Uber faces attacks on multiple fronts.
For starters, Susan Fowler, a reliability engineer, unleashed a firestorm with a 3,000-word document describing multiple instances of sexual harassment over the course of a full year, starting with a first-day proposition from her manager.
Next, Uber’s credibility is at stake after one of its self-driving vehicles ran a red light. Uber claimed a human was at the wheel, but it turns out Uber lied.
Finally, Uber also has to deal with a Google lawsuit regarding stolen technology.
The Financial Times reports Susan Fowler, the Techie Taking on Uber.
Travis Kalanick, Uber’s chief executive, started the week by launching an investigation into claims of sexism at the ride-hailing start-up. Within days, a wave of consumers had quit the app to protest at its treatment of female developers.
The revelation that shook Mr Kalanick, Uber and the technology industry came from Susan Fowler, a 25-year old site reliability engineer, who had worked at the company for a little over a year. She wrote an entry on her personal blog called simply: “Reflecting on one very, very strange year at Uber”.
Ms Fowler detailed in almost 3,000 words, each alleged incident of sexism by her superiors. It was shared on Twitter just under 22,000 times. According to her account, Uber’s human resources department refused to discipline her manager when he propositioned her on her first day, despite his having harassed other women. She describes being told something “personal” might be holding her back from moving teams despite a perfect performance review, as well as subtle discrimination, such as female engineers being denied leather jackets given to men, because there were too few women for a bulk discount. “I feel a lot of sadness, but I can’t help but laugh at how ridiculous everything was. Such a strange experience. Such a strange year,” she summed up.
Uber Lies About Running Red Light
The New York Times reports A Lawsuit Against Uber Highlights the Rush to Conquer Driverless Cars
Late last year, Uber, in defiance of California state regulators, went ahead with a self-driving car experiment on the streets of San Francisco under the leadership of Anthony Levandowski, a new company executive.
The experiment quickly ran into problems. In one case, an autonomous Volvo zoomed through a red light on a busy street in front of the city’s Museum of Modern Art.
Uber, a ride-hailing service, said the incident was because of human error. “This is why we believe so much in making the roads safer by building self-driving Ubers,” Chelsea Kohler, a company spokeswoman, said in December.
But even though Uber said it had suspended an employee riding in the Volvo, the self-driving car was, in fact, driving itself when it barreled through the red light, according to two Uber employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they signed nondisclosure agreements with the company, and internal Uber documents viewed by The New York Times. All told, the mapping programs used by Uber’s cars failed to recognize six traffic lights in the San Francisco area. “In this case, the car went through a red light,” the documents said.
Fatal Setback for Uber Coming UPO?
The Guardian reports Google lawsuit could be a fatal setback for Uber’s self-driving dreams.
Anthony Levandowski, who runs Uber’s self-driving car program, is at the center of a blistering lawsuit against Uber that was filed Thursday by his former employer, Google’s self-driving car project, Waymo. He is accused of brazenly stealing critical intellectual property and trade secrets and using them to start his own company, Otto. Uber’s $680m acquisition of Otto in August 2016 gave it access to Waymo’s secrets, the suit claims, which the ride-sharing company is now using to bypass Google’s seven years and many millions of dollars worth of research and development.
Waymo claims to have significant evidence of the theft, including logs of downloads by Levandowski and other Otto recruits, an errant email from a vendor showing that Otto’s LiDAR system – the system that allows an autonomous vehicle to navigate – bears a “striking resemblance” to Waymo’s own design, and documents Otto filed with the Nevada state government. The suit also alleges that Levandowski met with “high-level executives” at Uber’s San Francisco headquarters while he still worked at Google – and one day before he formed the company that would become Otto.
On Friday, Uber issued a blanket denial, saying in a statement: “We have reviewed Waymo’s claims and determined them to be a baseless attempt to slow down a competitor and we look forward to vigorously defending against them in court.” Levandowski did not respond to a request for comment.
But if Google is able to prove its case, the cost to Uber could be significant. In addition to monetary damages, Waymo is seeking an injunction against Uber to bar it from using the allegedly stolen tech.
Google could win a “head-start” injunction against Uber, preventing the company from working on the disputed LiDAR technology for as long as it took Google to develop, according to Robert Merges, an intellectual property expert at the University of California, Berkeley law school. For Uber to “sit on the sideline” for three to five years while its competitors race to market would be a “very significant setback”, Merges said.
