alt Hacker NewsWaymo are working towards Tokyo as well. I'm worried. Living in here, I've noticed that the taxi industry acts as an unintentional social support system. Many taxi drivers are in-between jobs or stages in life, or simply didn't fit in to the corporate life. It doesn't pay well, but it's a decent job all things considered.
I worry the death of the taxi industry means even less avenues for these people to escape to.
Of course the argument here is "well Japan should fix the corporate situation" but the current prime minister seems to be hellbent on the opposite. I think this will suck for a lot of people.
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I'd also love to see Waymos more in the countryside: _there_ calling a cab is annoyingly expensive, financially impractical, while "granny" and "pops" are having a hard time driving around without help.
I have high hopes for a positive social impact of self-driving cars out there.
Doesn't Tokyo have very low unemployment? According to Wikipedia: Japan 2.5%, Singapore 3.2%, USA 4.1%, EU 5.2%.
I expect Tokyo is probably even lower than the national average. Visiting just as a tourist it seems like Japan is quite good at creating, I don't want to say bullshit jobs, but perhaps not-that-necessary jobs? Jobs which mainly serve to give something to do to (usually) elderly. My understanding was that the idea is to make them feel to be a contributing part of the society(?)
I mean all the people controlling the pedestrians or acting like "human signs" and such.
Am I getting it wrong?
I have to admit I haven't taken a taxi in Tokyo but my impression was that it was a fairly high-end service akin to London black cabs and relatively pricey.
As AI becomes more and more capable and integrated into our lives, we will see this across many industries.
In theory, as things get cheaper to produce, business profits should rise and governments should be able to raise more taxes. So the government then has more means to provide goods and services for free to people who need them.