China's growing 'robotaxi' fleet sparks concern, wonder on streets

At one intersection in an industrial area of Wuhan, AFP reporters saw at least five robotaxis passing each other as they navigated regular traffic.

Meanwhile Japan is grappling with allowing foreign tax drivers some slack on Japanese language testing or allowing ride sharing apps to gain market share.

Why in the hell did they pick Wuhan,hope the car do not pick up COVID-19

It looks like robots take all jobs from people someday. Unemployment rate would go up further.

"They are stealing our rice bowls, so of course we don't like them," Wuhan taxi driver Deng Haibing told AFP, using a popular Chinese term for livelihoods.

I realize what our kids major in college and the jobs they have a design on may or may not exist when they graduate if the pace of change is unforgiving. Since the Industrial Revolution, jobs were lost to machines and new jobs were created. The average standard of living has increased dramatically but do you think there are good reasons to think that this time it's different, and that machine learning will be a real game changer?

AI can be better at jobs that demand intuitions about other people. Many lines of work – such as in this article, driving a taxi in a street full of pedestrians, or lending money to strangers, or negotiating a business deal – require the ability to correctly assess the emotions and desires of other people.

Is that smart phone engrossed aruki person about to walk blindly onto the road? Does the man feigning credibility with a rehabilitated credit rating intend to make timely payments or will he take the loan and disappear? Will that lawyer act on his threats, or is he just bluffing? As long as it was thought that such emotions and desires were generated by an immaterial spirit, it seemed obvious that computers will never be able to replace human drivers, bankers and lawyers.

Yet if these emotions and desires are in fact no more than biochemical algorithms, there is no reason why AI cannot decipher these algorithms and do so far better than humans.

Why in the hell did they pick Wuhan, hope the car do not pick up COVID-19

Pittsburgh has three rivers. There's the Allegheny, the Monongahela, and the two rivers meet to form the Ohio River. If you go to Okutama 奥多摩, Tokyo, you'll see the Nippara 日原 river flowing into the Tama river, a major source of water along with Akigawa 秋川 for the Tokyo Metropolitan area.

If you look at the kanji for state 州 you see three rivers. The dots are the people living near the rivers to form civilizations. It is the source of life. 上州 is the upper part of the Tone River 利根川 that is the modern prefecture of Gunma 群馬.

Wuhan is right at the flowing together or confluence of the Han River and the Yangtze River 長江 or 揚子江. New Castle upon Tyne? Wuhan upon Yangtze.

It not only is a Two River city but it is a formation of three cities. For Americans you have the twin cities in Minnesota. Wuhan is like Dallas Fort Worth plus one other city. If you're from Texas think Houston, Dallas and San Antonio combined. Wuhan has a greater population than the three put together. That is the economic power of Wuhan. 武漢.

There's one glitch that San Fran suffers from the driverless taxi introduction - the taxis, when not in service congregate, and block streets which is aggravating for other road users.

the taxis, when not in service congregate, and block streets which is aggravating for other road users.

They're forming a union :o

It looks like robots take all jobs from people someday. Unemployment rate would go up further.

The total fertility rate in Shanghai is down to 0.6. That means just a smidge under half the women in Shanghai never have a child and the remainder have only one. They will need robots sooner than Japan will !