At the center of the current dispute is LiDAR, the system of lasers that allow an autonomous vehicle to build a 3D map of its environment and “see” where it is going. Waymo claims that its proprietary LiDAR is its secret sauce, but Merges cautioned that “it might not be as innovative as they make it seem”. If Waymo’s design is derived from public information, such as scientific papers, then Otto and Uber could defend the alleged similarities in design.
Still, experts questioned the speed at which Otto claimed to have developed its own system. “It takes years to break into commercialisation if you start with a blank sheet of paper,” said Richard Wallace of the Center for Automotive Research. “Recreating is a lot slower than ‘I already have it.’”
Waymo has also alleged that the theft went beyond the LiDAR system’s specifications to include other trade secrets involving the company’s supply chain and vendors. And despite Levandowski’s claim that the company was started “traditionally in a house in Palo Alto”, the company’s roots clearly point to Mountain View.
The four co-founders – Levandowski, Lior Ron, Claire Delaunay, and Don Burnette – all left jobs at Google to start Otto. An additional 28 Otto employees are Google alumni, according to a review of LinkedIn profiles, and 18 of them left jobs with Google’s self-driving car unit and joined Otto a month or two later. Many moved into positions with the same or comparable job titles, including Sameer Kshirsagar, Google’s former manager for global supply management for self-driving cars who became Uber and Otto’s director of supply chain in July 2016, the same month he left Google.
In the lawsuit, Waymo alleges that a “supply chain manager” downloaded “confidential supply chain information and other confidential manufacturing information” one month before resigning in July 2016 and going to work for Otto. Kshirsagar did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
On Thursday, just hours before the Waymo suit dropped, Uber was also hit with a public rebuke from two of its earliest investors, Mitch and Freada Kapor. The pair lambasted “a culture plagued by disrespect, exclusionary cliques, lack of diversity, and tolerance for bullying and harassment of every form” and pointed out Uber’s habit of “responding to public exposure of bad behavior by holding an all-hands meeting, apologizing and vowing to change, only to quickly return to aggressive business as usual”.
That’s quite a set of charges, plus a rebuke, all of which seem credible.
Meanwhile, none of this will slow down the march towards driverless vehicles.
Uber or not, the driverless trend is unstoppable.
Related Articles
- January 18, 2017: Evaluating the Timeframe for Self-Driving Widespread Adoption
- January 8, 2017: Google’s Self-Driving Minivans Arrive This Month
- December 3, 2016: Apple Officially Enters Self-Driving Car Race, Sends Letter to DOT
- November 28, 2016: “Otto” Self-Driving Truck Test on Ohio Roads this Week
- September 20, 2016: DOT Embraces Self Driving Vehicles: “Rise of New Technology is Inevitable, Unknowns Today Become Knowns Tomorrow”
- August 6, 2016: Singapore Unveils “Real” Self-Driving Taxis (No Steering Wheel, No Pedal) Dateline 2019
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
David McCabe Gerald Rich Lazaro Gamio
21 Feb 2017
Here’s where jobs will be lost when robots drive trucks
Truck drivers will be some of the first people to lose jobs as automation technology spreads.
A push by companies like Uber to automate heavy trucks through a combination of artificial intelligence and robotics raises questions for millions of drivers brought into the profession by the promise of a steady job. Will they be employed behind the wheel five years from now? Or will robots be doing it instead?
And if you think this is a niche problem, think again. The impact of self-driving trucks would be felt in communities around the country — especially Trump country.
How it could play out:
….
https://www.axios.com/heres-where-jobs-will-be-lost-when-robots-drive-trucks-2276682948.html
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A short history of the trucking industry and why it’s relevant:
The railroad/trucking industry came together and decided upon standards that allowed the same trailer behind a semi-tractor to be used as a railroad car. That change (Intermodal) was gradual and came in the 90’s reducing the average load from 1,200-1,500 miles to 500-800 miles.
“Automated” driving will be no different. Companies will buy yards every 600 or so miles on long stretches of straight uncomplicated driving interstate like I-80. Drivers will then pick up from these yards and deliver the loads locally. Average load length will change from 500-800 miles to 150-300 miles. Like the change to intermodal, the change to “automated” drivers will be gradual and there will be no mass firing of 2 million drivers.
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Driverless trucks: economic tsunami may swallow one of most common US jobs
America is producing more than ever before, but it is doing so with fewer and fewer workers. Once trucks become automated, where will these jobs go?
Martin Ford
Thursday 16 February 2017
In April 2016, Uber announced the acquisition of Otto, a San Francisco-based startup that has developed a kit that can turn any big rig into a self-driving truck.
The Otto technology enables complete autonomy on highways: trucks can navigate, stay in their lane, and slow or stop in response to traffic conditions completely without human intervention. Otto’s equipment currently costs about $30,000, but that is certain to fall significantly in the coming years.
