# What happens when the robots (peacefully) take over? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 9, 2012, 11:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914 "2012-01-09T11:43:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 22
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2015, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/421 "2015-11-18T19:36:41Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > Sure, Rick, we all know the history of farm labor being made unnecessary by machinery. That’s why I pointed this out as an interation of the development that will make ALL forms of manual labor unnecessary. I LIKE the idea of farmers being able to grow crops without pesticides without anyone having to do the backbreaking manual labor involved in weeding, I think it’s a GOOD thing. I’m just worried about job losses down the road due to all sort of labor being replaced by machinery, and none of those jobs being replaced. I know, I know, the invisible hand of the marketplace will magically pull jobs from the sky when the time comes. I have no faith in the invisible hand of the marketplace. To me you sound like one of those bankers in 2006 saying, “Real estate will NEVER go down in value.” > > The Luddites were RIGHT as far as their own personal fates went: they DID suffer massive economic disruptions, losing homes and families, when the automated mills made their jobs obsolete. But nobody seems to have noticed, or cared about that. I suppose if you operate from the premise that you your job will never, ever go away, and that you will be unable to do any other job, then you should be very concerned about the robots taking over. Be concerned. Be very concerned! ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2015, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/422 "2015-11-18T20:04:24Z")
There will be jobs for creative intellectuals for a good long while. But I am not sure why you think farm laborers would be able to find any other job that is not also automated. Which is fine, as long as we provide a guaranteed income for everyone. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2015, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/423 "2015-11-23T17:09:45Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > I suppose if you operate from the premise that you your job will never, ever go away, and that you will be unable to do any other job, then you should be very concerned about the robots taking over. Be concerned. Be very concerned! Sure, John, I’m sure you’ll have some handy dandy ideas when 3 million truckers come looking for work once self-driving trucks are fully implemented. I hear nail salons are a big thing nowadays … ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2015, 9:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/424 "2015-11-24T09:52:44Z")
Just heard something on the CBC discussing an [interesting Canadian experiment](http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/12/23/mincome-in-dauphin-manitoba_n_6335682.html) in the 1970s on a guaranteed minimum income, called Mincome. It sounds like it worked pretty well, and we are definitely going to need something like that before long. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2015, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/425 "2015-11-24T12:04:56Z")
The historical relationships between technological progress and human welfare must be a fascinating topic. I’d love to see some good cites. [Here’s one that emphasizes the _inverse_ relationship between high population and happiness/prosperity.](https://aeon.co/essays/history-tells-us-where-the-wealth-gap-leads) It points out that the Black Death of 1348 “paradoxically, introduced a Golden Age for common people.” Read the article! At least check out [the interesting graphic](https://nu.aeon.co/inlineimages/1d108493-7d0a-4a85-af15-549ee19f6f9f/show_two-centuries.jpg) slightly more than halfway down the page. I’ve just started reading this zombie thread but, though I’ve only read the first few posts, already want to comment. 😃 I’ll quote two contrasting views. **Untoward\_Parable** ’s pessimistic view is by no means a certainty. But **Hellestal** ’s view is, at best, a severe oversimplification. > [@Hellestal](#): > > … the owners of the robots are not now, nor have they ever been, the only winners. The remaining workers benefit loads, as does the rest of society. We’ve had _two hundred years of evidence_ about this since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. It is helpful to learn a little bit about these events and economic processes that led to our modern technological world in order to comment sensibly about it. There was huge technological progress and wealth-building in the final decades of the 19th century – railroads, petroleum, etc. Let’s contrast **Hellestal** ’s view with that of the article I linked above: > [@](#): > > In the US between around 1870 and 1900, there was another Golden Age for the elites, appropriately called the Gilded Age. While living standards for the majority declined (seen vividly in dwindling average heights and life expectancies), the moneyed classes were enjoying ever more luxurious lifestyles. > [@Untoward\_Parable](#): > > The result will most likely be hyper-fascism. A small number of wealthy families will control this labor pool that have no rights and do whatever is necessarily to eliminate any threat to their new royalty system, IE eliminate the vast majority of the human population (99.9% or so). This pessimistic outcome seems possible. The rich will want sex toys of course but may find that enslaved humans tickle their libidos more than any mechanical toy. Outcome depends on political developments. America’s are pointing the wrong way. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2015, 12:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/426 "2015-11-24T12:08:02Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > I’ve just started reading this zombie thread but, though I’ve only read the first few posts, already want to comment. 😃 The more the merrier. I wouldn’t call it a zombie thread. It’s just a slow thread. We don’t have a lot to say, until we do. