or be aware of others sharing your car. To avoid a feeling of being closed in, virtual windows could be mounted on the dividing walls; high resolution screens would display images captured by cameras mounted on the exterior of the car. By the time self-driving cars are in routine operation, the hardware to accomplish all this will be remarkably inexpensive. The vehicle would stop, a green light would flash on one of the doors, and you would get in and ride to your destination just as if you were traveling alone. You’d be sharing the vehicle, but riding in your own virtual commuter pod. Other vehicles might be designed to carry groups (or more sociable solo travelers), or perhaps the barriers could slide away upon mutual consent.
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Then, again, the commuter pod might not need to be “virtual.” In May 2014, Google announced that the next phase of its research into self-driving cars would focus on the development of two-passenger electric vehicles with a top speed of 25 miles per hour and specifically geared toward urban environments. Passengers would call for the car and set its destination with a smart phone app. Google engineers have come to the conclusion that returning the vehicle to the driver’s control in the event of an emergency is unfeasible, and the vehicles will be fully automated—with no steering wheel or brake pedal. In an interview with John Markoff of the
New York Times,
Sergey Brin highlighted the company’s dramatic departure from the more “incremental” designs being pursued by the major auto manufacturers, saying “that stuff seems not entirely in keeping with our mission of being transformative.”
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The market might also create other solutions geared toward sharing automated vehicles. Kevin Drum of
Mother Jones,
who thinks that “genuine self-driving cars will be available within a decade and that they’ll be big game changers,”
¹⁷
has suggested that it might be possible to purchase a share in a car service, with guaranteed availability, for a fraction of what it would cost to buy a vehicle. In other words, you would share the car only with fellow subscribers to a service, rather than with the public at large.
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If the sharing model does prevail, higher utilization for each car would, of course, mean fewer vehicles relative to the population. Environmentalists and urban planners would likely be overjoyed;
automobile manufacturers not so much. Beyond the prospect of fewer cars per capita, there could also be a significant threat to luxury automotive brands. If you don’t own the car and will use it for only a single trip, you have little reason to care what make or model it is. Cars could cease to be status items, and the automobile market might well become commoditized. For these reasons, I think it’s a good bet that the auto manufacturers will cling pretty tightly to keeping someone in the driver’s seat—even if he or she rarely touches the controls. Automotive manufacturers could be poised to face the kind of dilemma that powerful companies often encounter when disruptive technologies come along. The company is forced to choose between protecting the business that provides revenue today and in the near future—or helping to propel an emerging technology that may ultimately devalue or even destroy that legacy business. History shows that companies nearly always choose to protect their established revenue streams.
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If the kind of revolution that Brin envisions is to unfold, it may have to arise outside the automotive industry. And, of course, Brin may be in exactly the right place to make that happen.

If the individual-ownership model for cars ultimately falls, the impact on broad swathes of the economy and job market would be extraordinary. Think of all the car dealers, independent repair shops, and gas stations within a few miles of your home. Their existence is all tied directly to the fact that automobile ownership is widely distributed. In the world that Google envisions, robotic cars will be concentrated into fleets. Maintenance, repair, insurance, and fueling would likewise be centralized. Untold thousands of small businesses, and the jobs associated with them, would evaporate. To get a sense of just how many jobs might be at risk, consider that,
in Los Angeles alone,
about 10,000 people work in car washes.
¹⁸

The most immediate employment impact, of course, would be on those who drive for a living. Taxi driving jobs would evaporate. Bus driving might be automated, or perhaps buses will simply disappear, replaced by a better and more personalized form of public transportation. Delivery jobs might also disappear. Amazon, for example, is already experimenting with same-day deliveries to lockers in fixed locations. Why not put the lockers on wheels? An automated delivery van might send a text message to the customer a few minutes before its arrival and then simply wait for the customer to enter a code and retrieve the package.
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Indeed, I think that commercial fleets could be one of the first places where we see widespread adoption of automated vehicles. The companies that own and operate these fleets already face enormous liability. A single mistake on the part of a single driver can make for a very bad day. Once the technology has a solid track record and the data demonstrates a clear safety and reliability advantage, there will be a very powerful incentive to automate these vehicles. In other words, the first place where self-driving cars make serious inroads might be exactly the area that directly impacts the most jobs.