Otto is by no means alone. Massive automated vehicles are already commonly used to move materials for the Australian mining industry. Daimler, the German multinational company, has likewise demonstrated its own model, a giant 18-wheeler with a “highway pilot” mode available (meaning a driver has to remain present, prompting the head of the US branch to say that “tomorrow’s driver will be a logistics manager”). Another approach is to use automated convoys, in which self-driving trucks follow a lead vehicle.
It seems highly likely that competition between the various companies developing these technologies will produce practical, self-driving trucks within the next five to 10 years. And once the technology is proven, the incentive to adopt it will be powerful: in the US alone, large trucks are involved in about 350,000 crashes a year, resulting in nearly 4,000 fatalities. Virtually all of these incidents can be traced to human error. The potential savings in lives, property damage and exposure to liability will eventually become irresistible.
There’s only one problem: truck driving is one of the most common occupations in the US.
Once replaced by automation, where will these jobs go?
….
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/16/self-driving-trucks-automation-jobs-trucking-industry
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What happened to mule-team drivers when the automobile was invented? What happened to lamplighters when the electric light was invented. Where did all the farm workers go when agriculture became mechanized?
There are two kinds of people in the world — those who look backward and bemoan the loss of obsolete occupations and those who look forward and create the occupations of the future. The choice is yours, but you will have to choose.
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Actually, the agrarian and industrial revolutions in the UK that eliminated many jobs led to extreme hardship, even starvation, and many early deaths. Workers were often forced to toil in the coal mines and clay pits, where the death rate was astronomical and death benefits for their families minuscule to nil…Children as young as 6 worked long hours in textile mills, were malnourished, and often died before reaching adulthood. Single women who couldn’t get work as servants were forced into prostitution, where they usually died within a few years.
There’s the historical result of mass displacement of the working classes, and the UK didn’t have immigrants taking away English jobs. That would not have been tolerated….
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@pyrrhus – Thanks for a dose of reality. Too many like Greenberg are incapable of understanding the differences between the pre-industrial, industrial and post-industrial periods, where we are now.
The labor participation rate is on a downward slope and looks to be continuing on that trend for the foreseeable future.
Technology deployment destroys more jobs than it creates. Look at how many people a modern technology company like Google or Apple employ compared to an old line company like GM or Ford. This is why so many people have to hustle for work in the “gig economy”, for instance, acting as glorified taxi drivers working for companies like Uber and Lyft. Or else work part-time at various service jobs like coffee server, burger flipper, nail polishers and so on.
Each year going forward, there will be less jobs available for humans than the years prior. There are not and will not be enough positions, even part-time for absorbing 2-3 million former truck and taxi drivers into the work force.
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I am perfectly capable of understanding those differences Joe. I just have faith that humanity will soldier on, find new ways to occupy time and trade with each other.
At any rate, there’s no stopping technological progress so my initial point stands. One can either complain about cruel fate or put the stuff between the ears to good use.
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Of course technology deployment reduces jobs, and it always has. That, after all, is the whole point. No technology would ever be adopted unless it makes things better or more efficient.
Note that we can affect the speed of deployment of technology dramatically with our economic policies. Compare two possible policies. One policy is to respond to technology deployment by dramatically raising minimum wage. The logical result of this policy option would/will be to exponentially speed up the deployment of technology. For example, with a $15 minimum wage, expect to see self service kiosks in fast food restaurants, and automated cooking equipment, and a dramatic reduction of personnel. Also expect to see less brick and mortar stores, and more online shopping where items can be shipped direct to consumers from fully automated warehouses.
A possible alternate policy (which will no doubt never be adopted) would be to eliminate the minimum wage entirely, and then to supplement the income of those with very low hourly wages. This would slow down the deployment of technology until the technology became much less expensive. It would also allow many more people (including the handicapped) to have the self-respect that comes from actually having a meaningful job. Why can it never be adopted? Because well-meaning liberals will tell the lower income workers that it is unfair to them, and that they are “worth” much more, and that they are entitled to demand a minimum wage of at least $15 an hour, and they will, little realizing that the group hurt most by rising minimum wage is low end employees, who then find themselves entirely unemployable.
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Total number of jobs existing on planet Earth has exploded since the start of the Industrial Revolution, in case you missed the news or have trouble with very large numbers. Even Karl Marx and later Lenin recognized and embraced this trend towards technology and automation as part of the socialist revolution (worker’s paradise). A major downside to technology like personal computers and smart cell phones, is all the dumb-ass rants against technology on the Internet. Not exactly Fake News, but similar. Use a lead pencil to handwrite your anti-tech comments, and snail mail them to Mish to post on a bulletin board in his home if you hate technology. Hypocritical to do otherwise.