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2015, 12:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/427 "2015-11-24T12:09:54Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Just heard something on the CBC discussing an [interesting Canadian experiment](http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/12/23/mincome-in-dauphin-manitoba_n_6335682.html) in the 1970s on a guaranteed minimum income, called Mincome. It sounds like it worked pretty well, and we are definitely going to need something like that before long. I can’t comment on whether we will need it, but Finland is experimenting (or at least was planning to) with it. > **[Finland considers basic income](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=766033)** > > Not a lot of details in the bbc article, but it looks like an attempt to simplify their various welfare (if that’s the right word) systems. The trial will involve only part of the population. I’m interested to see how this goes down. We’ve discussed... ---
**Author:** ![Kinthalis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kinthalis/32/16084_2.png) [@Kinthalis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kinthalis)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2015, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/428 "2015-11-24T15:40:43Z")
> [@Bering](#): > > Wow, those pictures are genuinely stunning, especially the white noise ones! Thank you for linking to that 🙂 Wow! That is amazing stuff. I wouldn’t be surprised if the civilization of our robot overlords ends up creating more beautiful and amazing art than we hairless apes ever did. Let’s face it guys, we are an evolutionary dead end. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2015, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/429 "2015-11-24T15:52:43Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > Sure, John, I’m sure you’ll have some handy dandy ideas when 3 million truckers come looking for work once self-driving trucks are fully implemented. I hear nail salons are a big thing nowadays … Nah. Nail salons will be automated any day now. Except. of course, _artisanal_ nail salons. But those are gonna cost ya! ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2015, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/430 "2015-11-24T17:18:37Z")
> [@Untoward\_Parable](#): > > The result will most likely be hyper-fascism. A small number of wealthy families will control this labor pool that have no rights and do whatever is necessarily to eliminate any threat to their new royalty system, IE eliminate the vast majority of the human population (99.9% or so). As I’ve complained over and over in this thread, I simply can’t understand the line of thinking that says only the 0.0001% will control the automated means of production in the brave new world. Why would anyone think that? It makes no sense. It is literally taking trends from the age of industrialization, and applying them to a world where industrialization has no meaning. Why did robber baron industrialists want to own factories and coal mines and steel mills? Because those things were the sources of wealth in the industrial age. Just like back in the medieval era the aristocrats only cared about land ownership, and riches meant owning vast tracts of land filled with peasant farmers. So just as the robber baron industrialists weren’t concerned with owning agricultural estates and building castles, the elite of the coming era will have no interest in factories filled with robots churning out billions of knickknacks and widgets. Neither will their wealth come from owning the rights to weak AI processes that take the place of human knowledge workers. That’s the way to get wealthy TODAY. Not tomorrow. See, the thing about information is that it’s trivial to copy. How do the future elites monopolize an automated medical diagnosis protocol? Ever since Napster we’ve realized such a thing is impossible. Yes, people pay for software. But only when paying is cheaper than getting it for free. As I’ve said over and over, the marginal cost of software is zero. The value proposition is the experts who know how to use the software. You charge $1 for the golden hammer, and $99 for knowing where to use the golden hammer. Except in the future world of the future, those experts have been automated away. Now you don’t need an expert to design an iPad, a computer can do it better than a human. So how do you charge people for the new iPad design, when you can’t sell expertise anymore, since expertise has been automated? Yes, there will be social stratification in the future. There will be a lot of hopeless people in the future. But those people won’t be hopeless because they’re starving in the gutter and killbots are roaming the countryside grinding useless people into compost. They’ll be hopeless because they have enough food, clothing, shelter, medical care, beer, TV, games, drugs, all their bodily needs taken care of, but they have no reason to live. We’re already halfway to this condition. The elite won’t need to intentionally degrade the proletarian drones to feel superior to them, the drones will display their inferiority all day every day as they sit around in their free trailers watching free TV and drinking free beer and doing nothing. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2015, 11:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/431 "2015-11-26T11:53:23Z")
