First they came for....

    Recently I was in comment-section at work on an article dealing with the future of the Automated-Car.   I had made the comment that I believe the "force" behind this technology is not the consumer, but the heads of corporations.  I say this because you hear very little support from your average person.   Google has tried automated taxis for sometime now and there has been very little increase in their usage.  The idea of letting go of the wheel and letting a computer do the driving is still unnerving for a lot of people (me included).   Our guts tell us that the world is a very complicated place and no programmer could think of every possible scenario. 

    This is why I said in my comment, "This is coming from corporations wanting to get rid of delivery jobs like truckers and home-delivery-drivers".   Another person from my work replied that these jobs will eventually go away but other jobs will take their place.  He ended it with "we should not worry about this".

    Of course he can say that...he's not a truck driver.  Tell that to a person is over the age of 40 and has 20-25 years left to work that he needs to change careers.   Look him in the face and tell him it's all for the better because now he can buy his stuff from Walmart even cheaper!   But what does he buy all that Walmart crap with???  His tears??

    My reply to him was that it's easy for us to say that... we are not truck-drivers.   But engineers have a target on their backs as well but don't want to face it.   I have written before how Moore's Law is shifting it's methods to achieve its goals.  For those of you not acquainted with it, it goes like this: The COST of the transistor will be cut in HALF every 2 YEARS.   In the past, we have had the luxury of a silicon process system where we could make transistors 50% smaller every 2 years (ie - double the number of transistors on a chip).   Year after year we grew the number of transistors on the chip and added more and more functionality.   Everything else could stay the same and our costs would be cut in half and Moore's Law kept marching on.  But now today, that is not possible.  Transistors are getting TOO SMALL and it's taking 4+ years (AND GROWING) to improve the silicon processes. 

    In order to keep the law going, focus is not on the transistor, but on those who put the transistors together to make new products; the engineers.  Some of this has been done by standardizing our designs.  By turning parts of the design into small "LEGO blocks" we can reuse them over and over again ( motto: design once and use many ).   But now the attention is focusing on the validation process.   What if I can write a specification in a way that a computer can read it and create validation content to verify it works or not?   I can get rid of teams of validation engineers. 

   Artificial Intelligence is the engineers "automated truck".   If you think it's too complicated you are wrong.   If I can have AI read medical documents and kick out cancer-treatment-recommendations I can surely have it read a design spec and kick out design-verification-tests.  What's really crazy is it's engineers who are putting these systems together.   It reminds me of a famous episode of the 1950's TV series "The Twilight Zone" in which a factory manager keeps automating more and more of his factory until all that is left is him.  Then on the final scene the board replaces the manager with a robot too.  We are designing our own replacements as we speak.

We should all pay heed to the old poem, "First they came for the socialists"

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Maybe a 21st century version would be

First they came for the Bank-Tellers, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Bank-Teller.

Then they came for the Checkout-Clerks, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Checkout-Clerk.

Then they came for the Truck-Drivers, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Truck-Driver.

Then they came for the Engineers—and there was no one left to speak for me.