Some textile workers lost jobs and burned down textile mills in protest of technology/automation at the start of the Industrial Revolution. But the more automated textile industry now employs more people than at the start of the Industrial Revolution, and people today have more clothing in much wider variety than ever before in human history. And handcrafted designer clothing is still available, too. Also, in case you missed the news, Henry Ford started the automation (intro of technology) of automobile manufacturing. Automation (technology) allows mass production of automobiles, and hence higher wages. Handcrafted cars are still available, but much more expensive and employ fewer people than GM or Ford assembly lines.
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“What happened to mule-team drivers when the automobile was invented? What happened to lamplighters when the electric light was invented.”
They went on to other lowish IQ (consider the number of people on the left hand side of the symmetrical IQ bell curve and the number of people on the right hand side who apparently don’t use what they have) jobs which didn’t require advanced education since huge numbers of those jobs existed then. What happens when all of those jobs are automated as they will be in our time?
It is simply a misguided act of FAITH to compare past events with the present and say that everything will be OK simply because they were OK then. It’s comparing apples and oranges.
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Agree to disagree Winston, as reasonable people are known to do.
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It isn’t straightforward, if it is one step back then two forwards, a lot depends on what people step back into, and that is not just in material terms but the whole change in status and motivation, as well as what real perspectives are perceived from there. If you lose your job, if your training is no longer applicable, but your debt and obligations stay the same, and that goes on across society, then it could lead to a lot of hardship and disruption.
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That their will exist temporary problems is unquestionable.
Bowever, in a free society or limited red tape all kinds or new jobs will manifest. Human desires are endless. Eventually we may be an almost entirely service economy.
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Maybe they can become very well paid commercial aircraft assemblers… oh, wait. I love how the ONE guy now controlling it all says it’s a good thing because the job caused the formerly employed human workers to have aches and pains:
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What made me smile was
” But the more automated textile industry now employs more people than at the start of the Industrial Revolution”
The fact that the global population has grown by 700% since the time of Ned Ludd seems to be immaterial.
Clothing ownership is probably up by a factor of 20.- much, much more in my wife’s case.
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Well one difference is the automobile and electric light businesses didn’t have ZIRP to raid the pensions of the workers they were displacing, to fund their launch.
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I’m so surprised by so many educated, intelligent people who are either unwilling or unable to differentiate between the Industrial Revolution and the Post-Industrial Revolution going on today.
When we shifted from the mule to the truck, both were devoid of a BRAIN! The human was needed since he/she provided the brain.
In the case of the autonomous truck, it comes with a robotic/AI brain. So, humans not needed anymore. Why is it so hard to understand?
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An expert is someone who has made every mistake possible in a given field. Sounds like Uber is well on its way to becoming expert.
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Uber’s mistakes are mostly about flaunting or breaking the law — pretending employees are contractors, running red lights then lying about it, stealing intellectual property… not to mention the allegation that some (male) employees are more part of the team than other (female) employees.
Experts in breaking the law, and alienating half the team?
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Sorry the humor in my comment wasn’t more obvious. I’ll try harder next time.
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I saw you were making a joke, but thought you were going in a different direction…
A lot of “tech” companies really do advance by making lots of mistakes and learning from them. Thomas Edison is reputed to have said he hadn’t failed to invent the lightbulb, so far he had found 9999 ways that didn’t work.
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Uber may be on its way to being Unter.
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Six Feet Unter
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Approximately two meters… 🙂
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When I think about how many “older” couples I know (older, not elderly) that met each other at the office and remain happily married decades later, I wonder if the feminist brigade has thought through their complaining about a man making a pass at a woman at the office… if you are spending (at least) 40-50 hours at an office, where exactly do you figure you are going to meet someone? Ladies need to think through where the line is — a man making a pass at you in the office, by itself, should be flattering, not grounds for a lawsuit.
The other parts, if true, are more worrying even if they aren’t discrimination. The leather jacket slight seems ridiculous… not sure why Uber “can’t get a bulk discount” for women’s jackets., Assuming Uber needs the discount: the jacket is more about team building than discounts. A well run company wants everyone to feel and be part of a team. A company divided against itself (even if it isn’t sexist), is a company that is going to lose.
Self driving cars are going to get regulated — too many government unions that refuse to right-size, too many ambulance chasing trial lawyers who donate too much money to too many politicians. For Uber to ignore the law and operate unlicensed vehicles is a non-starter. A well run company would never had tried that stunt.