**Lemur** , I’ve consistently trumpeted your contributions as my favorites in the thread (although there are to be sure many others who submitted great content as well). And I especially like your pointing to the issue of automation in medicine, as I felt this was a real failure of the disappointing sci-fi movie _Elysium_, as [Alyssa Rosenberg points out](http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa/2013/08/12/2450871/elysium-health-care/) (there are spoilers for the movie at that link, FYI). But while you are almost certainly correct at how things look once you’ve got frictionless, unlimited automated manufacturing and labor capacity, what about along the way to that point? Couldn’t we see a transitional period that is more in line with what \*\*septimus \*\*described from the Gilded Age, with robber barons slurping up more and more of the wealth before this wealth bubble bursts and scarcity becomes a pointless and even quaint notion (except, as I keep saying, for real estate with good scenery, artisanal services, etc.)? > [@Ruken](#): > > The more the merrier. I wouldn’t call it a zombie thread. It’s just a slow thread. We don’t have a lot to say, until we do. Exactly! I don’t think there’s ever been a super long interval without posts. And it’s the kind of thread that really holds up well to being continuously added to, as there have been several significant developments in automation just in the four years since it started. > [@Kinthalis](#): > > Wow! That is amazing stuff. > > I wouldn’t be surprised if the civilization of our robot overlords ends up creating more beautiful and amazing art than we hairless apes ever did. > > Let’s face it guys, we are an evolutionary dead end. Yeah, I may be repeating myself, but when I hear some of the big thinkers on AI talk about how we need to avoid making the mistake of letting AI evolve too far to the point where we essentially become their obsolete forebears, I wonder if that’s even the ethically correct thing to do. Maybe that is a selfish impulse, and the really enlightened move is to let them take over and be content with our role as their progenitors. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2015, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/432 "2015-11-27T02:27:14Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > As I’ve complained over and over in this thread, I simply can’t understand the line of thinking that says only the 0.0001% will control the automated means of production in the brave new world. Why would anyone think that? It makes no sense. The problem is, the 0.0001% won’t control just the means of production, they’ll also control most of the land and the natural resources, not to mention the food production. That’s basically what the shift of wealth from the middle class to the One Percent is all about: the One Percent is grabbing EVERYTHING. What exactly will they need the middle class and the poor for, under the worst case scenario? > [@](#): > > Yes, there will be social stratification in the future. There will be a lot of hopeless people in the future. But those people won’t be hopeless because they’re starving in the gutter and killbots are roaming the countryside grinding useless people into compost. They’ll be hopeless because they have enough food, clothing, shelter, medical care, beer, TV, games, drugs, all their bodily needs taken care of, but they have no reason to live. We’re already halfway to this condition. The elite won’t need to intentionally degrade the proletarian drones to feel superior to them, the drones will display their inferiority all day every day as they sit around in their free trailers watching free TV and drinking free beer and doing nothing. Useless to YOU maybe. You might be surprised how many people lead fulfilling and, to them, useful existences, without having any usefulness to you or anyone you know. It’s like they have their own lives to lead or something. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2015, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/433 "2015-11-27T13:58:01Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > The problem is, the 0.0001% won’t control just the means of production, they’ll also control most of the land and the natural resources, not to mention the food production. Why would .0001% of the people have any interest in owning 50% of the food? > [@](#): > > That’s basically what the shift of wealth from the middle class to the One Percent is all about: the One Percent is grabbing EVERYTHING. What exactly will they need the middle class and the poor for, under the worst case scenario? You’re ascribing to people motives that not only do they not have, but don’t even have any reason to have. You’re so far from right you’re not even wrong anymore. The super rich do not think of everyone else as someone they “need” or “Don’t need.” They think of everyone else as just being the people who don’t get invited to their dinner parties. Brad Pitt, Mark Zuckerberg and Rich Heiress #7 have no plan or role for everyone else. They just act in their own interests, like anyone else does. > [@](#): > > Useless to YOU maybe. You might be surprised how many people lead fulfilling and, to them, useful existences, without having any usefulness to you or anyone you know. It’s like they have their own lives to lead or something. You missed his point, badly. Indeed, you just inadvertently said that your “Robot job holocaust” won’t hurt anyone, and you didn’t even notice you were doing it. [QUOTE=Evil Captor] To me you sound like one of those bankers in 2006 saying, “Real estate will NEVER go down in value.” [/QUOTE] Bankers =/= economists. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2015, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/434 "2015-11-27T18:45:55Z")
**RickJay** , I agree mostly with you, but I have to point to these items: > [@RickJay](#): > > Why would .0001% of the people have any interest in owning 50% of the food? Food is a weapon too. [http://www.crazywebsite.com/Free-Galleries-01/USA\_Patriotic/pg-WWII\_Posters\_Vintage/World\_War\_II\_Patriotic\_Posters\_USA\_Conservation\_Food\_1\_jpg.htm](http://www.crazywebsite.com/Free-Galleries-01/USA_Patriotic/pg-WWII_Posters_Vintage/World_War_II_Patriotic_Posters_USA_Conservation_Food_1_jpg.htm) > [@RickJay](#): > > Bankers =/= economists. Indeed, but the fact was that many economists did lie in the bed of those bankers and did not get not even a reprimand like the bankers did for the meltdown. The economists that “advised” the movers and shakers then did not even got a slap in the wrist. > **[Inside Job: how bankers caused the financial crisis](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/feb/17/inside-job-financial-crisis-bankers-verdicts)** > > The film Inside Job brilliantly exposes the corruption in US banking that led to the 2008 crash. We ask four bankers for their verdict on this damning indictment of their world > [@](#): > > When Glenn Hubbard, George Bush’s chief economic adviser and dean of Columbia Business School, is shown as a partisan advocate of deregulation, we have one of the movie’s punch-the-air moments. During the interview, Hubbard, who