I’ve seen many suggestions that heavy, long-haul trucks might also be fully automated in the relatively near future. Here, again, I think progress is likely to be far more measured. While the trucks may indeed soon be able to essentially drive themselves, the staggering destructive potential of these vehicles probably means that someone is going to remain in the driver’s seat for the foreseeable future. Experiments with automated convoys, where a truck is programmed to follow the vehicle ahead of it, have already been
successful and may have an important role in the military or in less populated areas. In a 2013 interview with
Time
magazine’s David Von Drehle, one trucking company executive made the important point that the United States’ crumbling infrastructure presents a significant obstacle to making full automation viable.
¹⁹
Truck drivers have to routinely deal with the reality that our roads and bridges are basically falling apart, and that they are constantly being patched up. As I suggested in
Chapter 1
, getting rid of truck drivers entirely might also make deliveries of food and other critical supplies susceptible to hacking or cyber attack.

Excepting perhaps electricity, there is no other single innovation that has been more central to the development of the American middle class—and the established fabric of society in nearly all developed countries—than the automobile. The true driverless vehicle has the potential to completely upend the way we think about and interact with cars. It could also vaporize millions of solid middle-class jobs and destroy untold thousands of businesses. A small preview of the conflict and social upheaval that are sure to accompany the rise of self-driving cars can be found in the conflagration surrounding Uber, a start-up company that allows people to call for a ride using their smart phone. The company has been embroiled in controversy and litigation in nearly every market it has entered. In February 2014, Chicago taxicab operators filed a lawsuit against the city, claiming that Uber is devaluing nearly 7,000 city-issued operating licenses with a total market value of over $2.3 billion.
²⁰
Imagine the uproar when Uber’s cars start arriving without drivers.

A
S JOBS EVAPORATE
and median incomes stagnate—or perhaps even fall—we run the risk that a large and growing fraction of our population will no longer have sufficient discretionary income to continue propelling vibrant demand for the products and services that the economy produces. In the next chapter we’ll examine this danger, and see how it might ultimately threaten economic growth, and perhaps even precipitate a new crisis.

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Three-dimensional printers can already print basic electronic circuits, but it seems highly unlikely that they would ever be able to print the state-of-the-art processor and memory chips used in smart phones. Fabrication of these chips happens at industrial scale and requires precision vastly beyond the capability of any printer. One obvious future trend is that more and more of the everyday objects we use are likely to incorporate advanced processors and smart software. To me, this suggests that personal 3D printing is unlikely to keep pace with the products consumers really want to buy. A hobbyist, of course, might print most of a product and then assemble the necessary components, but I doubt that would appeal to most people.

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One problem with shared automated cars, especially if they had private compartments, would likely be keeping the vehicles clean. This is a common problem on buses and subways, and in the absence of a driver (or other passengers) some people might not be on their best behavior.

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If the sharing model doesn’t take hold, then automated cars could actually have a negative impact in congested areas. If you own an automated car and need to visit an area where parking is scarce and expensive, you might choose to have the car simply circle around and then pick you up once you complete your business. Or perhaps you might send it to cool its heels in an adjacent residential neighborhood rather than pay for parking. You might even have downloaded an illicit software application that allows your car to park illegally and then zip away in the nick of time if it detects the approach of an official-looking vehicle.

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Microsoft clinging to its massive Windows-based revenue stream and failing to get a toehold in the smart phone and tablet markets is a classic example of this.

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This strikes me as far more viable than the drone-based delivery idea that Amazon unveiled in a 2013 episode of CBS’s
60 Minutes.
No technology can be made 100 percent reliable. Amazon’s business is so vast that, in order to have a meaningful impact, an enormous number of drone-based deliveries would have to occur. Even a very small error rate multiplied by the huge number of flights would likely result in a continuous stream of unfortunate incidents. An incident involving a five-pound payload potentially suspended hundreds of feet in the air is not an incident you would want to have.

Chapter 8

CONSUMERS, LIMITS TO GROWTH . . . AND CRISIS?

There is an often-told story about Henry Ford II and Walter Reuther, the legendary head of the United Auto Workers union, jointly touring a recently automated car manufacturing plant. The Ford Motor Company CEO taunts Reuther by asking, “Walter, how are you going to get these robots to pay union dues?” Reuther comes right back at Ford, asking, “Henry, how are you going to get them to buy your cars?”

While that conversation probably never actually took place, the anecdote nonetheless captures a key concern about the ultimate impact of widespread automation: workers are also consumers, and they rely on their wages to purchase the products and services produced by the economy. Perhaps more than any other economic sector, the automotive industry has showcased the importance of this dual role. When the original Henry Ford ramped up production of the Model T in 1914, he famously doubled wages to $5 per day—and, in so doing, ensured that his workers would be able to afford to buy the cars they were building. From that genesis, the rise of the automotive industry would go on to become inextricably intertwined
with the creation of a massive American middle class. As we saw in
Chapter 2
, there is evidence to suggest that this powerful symbiosis between rising incomes and robust, broad-based consumer demand is now in the process of unwinding.