First city to go full autonomous taxi

I am a big supporter of autonomous vehicles.  Not only are they an aspect of “The Future” that we’ve been waiting so long for, but they will make life better for so many people.  I live – I like to say – a short drive from the middle of nowhere and if I need to go to work or a store, it takes half-an-hour to get there.  But if my car just drove itself, I’d have that extra time to read, watch YouTube, or write. 

Unfortunately, we’re not at the point of fully self-driving cars on country roads.  They’ll start in cities, which got me wondering which will be the first city with a self-driving taxi service.  I don’t mean when some tech billionaire gifts ten self-driving cars to their small hometown so it now has a self-driving taxi service, but some city – like New York or London – that currently has a taxi service switches over entirely to a self-driving service.  My top picks are some city in Japan, China, or Germany.  Japan because they like robots and have a population issue, and China and Germany to show off their technological might. 

Whatever city goes first, it will be closely watched by the rest of the world, and as long as there is no major issue there will be a rapid – maybe ten years – transition to self-driving taxis in other cities.  Mainly because they’ll be cheaper to operate because they don’t have to pay drivers.  They may even cut fares to knock the people protesting the “dehumanization” off-balance.  Still, there will be a few hold outs like New York and London which are known for their human taxis.

So millions of taxi customers may save money, but what about all the taxi drivers?  What will happen to them?  They’ll just have to find new jobs.  Before you start yelling that that’s a cold view to take, realize, that’s capitalism.  How many horse farms were put out of business when people started buying horseless carriages?  If you don’t complain about that, why complain now about drivers being put out of business by driverless cars?

Some of these taxi drivers could make a new career as … I guess tour guides.  If you just need to go to work, or the airport, or whatever, when you order your taxi you could specify a fully autonomous one.  But if you’re on vacation, you could get one with a tour guide.  These could take you around, tell you the history of the places you go by, maybe recommend some restaurants, stuff like that.  Those that aren’t that interesting, wouldn’t be rated that highly, and would have to look for yet another job. 

Before cars, a lot of people knew how to ride a horse, but now that’s rarely a necessary skill.  Now, most people know how to drive a car, but that will become an unnecessary skill in the coming decades.  It’s possible that in some future amusement park there might be a place where you could drive a car.  Perhaps these aging, out of work cabbies could give those whippersnappers a … crash course on how to drive.  Although a virtual reality setup might be better.  Of course, that could lead to a Virtual Virtual Skeeball scenario.

Useless Cogs

I have just published my eighth short story collection.  “Useless Cogs” contains forty, science fiction stories that range from only a few dozen words to a few thousand and are filled with time travelers, AIs, clones, aliens, even sexbots, although not often as you would imagine.  As examples, there’s a time traveler that’s always a step behind, an AI that’s late on rent, and a sexbot with bad software.  Some of the stories are humorous, some horrifying, and some … depend on your point of view.  You can get it on Kindle for only $1.99, or the equivalent.

The economics of Speed Demon Construction

So the other night – as I was trying to fall asleep – I had an interesting idea I thought about turning into a story, for a bit.  It seems that – in the comics and movies and whatever – whenever someone develops supernatural powers they become either a superhero or supervillain.  But I wondered what if some Joe got super speed and instead of fighting crime they started a construction business.  You’d buy all the materials and have them sitting on your lawn and the Speed Demon would show up, and a minute later you’d have a new roof, or garage, or whatever.  You’d pay like a hundred bucks, and then he’s off to the next job.  He’d probably have a deal with all the local pizza and sub shops to have something set out for him every half-hour or so.  There’d be a blur and the pizza would be gone with a $50 bill in its place.

Of course even in a large town there wouldn’t be enough construction jobs to keep the Speed Demon active all the time, so he’d diversify.  Like he’d have Speed Demon Movers where, in like thirty seconds he can have all your belongings packed up and loaded in a van.  And there’d also be the Speed Demon Garage.  You stop in, say the engine is making an odd noise, and in less than a minute – with you not even getting out of the car – the engine is disassembled on the floor next to you.  He fixes whatever the issue was, puts it all back together, and only charges for parts and maybe a flat $20 for labor.

Now this Speed Demon would likely put dozens of small business out of business by being able to do in an hour what would take them a month.  And even charging so little for his time, he could still make tens of thousands of dollars a day.  Some would say that if hundreds of people lose their jobs because someone else can do it better and cheaper, well, that’s Capitalism, and if you even think anything bad about Capitalism, well, you’re just a dirty socialist.

While in this world toxic goo usually just gives you cancer instead of superpowers, we do have a burgeoning Speed Demon: automation.  It’s unlikely we’ll have machines able to replace your roof in a minute or less, but it is likely that someday a (self-driving?) truck will pull up to your house with robotic arms in the back that lift up the materials and other robots that scurry around and do all the work.  Not as fast, but robots won’t need a lunch break, or even a restroom break, can work 24/7, and you don’t have to pay them.  So we’re coming to a point where hundreds of people will lose their jobs because machines will be able to do it faster and cheaper.  Yea Capitalism.  But how does Capitalism work if nobody has money because nobody has jobs?

Possible Futures – Trial stores

In the not too distant future, there may come a day where the supercomputer – or low level AI – that runs your house notices that you are almost out of toothpaste.  It will then order some, possibly scheduling the delivery to occur at 3 AM so as to not disturb you.  Either an autonomous drone would fly the package to a dronepad on the roof of your house, or an autonomous delivery truck will drive it to your house and a robot will walk it to your front door.  Your botler (robotic butler) will take delivery and place it in the bathroom for you to find in the morning.