Running a red light? Then lying about it? Its like Uber thinks they are Hilary Clinton (but without a leather employee jacket)
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According to
https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-one-very-strange-year-at-uber
it wasn’t just a pass, though management pretended it was though they new otherwise.
At work, if you make a mistake or misjudge, then you should pay the price… at the very least apologise and self correct. Much more decent is simply to invite the person out etc., i.e. a form where a rejection has much less consequence and is less imposing on the other.
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As I mentioned, whomever making a pass **IN ITSELF** should not be a big deal, it should be flattering. She should say thanks but no, etc; and there should be no further consequences to either party. Women get asked and men get rejected all the time — that’s life.
But then if the other allegations are true, it does make me wonder if she has a valid point. Even if the leather jacket slight isn’t sexist (I have no idea), its dumb business to alienate half of your own team
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I think the key factor is the superior/subordinate relationship. There is a strong undertone of harassment when a boss hits on an underling, i.e., how can you possibly say no if you care about advancing your career?
As for the “half your own team,” I think you are dramatically overestimating the ratio of men to women employed by Uber corporate (excluding drivers, though I don’t rule out women drivers been off-put by the corporate culture, has anyone interviewed them?).
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Think you took “half the team” ratio a bit too literally. Women are about half the population and about half the potential workforce (even if they don’t work in that Uber department). Whether more women work in some other department or at some other company, they are still being alienated and made to feel like they are not part of the team. Its still a dumb business decision to alienate “somewhere approximately but not necessarily precisely” half your team.
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Well it wasn’t exactly flattering invitations she received, and she was told best to move dept. . The jacket story is just dumb, not by her but by Uber. They fork out for 150 or so male jackets and deny the girls their 6 I think on bulk price difference… petty sort of vindictiveness probably… even possibly by female management, who knows.
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I skimmed the story on her blog page, but it says that he texted her that he/his wife were swingers and the wife was having more luck than him. Pretty sure that sort of text message would get a man slapped upside the head in most states — and the man would deserve it. In many states with strong religious cultures, the guy would quickly be persona non grata.
California has its own weird standards and its own weird sex clubs… who knows what the social norm is out there?
In itself, the texts were stupid, not discrimination. Combined the other allegations it looks a lot worse.
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Sometimes staff environment can get very inbred and self-perpetuating/reinforcing. Even solid companies just seem to often get stuck in a rut and not be able to refresh themselves, are eventually overtaken.
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A scandalous story…
throughout history…
a crowd pleaser.
Link to “Dirty Laundry by Don Henley [News Parody]” if embed failed:
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I seem to recall being promised a national ‘day without females’?……..
I wuz robbed…..
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… changed their minds at the last minute maybe.
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Perfect 1, 2 punch…line.
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Day without Women is being sponsored and run by a woman convicted of terrorism (2 bombings) in Israel — she is a violent marxist. Her right hand woman allegedly brought weapons into a courtroom that were used in a long gun battle where several people (including the judge) were killed — she fled to Cuba.
When the DNC tried to run a “feminist” who’s actions implicitly endorsed her husband’s sleeping all over town and country … it kind of backfired. Probably didn’t help that Hillary is a liar and a crook.
All that is missing is for George Soros to “donate” a few million to NGO’s he controls to hire violent agitators — beat people up and destroy property. How many different European countries have now banned Soros and his “non profit” violence? In addition to Hungary his birth country? Sponsoring acts of political violence is supposedly illegal in all western democracies — apparently its OK if a democratic party big-donor does it.
Seems like women can find better ways to make their points than a day of extra violence
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What an article. It has it all, sex, intrigue and drama. Buggy whip makers of the world unite.
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But no romance 😦 .
Why do you have whips on your mind Seenit, you know we are relatively conservative here.
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I respect the enthusiasm for driverless vehicles, except people like to drive. Manufacturers have invested fortunes to make driving cars enjoyable, and it may be suggested this response meets a need inherent in the drivers. In the case of driverless trucks, probably a passenger would be needed at least to keep the load in safe custody, otherwise the truck would be vulnerable to robbery.
I think the main consequence of development of driverless vehicle technology will be mergers and acquisitions in the auto industry. The car company that develops the best system will attract more investment and use the money to buy out the competition. The result will be consolidation, with fewer companies building cars in the future.
