Confused52
Member
- Joined
- 5 Aug 2018
- Messages
- 268
We have gone beyond automating routine tasks which can be just as easily done by computers, to this whacky notion that everything can be better done by cimputers, no.matyer how.much the job currently depends on human thought, reasoning, creativity, imagination or any of the other qualities that AI cannot replicate. The 'efficiency gains' made as a result (ie the lower employment costs after sacking lots of people,) are not passed on to consumers, but instead used to make a small number of people wealthy. Meanwhile, the number of people underemployed, or in jobs providing no economic benefits to themselves or others but whoch conveniently keep them off the unemployment statistics, grow steadily, we end up with the worst productivity statistics in the developed world, and society disintegrates as fewer and fewer people have even the most basic economic stake in it. Something is going rather badly wrong, and a blind faith in the wonderfulness of technology cannot disguise this.
Your comments about computers will in time relate more to drivers than other traincrew. As I understand it the current DCO needs for technology are related to video which needs to be viewed by a human because interpretation is needed. The later stages of automated train control remove the need for drivers and reduce the probability of human error in that function but will not remove the need for despatch by thinking humans if the process is not to be slowed right down. For example better trap and drag protection would require passengers to be further away from train doors and despatch would have to wait until automation detects that they have moved. So my view is that there is a place for humans on every train but it is not clear what other functions they will perform. However the DCO proposal to maintain second members of staff where that is the best way and not just reduce numbers to improve profit, which would be clawed back if they made it, do not represent a significant challenge to employment. Rather they challenge the unfettered power of the RMT to shadow manage the TOC and I don't believe that if the general public understood this was the real issue there would be any support at all for the RMT other than from left wing commentators.
The concerns about prosecutions can be limited by recording video shown in the cab and not permitting other video evidence from station cameras as they could not be seen by drivers. Then if the decision looks correct based on what the driver can see alone there would be no fault. I don't expect any such discussions to be in the public domain in the current climate.
When there is only one person needed to do the despatch will he be called a driver or a guard, I doubt it. DLR is the closest thing to where we are headed but the speed is still very slow and not worthy all this disruption.