How Will Autonomous Vehicles Impact Jobs?

Autonomous cars have been a hot topic of discussion for years, but now that we are actually getting closer to the technology hitting the roads, it’s time to think about the impact they can really have. Although the technology may be improving, but there are many other areas that are still holding us back from putting fully autonomous cars on the road. In fact, most people agree that the short-term timeline is more hype than anything else and that it will still take some time for the cars to be ready for the road. The major roadblocks to this happening fall under the acronym STEEPLE.

• Society. Are we really ready to get into a car without a driver and tell it where to take us? Most people are intrigued by the idea, but when it comes to actually making it happen, we’re not quite there yet. There are a lot of societal implications for turning our control of the road over to a machine.
• Technology. Can the technology operate safely and reliably? We’re getting pretty close in this regard, but even major companies admit that there still needs to be a driver in the car for all the variables AI can’t compute.
• Environment. What impact will autonomous cars have on the environment? Studies have shown vastly different results ranging from dramatically reducing energy consumption to greatly increasing it, so there is some work to do here.
• Economics. How will autonomous cars impact jobs and who will actually own and use them? There are a lot of ideas floating around, but nothing seems to be agreed upon yet. As commenter Daniel Jean-Pierre Riveong said, cities that can implement resources for autonomous cars will have a huge advantage over other cities that aren’t ready for the cars to hit their streets. “I could imagine a Singapore or China converting or creating entirely new cities/districts with autonomous cars in mind,” he says. “I wonder if the U.S. has that risk-taking “pioneering” spirit to do the same.”
• Politics. Does the government support automation? The White House has said it isn’t worried about automation for the next 50–100, which means it could take some time to get legislation passed regarding standardizing autonomous cars.
• Legal. Is there legislation in place regarding autonomous vehicles? This has been a major cause of concern and one of the holdups to autonomous cars, especially when it comes to crossing state lines and who is ultimately responsible for the car. There are also legal issues regarding privacy because autonomous cars use 360-degree cameras that are essentially taking pictures of everything as they drive.
• Ethical. Are cars ready to make difficult human decisions like injuring either the passenger or the bystander? This is a major gray area that still faces a lot of discussion.

Obviously there is a lot of work that still needs to be done in these areas. Having the technology in place like many automakers do is one thing, but actually putting the cars on the road is a different issues entirely.

In the mean time, we’ll likely see companies using autonomous cars with human back-up drivers or with features that aren’t totally autonomous, like advanced cruise control or self-parking features. It will likely take at least 10 to 15 years before autonomous vehicles really hit the road en masse, and by that time the labor market could be entirely different. According to commenter Wayne Bunker who works as an electricity distributor in Australia, the biggest job benefit to autonomous vehicles could be in the supply chain and transportation industries, an idea most experts support. However, before we worry about how self-driving cars will impact work, we need to take the steps to actually get them on the road.

Jacob Morgan is a best-selling author, speaker, and futurist. His new book, The Employee Experience Advantage (Wiley) analyzes over 250 global organizations to understand how to create a place where people genuinely want to show up to work. Subscribe to his newsletter, visit TheFutureOrganization, or become a member of the new Facebook Community The Future If…and join the discussion.