A surprising example that supports my conclusion is the story of self-playing pianos. One hundred years ago, piano companies had been in a race to develop the perfect player piano technology. Seemingly this was achieved by the Aeolian piano company with its Duo-Art system. Whereas at the time perhaps more than 200 companies had built pianos in the United States, Aeolian soon used the investment attracted by its technological prowess to buy out its rivals, and by 1932 it was by far the largest of just a handful of piano companies remaining. The ironic thing is that player pianos never outsold their conventional rivals, and the technology disappeared after WWII. The reason was, perhaps, that people who were motivated to purchase pianos decided to buy because they wanted to play, not so much because they wanted to listen.
This reasoning can be applied to self-driving cars. The question presents, whether more people would make a decision to buy a car because they want to drive, or because they want to go along on a ride? If the former, then the self-driving technology will be an interesting option but not critical to selling cars.
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As is well known in the Ad business, most cars are sold on sex appeal or as some other reflection of the buyer’s personality.
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A lot of people buy cars, and then heavily personalize them. There are multiple hour long TV shows on several cable channels where gear heads discuss the modifications they have made to their cars / trucks.
Many other people have cars / trucks because they want to be able to travel where and when they want to go, without having to put all their personal information in a corporate database.
Imagine the whole Romeo and Julliet play — but each time they wanted a secret rendezvous they had to put their ID’s into Google/Uber’s databases, and those big brother companies then sent an alert to the family patriarchs? … This is an attribute of humanity that predates the car, and transcends cultures and time periods.
Driverless cars might replace some taxis in big cities. They already replaced dump truck drivers in many mining operations. But the pizza delivery boy has nothing to fear, unless the pizza somehow walks to the door by itself and magically collects payment — I would estimate that more than 95% of pizzas are bought with cash. Sometimes you don’t want your eating splurge to be documented for all time in a corporate database.
It is lunacy to suggest that humanity will give up freedom of movement … and that is what this driverless car fantasy claim really boils down to. The claim would fail in Shakespeare’s time before cars were invented, and it fails now.
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Driving used to be fun, but there are too many people on the roads now… it’s torture.
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People will give up driving when the cost to insure a human driver goes to 1000x a robot driver. Plus, private automobile ownership will eventually vanish for the vast majority. Two more generations and no one will miss it.
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But not everyone lives in California or subscribes to their weirdness. And based on the number of people and businesses fleeing CA — a lot of soon to be ex-Californians don’t buy into it either.
Freedom of movement, and movement controlled by politically motivated corporations, are not compatible. As long as Google is going to be pushing Eric Schmidt’s uber-liberal politics, they will have problems.
Most companies donate to both parties and try to at least appear politically neutral — the political pendulum goes back and forth, companies that take sides end up crushed when the pendulum invariably shifts the other way.
If there are so many smart people at Google, why don’t they grasp the obvious? Maybe — like the ding bats running the Fed — Googlers are academic/book smart, but lacking in street smarts?
A smart company would have anticipated the country not veering dangerously left of center. A smart company would have looked at what the entire country was thinking and feeling — not just San Fran and NYC. A smart company would have stayed politically neutral…. that whole “don’t be evil” thing that Google used to believe.
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There will likely be only one winning company in the driverless vehicle competition. All the rest will go bust. I will guess Google, because they have cash and access to the best brains, many of them contractors…
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I take allegations of sexism about as seriously as allegations of racism. They are usually BS. In most cases they are just a Marxist weapon to either get ahead or to destroy your competition. By constant lying and overuse, the Marxists have completely deflated the seriousness of words like racism, sexism, rape, assault etc.
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The Marxists are sending robots to steal your medicine. Be vigilant!
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Sorry if my cynical realism offends you. Over my career, I have met plenty of “activist” employees that thought that their purpose is to look for “oppression” behind every corner.
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I don’t like the idea of some perv screwing up the career and peace of mind of an employee and have management defend him doing so, if that is the case.
But.
My experience is that women can be as sexist, if not more so, than men, and some will happily take all the effort put into sincerely raising the standards, of whatever kind, for women, and use it for their own selfish ends. Politicians also do the same.
Several times I have been falsely accused ( as in total invention) by women, sometimes not finding out even till much later, and have pieced together the damage done to myself, friends and family. So all I can say to feminists is to simply fuck off, go sort out ‘your own’ first if that is what concerns you and how you want to look at the world, and stop doing a disservice to other women by speaking and acting in their name.
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We live in a bizarro world. Twenty years ago they would strip your gold medal if you did not have the correct chromosomes to compete as a woman. Today they allow boys to grow their hair out, call themselves transgender then waltz straight to a wrestling championship against normal girls.
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The first one is the standard feminist BS.
