Future of Taxi Drivers... The AI Revolution

AI race is on. Google, Amazon, Samsung, IBM, Tesla are among the top contenders in this race. We are standing at the Crossroads of the human future. Multiple phenomenons are happening simultaneously and it is almost impossible for any human being to make sense of the future. But, there is one thing that is certainly going to happen and that is massive unemployment. The highest ever unemployment observed in the last 100 years was during the Great Depression with a record high of 24.9% in 1933. During the 2009 recession, the unemployment rate peaked at 9.9%. The analysts are projecting another economic downturn in 2020 which may be the beginning of a global employment crisis where the machines will take away the jobs of human beings. One immediate job that is going to vanish in the next 5 years is that of Taxi drivers. So what can be done to save these hardworking people from getting bankrupt? How do we help these Taxi Drivers in transitioning into another career/profession? Let's explore the possibilities...

Self Driving Cars

General Motors, Ford, Toyota, BMW, Tesla, Google, and many more companies are in the self-driving cars race. And, all these companies are saying they will mass-produce the self-driving cars by 2020. And, the transition may take somewhere between 2-5 years for the cars to become truly self -driven (i.e. not assisted by human drivers). Here is a possible timeline of 5 years.

Now, when Cars are transforming into self-driving machines, Taxi Drivers will become redundant in the system. There is no need for drivers. This means, in the United States alone, 0.45 million people will lose their jobs to self-driving cars. To put things into perspective, this number is equivalent to the total number of employees Amazon has across the globe.

The Solution

Let's say you book a ride from JFK to Washington Square Park which is a 30 minutes journey on a cab. A self-driving car arrives and you take the cab. You do not have anyone to talk to during the entire ride. It's just the car and you. Had there been a driver to talk to, the ride wouldn't be so boring. What if we put Harold (a 45-year-old driver who lost his job to the self-driving car last year) to a new job, i.e. to be the companion of the commuter during the ride. The companion can ask you about how your day was... may tell you some jokes... or even better, give you product demonstrations... The taxi driver may serve as a facilitator of business meetings that can be carried out inside of a car... The driver can make you a cocktail inside the cab... You get the idea right! We are exploring possibilities for a driver to slowly become an a-la-carte provider of services that can be served inside of a car... There are a million possibilities... I just gave a few of the ideas on how we can save the Taxi Drivers or how they can save themselves by inventing new professions altogether.

Please comment to share your views... Or, any innovative ideas on the Future of Taxi Drivers.