Driverless tech is all the rage in the auto industry. Tesla, whose Autopilot system is the most sophisticated current deployment of the technology, has become the most valuable American car maker, having overtaken the market cap of General Motors in April, despite managing just two profitable quarters since it went public. The head of Daimler, Dieter Zetsche, sees Google and Apple as his company’s main rivals, rather than BMW and Audi. But India’s Minister for Road Transport and Highways, Nitin Gadkari, isn’t enthusiastic about these developments. He says India will prohibit driverless cars because they threaten hundreds of thousands of jobs.
The good news for Gadkari is that autonomous vehicles are further from production than Silicon Valley hype would have us believe. The first completely autonomous cars might not be road ready for another three decades. Even if they appear earlier, India will be the very last place on earth where they will work, thanks to our anarchic roads. Negotiating potholes, bullock carts and jaywalkers at the same time is likely to pose an insurmountable challenge for the most intelligent driving machines we can devise.
Yet, Gadkari’s statement deserves to be challenged, because it is misguided on many counts.
First, technologies improve incrementally, making it difficult to draw a line in the sand. Is the government going to ban Tesla’s Autopilot or similar systems, which over the next few years will be installed in virtually every motor vehicle? Obviously not, for they don’t eliminate the driver. As these systems keep getting better, though, a number of people who currently employ chauffeurs will take over driving duties. The elimination of jobs will begin long before a fully autonomous vehicle is available on the market.
Second, Gadkari misses the simple fact that all new technologies cost jobs. When washing machines became popular in India, they robbed thousands of dhobis of their livelihoods. Was that sufficient reason to ban the use of washing machines? Computers and digital technology have wiped out dozens of occupations, but created hundreds of others. Not every new technology creates more jobs than it eliminates, but it is impossible to judge beforehand what benefits might accrue from a given advance. Who, during debates about computerisation in the 1970s and 1980s, predicted the scale of India’s success as a software services provider?
Third, self-driving vehicles are one aspect of a revolution in automation that is already taking a toll on India’s jobs market. I wrote about the impending disaster in a column published in March last year. It is strange to hear a minister talk about prohibiting technology that is at least a decade away if not three, while the government has ignored the clear and present danger posed by automation, and is yet to formulate a plan to counter job losses in the Information Technology industry.
The most dangerous aspect of Gadkari’s pronouncement is made clear by its context. He spoke of driverless cars in relation to ride-hailing apps, and went on to say the government was planning to launch an app of its own. This highlights the big government perspective of the Modi administration, its statist mindset. The government has no business creating ride hailing apps any more than it has banning technologies based on the perception that they are job destroyers.