I’d rather see us replacing train conductors. Why do we even need them? Why aren’t trains self driving? Trains regularly don’t drive due to personell shortages and they don’t drive in the middle of the night. Also trains are getting ridiculously expensive (in the Netherlands, due to privatisation) where self driving trains could be a solution to make trains affordable again.
Comment on Radio Station Replaces Journalists With AI 'Presenters'
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
Why do we need to get rid of the job of human radio presenter?
Techbros keep telling me AI frees people up to stop working shitty jobs and pursue their dreams, but the truth is none of these tech evangelists give a shit about anyone’s dreams if they aren’t some lame vision of factorio where the factories pollute the planet churning out ripoffs of human culture.
abbadon420@lemm.ee 1 month ago
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
Freight trains are thousands of feet long and haul unbelievably large quantities of material, the idea that it is inefficient to have a human (really a pair of humans) oversee and be responsible for a machine that large is laughable honestly.
…so is the idea that there is a genuine shortage of people willing to work as conductors, it is a convenient lie companies tell to rationalize why nobody wants to work for them because they pay shit and respect their employees so little that they won’t even give them unpaid time for necessary doctors appointments.
This point is even more true for passenger trains.
HatchetHaro@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 month ago
US’s PSR system is a fuckin joke
barsoap@lemm.ee 1 month ago
Plenty of self-driving trains around, generally metros where frequency and 24/7 operation is a great boon to overall service quality – you don’t want people to look at schedules, you want them to go to the station knowing there’s going to be a train in a couple of minutes, tops.
It’s way different for long-haul service, freight, passenger, doesn’t matter. Longer and less frequent trains with way more passengers in them, and you probably need other staff too, like someone needs to run the bistro. The tracks they’re running on are also way less predictable, with a metro you can have station screen doors everywhere (which btw necessitate automatic driving, humans aren’t accurate enough) try that with an international train: Regions much less countries can’t even agree on uniform platform heights. Much less door locations: Automated long-haul would require dedicated platforms at every station and while those could be served by trains with drivers, trains nowadays are all smart enough that including a button “stop at exactly that location, to the half-centimetre” isn’t an issue, those trains would have to have doors at the right location. Now go ahead and convince Germany and France that they need to replace all TGVs and ICEs to have doors in the same location as your regional trains.
Sauerkraut@discuss.tchncs.de 1 month ago
Profit motive. When maximizing profit margins are the primary object of the economy, then workers are seen as an unfortunate expense. And so capitalists seek to employee as few workers as possible while also paying them as little as possible.