From her post :
“It was clear that he was trying to get me to have sex with him, and it was so clearly out of line that I immediately took screenshots of these chat messages and reported him to HR.”
The guy tries to hit on her, and instead of saying no she screenshots & forwards to HR …
Let that sink in, she can’t even engage in a conversation, she immediately militarizes it.
She wanted the management to fire the guy. Or at least scold him. Because she can’t tolerate being hit on. Because she can’t just say “no” to a guy.
Later in the post she blatantly lies, says several women were “harassed”, but she fails to present anyone :
“In my meeting, the rep I spoke with told me that he had never been reported before, he had only ever committed one offense (in his chats with me), and that none of the other women who they met with had anything bad to say about him, so no further action could or would be taken. It was such a blatant lie that there was really nothing I could do.”
And her post goes on, and on. Basically ranting how Uber is a masculine company, and she wants her safe space.
An easy way to stop this SJW / feminists problem is to stop putting women in men jobs. No women in engineering jobs. No women no problem.
(also stop hiring leftists. but that’s harder to detect)
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Her boss is a jerk at best though
‘ My primary interests lie in metaphysics, philosophy of physics, and philosophy of math. I’m especially interested in: metaphysical implications and interpretations of quantum mechanics, the ontology of quantum field theory, the metaphysics of spacetime, structural realism, symmetries of nature, and the metaphysics of high energy physics (esp. beyond-the-standard model physics).’ Susan Fowler
Her boss ‘ I want to have sex or go work somewhere else’
Duh.
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Or, more concisely: “Seeing how much freshly printed Fed notes are thrown willy nilly at all things nominally ‘self driving’, the the usual coquetry of ambulance chasers, opportuninstic whores and others incapable of contributing anything at all useful, are desperately trying to get in on the action by sticking their grubby, attention starved fingers into value chains created and maintained by their infinitely betters.
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” Many moved into positions with the same or comparable job titles,”
Of course they did.
You don’t hire a supply chain manager as a welder.
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Like Trump and Brexit, Uber challenges the established powers. Hence, the MSM has to bring them down. Sexual harassment has become an extortion racket, much easier than medical malpractice and slip-and-fall lawsuits.
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MSM like the story, but I think that she is just writing out loud to make a point and did not expect that much attention. She is no fan of Trump but does not seem too political, says that an investigative campaign has been started against her… probably going to end up with more attention than she would like.
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You might be right, and I may be cynical. But I suspect a trial lawyer behind this media PR campaign ready to negotiate/extort money from Uber and sell book and movie rights. That’s the way things typically work in the USA. “Good cause” laws are a form of crony capitalism. Designed by lawyers in the USA Congress to benefit cronies via monetizing “good causes.” Business as usual in the USA, this legalized “milking” of businesses. The Trial Lawyer industry is one of the largest special interest contributors to the Democratic party. So, a form of political party self-interest, these lawyerly rackets ostensibly benefiting “victimized groups.”
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Hmmm, I did not know that there was a trial lawyer scene in the US, though I know legal recourse is very high there. In other countries the law just tends to get handed down, can be challenged and adjusted or clarified, but the content doesn’t tend to eminate from civil appeals, rather political process, signed petitions etc.
I suppose we will see, for now it seems like an open argument and neither has initiated proceedings… might even be Uber that starts to protect its reputation.
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Trial lawyers are a powerful special interest and write many of the laws to suit their interests, which is why Class Action and Medical Lawsuits are major USA growth industries. More profitable than manufacturing and traditional industry. Nothing happens or accrues by accident in the USA. Even Fake News is choreographed and its release carefully planned in advance. Now that Uber is an MSM villain, expect them to be labeled racist, put under the microscope for bathroom gender policies, investigated for possible ties to undesirables like Russia, Trump, etc. The Russian connection should be obvious, as Northern California once had Russian settlements and flew the Russian flag. The legality of USA annexation of Russian California is unclear, and separate from Russia’s sale of Alaska to the USA. San Francisco, site of Uber’s red light violation, has a large Russian population today, and with a Russian consulate might be labeled a Kremlin outpost. Mighty suspicious. Should flash some red warning lights, if not a Congressional investigation and special prosecutor.
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@chrysangle — “….Hmmm, I did not know that there was a trial lawyer scene in the US…”
WTF?
The US has more lawyers than any other country on Earth. The US is about 4% of the global population, and about 25% of global GDP. We have 41% of all the lawyers in the world, and many law school graduates in the US do not “practice” law.
The Trial Lawyers Association is the largest single donor to the Democratic political party, by leaps and bounds (and many big law firm partners max their personal contributions also).