denies he was corrupted by his paid-for relationships with government, angrily barks: “You’ve got five minutes, mister. Give it your best shot.” > > The spotlight has largely bypassed academics in the UK. There are plenty of economists who believed the banks understood what they were doing and supported deregulation. Whether they took large slugs of cash for writing poorly researched, cheerleading reports on the economic miracle in Iceland (pre-crash), as former US central banker Frederic Mishkin is found doing, is less clear. Over here, the relationship between academia and business appears to be more arm’s length, though London Business School dean Sir Andrew Likierman sits on the Barclays board, while Howard Davies, who argued for light-touch regulation while head of the Financial Services Authority, has become director of the London School of Economics. The UK’s chief villian, however, is probably the disgraced, but largely unpunished, banker Sir Fred Goodwin, the former boss of Royal Bank of Scotland, once the fifth-largest bank in the world. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2015, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/435 "2015-12-05T20:12:26Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Why would .0001% of the people have any interest in owning 50% of the food? To sell it to the 99 percent, what else? > [@](#): > > You’re ascribing to people motives that not only do they not have, but don’t even have any reason to have. You’re so far from right you’re not even wrong anymore. > > The super rich do not think of everyone else as someone they “need” or “Don’t need.” They think of everyone else as just being the people who don’t get invited to their dinner parties. Brad Pitt, Mark Zuckerberg and Rich Heiress #7 have no plan or role for everyone else. They just act in their own interests, like anyone else does. Yes, the motive I am ascribing to them is greed. They are not grabbing everything because they NEED it, they are grabbing everything because it will make them RICHER than they are now. It’s not like they are casting about to snatch bread from the mouths of starving children (they leave that to their bought and paid for legislators) it’s just that they discover they will increase their portfolio’s growth by X percent if they buy Property Y. And so they keep buying. And they have discovered that if they bribe legislators X millions in PAC money, they will get billions back in tax reductions and preferential legislation. It’s just a matter of numbers. > [@](#): > > You missed his point, badly. Indeed, you just inadvertently said that your “Robot job holocaust” won’t hurt anyone, and you didn’t even notice you were doing it. They’re not going to lead happy and fulfilling lives without some kind of social safety net to support them when the jobs all go bye-bye. > [@](#): > > \Bankers =/= economists. C’mon, they guy who invented trickle-down was an economist, and also one of the most evil people on the planet. He and his family ought to be forced to live on a Walmart workers’ salary for the rest of their miserable lives. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2015, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/436 "2015-12-05T20:19:42Z")
[People are going to be sleeping in their cars](http://www.dezeen.com/2015/11/25/self-driving-driverless-cars-disrupt-airline-hotel-industries-sleeping-interview-audi-senior-strategist-sven-schuwirth/?) on long trips in the next 20 years. Or course, [they already do that now](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0J8GC2gYoc), but the cars don’t drive themselves nowadays, so the results can be tragic. With self-driving cars, sleeping on long trips makes a lot of sense. But will probably create huge disruptions in the domestic travel industry. Lotta hotels and motels are going to go under. ---
**Author:** ![Snarky\_Kong](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a183cd/32.png) [@Snarky\_Kong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snarky_Kong)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2015, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/437 "2015-12-05T20:31:59Z")
Good. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/438 "2015-12-09T06:57:17Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > [People are going to be sleeping in their cars](http://www.dezeen.com/2015/11/25/self-driving-driverless-cars-disrupt-airline-hotel-industries-sleeping-interview-audi-senior-strategist-sven-schuwirth/?) on long trips in the next 20 years. > > Or course, [they already do that now](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0J8GC2gYoc), but the cars don’t drive themselves nowadays, so the results can be tragic. With self-driving cars, sleeping on long trips makes a lot of sense. But will probably create huge disruptions in the domestic travel industry. Lotta hotels and motels are going to go under. Good and interesting point. Although the article points out that people may still want facilities to take showers and so on. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 7:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/439 "2015-12-09T07:12:46Z")
Maybe it will pump new life into the mobile home/RV industry. People will be able to use them more like tour buses, and watch the world pass by through the windows between meals, naps and showers. But I suspect, robot drivers or not, it’s going to be a long time until traffic law is going to allow the driver’s seat to be left empty while the car clips along the highway. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2015, 7:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/440 "2015-12-09T07:23:27Z")
I don’t think so–I think it will become legal within five years of automation becoming commonplace. It will also become increasingly common to outlaw non-automated driving altogether, especially on the interstate. (It may become, for poorer people who can’t afford the new cars yet, the way it is in New Jersey if you can’t afford the tolls on the Turnpike: crawling along on the old U.S. Routes with all their dilapidated commercial infrastructure.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914.md?page=21) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914.md?page=23)