But your house wouldn’t just keep you in a steady supply of toilet paper, it would also keep you supplied with bananas, coffee, and mint ice cream.  Instead of you taking a minute to open your cabinets to see what you need and making a list, your house will either just reorder it or you’ll go, “House, I’m hungry for lobster,” and it will arrange to have some flown in to you.  And unless you’re particular about preparing it yourself, your botler will take care of everything.

For people who stick to the same brand of toothpaste, or coffee, or whatever for years, such a setup would be ideal.  But for people who want to try new things, I predict the emergence of what I’m calling trial stores.  These would be stores where, instead of having full size bottles of shampoo, would just have trial sized bottles.  But instead of having just a shelf full of Brand X shampoo, there would be dozens, or hundreds of brands from manufacturers all over the world.  You’d select a handful, take them home and try them.  Any you like you’d tell your house and it would add them to the list of brands to order.  You could have it set up that when you run out of the Number 1 Brand on the list, it orders the Number 2 Brand, and just cycles through them all.  Or you could have it set to random, or you could say to make sure you have Brand Y whenever you’re going on a date, or any other setup you can think of. 

Now these trial stores could be completely autonomous with robots stocking shelves and an Amazon Go style checkout.  There could also be systems – screens or more robots – you could ask for suggestions.  But I think, especially at first to make older people more comfortable, there may be human sommeliers, but for shampoos.  “You’re looking for a flowery shampoo?  Well I tried this Vietnamese brand last week and I really enjoyed it.”

You may be asking, if your house can just order stuff online, why doesn’t it just order a sample pack of a dozen or so types of pudding to see which you like.  That will also happen.  But people like to get out and be with other people.  How often while you’ve been grocery shopping have you seen people who bump into someone they haven’t seen in months?  Probably an important part of a trial store will be a little café for customers to just sit and chat for a bit.  Especially when things can be so easily ordered online, such cafés would be an additional reason to go out.

Automation – in the production and delivery of items – will drastically change the everyday idea of shopping.  We may not end up with trial stores, but the stores we have now won’t last forever.

“The Future is Coming” is free!

I am a big supporter of science.  Science is the foundation of our society and it will allow our species to go beyond anything we can imagine.  So I was happy when I heard about the March for Science which will take place this Saturday.  The marches in DC and in cities around the world are to put a spotlight on the importance of science in our lives. 

While I’m not going to any march (I’m not fond of crowds) I did want to do something.  So from now through Sunday my Kindle ebook “The Future is Coming” will be free to download.  “The Future is Coming” contains ten essays dealing with issues that are science fiction, but will quickly become just … science.  No matter how some try to ignore it, the future is coming and we need to start thinking about it.

Here’s an excerpt from the essay “Cloning Humans.”

Someday – almost certainly sooner than anyone suspects – a human will be cloned. There will be protests, boycotts, marches, condemnations, congressional hearings, etc., all for this one minor event. I say minor event, and here is why.

The short term issues

The biggest problem human clones will face comes from people watching too many bad science fiction movies. In those movies, 99.9% of what they show of cloning is utter crap. In reality, clones will not be mindless automatons who will blindly follow the orders of some megalomaniac out for galactic domination. Nor will you run the risk of walking into an alley where someone will jump you, and ten minutes later a clone will walk out of the alley to steal your identity. And clones will not “remember” the lives of their donors and do … whatever. A clone will just be another human. That’s it. If they can escape the mental scaring caused by “parents” or guardians bent on making them into exact duplicates of the people who donated some DNA, they will be no more screwed up than the rest of us.

Cloning will – especially at first – be extremely expensive. That combined with the fact that we already have over seven billion humans made the old fashion way begs the question, what need is there to create clones? Seriously, what will be the point? Yes, grieving families will want to replace loved ones, and companies will take their money to give them a clone who will have the same DNA as the person they lost. But the clone – because they will have lived a different life – will not be the same person. And yes, some historical figures will be cloned as well as the best and brightest of various fields, but when the Einstein clone takes up poetry instead of physics, what will be the point of continuing?

There will be clones, but they will make up a miniscule fraction of the population. But a ton of legal and ethical questions will surround them. Will the donor of the DNA have all the rights and responsibilities of a parent? What recompense will people have if they are cloned against their wishes? Will the donor be able to abort the clone, and if so, how far into the cloning process will they be able to do that? If the donor is Canadian but the cloning is done in the United States, will the clone be Canadian, American, or have dual citizenship? Will a clone be able to become President? It’s probably a safe bet that few – if any – of these questions will be answered by the time human clones walk among us.

Movie Monday – Short film “Abe” (2013)

My introductory post. 

“Abe” on IMDB  

(This isn’t the trailer, it’s the whole movie.)

(Spoilers)

“Abe” starts with a woman gagged and tied to a gurney in an abandoned factory with bloody plastic around her.  Then a robot walks in.  He talks about how he was built to love, and he loved his family.  But they stopped loving him.  So he tried to fix them, but it didn’t work.  All he wants is to be loved, but he can tell by the way the woman looks at him, she doesn’t love him.  So he’ll have to fix her.  He then picks up a saw and we hear screaming.

We then see the robot creepily watching another woman and wishing he could stop falling in love.

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When Abe first shows up, he asks the woman if she’s comfortable.  My first thought was he had lost his family and was trying to make a new one.  Then he starts talking about human instinct for survival and stuff and I got a little bored.  But then what he was saying started sinking in, and it started getting darker and darker.  A robot with, bad programming, sawing people apart just because he wanted to be loved could be done bad in so many ways.  But “Abe” nails the creepy, disturbing aspects of a robot serial killer.