We now return you to the Singularity, already in progress...

When it comes to truly autonomous self-driving vehicles, or capital-"a" Autos, it's helpful to remember that this cost- and life-saving technology doesn't need to be perfect in order to see widespread adoption; as CGP Grey put it, they just need to be better than us. And here's the thing; they already are better than us. Waymo's Auto has been in only 14 crashes during testing, of which 13 were caused by the human drivers that the AI had to share the road with; only one was caused by the Auto's software.

With a safety record like that, there was never any question that Autos would find their way onto our roads. The only question was, "When?" How long would it take the general public to accept the presence of self-driving vehicles on our roads? How long would public unease with these new AI drivers prompt risk-averse politicians to drag their feet on giving approval for automakers to bring these autonomous autos to market?

Well, we now know some of the answers to those questions. The general public may still be working their way around to a general acceptance of this new tech, but it seems that the politicians are all done with the foot-dragging, as of last Wednesday.

From Reuters:

A U.S. House panel on Wednesday approved a sweeping proposal by voice vote to allow automakers to deploy up to 100,000 self-driving vehicles without meeting existing auto safety standards and bar states from imposing driverless car rules.

Representative Robert Latta, a Republican who heads the Energy and Commerce Committee subcommittee overseeing consumer protection, said he would continue to consider changes before the full committee votes on the measure, expected next week. The full U.S. House of Representatives will not take up the bill until it reconvenes in September after the summer recess.

[...]

Democrats praised the bipartisan proposal but said they want more changes before the full committee takes it up, including potentially adding other auto safety measures.

[...]

Separately, Republican Senator John Thune, who is working with Democrats, said Wednesday he hopes to release a draft self-driving car reform bill before the end of July. 

AI does not need to be super-intelligent to completely reshape the way we do everything; automation technologies are already good enough to replace forty to fifty percent of the work force, and the impact that will have on society is incalculable. Self-driving Autos alone can replace cab drivers (Uber and Lyft are both working on this) and truck drivers (long-haul transportation, in particular, would benefit) long before consumers get around to replacing all of their personal transports with a shiny, new, auto. The economic impact of that can't be understated; it's not just the drivers' jobs that would be replaced, but also the related businesses, like truck stops, that would suddenly find themselves obsolete, and their employees looking for increasingly rare employment.

If you were thinking that this change was decades away, then think again. The benefits of Autos, in increased safety and productivity, are simply too compelling to ignore, and the only voices that might be inclined to fight against it (i.e. labour unions) just aren't influential enough, anymore, to be able to turn the tide. This is happening. Self-driving cabs and long-haul trucks will be playing city streets and highways across the continental U.S. in a matter of just a few years, with other countries doubtless following close behind, and industrialized society will never be the same again.

This is the Singularity, happening in slow motion. AI may still be well short of the super-intelligent mark, or even human-equivalent general intelligence, but it turns out that those things are not necessary for the Singularity to occur. There's a reason why governments across the industrialized world are already looking into things like Universal Basic Income as a way of caring for the basic needs of a populace who will find themselves not merely unemployed, but unemployable, within our lifetimes, through absolutely no fault of their own.

What will society look like when 40% of the population having nothing but time on their hands? What happens when simply having a job becomes a weird sort of status symbol, instead of being simply the baseline assumption that drives our perceptions of ourselves, and of each other? I don't know; I don't think anybody knows. But the U.S. congress, in a rare display of bipartisan agreement, have just decided that everybody, both within the U.S. and without, are about to find out.

We now return you to the Singularity, already in progress.