Many of the laws that have been applied — for IT intellectual property and driverless cars and so on — were written before the integrated transistor chip was invented.
Legislatures are usually preoccupied with baseball scandals, invisible “Russian spies” who turn out to be disgruntled Congressional staffers, and of course attending the next campaign fundraiser dinner. Most legislators have staffers handle email, because Congress doesn’t know how and traditionally “letters” were done by secretaries. Most US legislators understand e-commerce about as well as African bushmen… they have no clue.
Anyone who thinks Congress, or any state legislature, are going to understand artificial intelligence is out of their friggin’ minds….
Sometimes slimey lawyers become trial lawyers and sue microwave oven manufacturers because a woman tried to dry her cat in the microwave (true story, and the crazy lady won). But other times, slimey lawyers turn into “lobbyists”… Washington DC has a whole area (known as K Street) infested with lobbyists.
Lobbying is the only legal way (legal does not mean ethical) to bribe politicians and staffers. And the lobbyists in Washington DC are experts at all sorts of bribe payments disguised by any other name.
Every member of Congress has written at least one book. You may not have read it (no one has), but they sell for $50 a copy and lobbyists buy almost all for “holiday gifts”. Congress member gets royalties (a bribe by any other name), books get recycled (no one reads them).
And the speaking circuit is ripe for bribery. Come talk to our top salespeople at our retreat in Hawaii! 5-star hotel and private airplane are included for the invited speaker and his mistress (or wife if you are into that). $250K speaking fee, and we don’t care what the topic is. most attendees will be too drunk to care what the topic is, and labeling it a speaker’s fee avoids bribery charges.
That is how the USA works now. Sorry if you thought we were still a shining beacon of liberty on a hill — Washington DC works on backroom payments now.
Yes, most lobbyists are lawyers, because they need to understand the law well enough to structure the bribe payments as something else.
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Time to put the entire leadership of Uber where they belong: in jail working on chain gangs 12 hours a day
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Every trial lawyer in the country is salivating at the notion of a “driverless vehicle” causing a fatal accident. Juries will award many millions.
Liability and stupid human tricks will keep technology at bay.
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wrong on that
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A more realistic concern is that, when faced with the inability to get robodrivers to integrate fully, 100%, efficiently, into the chaos that is traffic, all the money “invested” in it, largely by the well connected, will have to be “protected.” Which is all that government does these days. By rather draconian limitations on how those who can not yet afford a robocar are allowed to drive. Think a few orders of magnitude increase of the “The Guys with Teslas get their own lane, you get to be stuck in traffic, ’cause the guys in Teslas are rich enough to afford a marketing campaign satisfying their desire for vanity by claiming they help the technology of the future, while you are just a drone” effect.
So, you’ll have to tiptoe around, bow down face in the mud, and wait in line, as those designated as Lords roll on by. Them getting to show off their latest contraptions are obviously more important than you getting to where you’re going on some sort of dispatch. Your job is, after all, just to cheer for them and feel happy and proud at how great and advanced “your” country is. Just like when the Lords allow you to see video footage of other advanced technology things they have, like “precision guided” bombs. (That also sometimes don’t really work as precisely as intended of course, but shut up, cheer, and be proud, you peon!)
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Reblogged this on The Most Revolutionary Act and commented:
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Uber faces attacks on multiple fronts. For starters, Susan Fowler, a reliability engineer, unleashed a firestorm with a 3,000-word document describing multiple instances of sexual harassment over the course of a year. Next, Uber’s credibility is at stake after one of its self-driving vehicles ran a red light. Uber claimed a human was at the wheel, but it turns out Uber lied. Finally, Uber also has to deal with a Google lawsuit regarding stolen technology.
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Move on Mish. Autonomous vehicles happening “sometime soon” is the lowest of hanging fruit. Everyone and their donkey knows the impacts. There are tech sites for that. Please.
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Most of my readers – at leat the commenters – still think it is decades away
I simply report when there is news.
It’s a very important topic, and not remotely understood by most
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not remotely understood … or greatly feared?
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When an idea is developed for commercialization, it DOES take much longer to “solve” than when competitors enter the market. The main reason being whenever the new idea is discussed, it is the problem that is discussed, not the solution. It takes a great deal of time to define the problem. Mistakes in the development process arise when an experiment goes wrong and engineers then understands why. The patent is only on the solution to the problem, and not the problem itself.
When someone explains to me the functionality of a product or project goal, I begin envisioning a solution very quickly from known building blocks arranged differently. It is possible for Uber to arrive at the stage it did much faster than it took Google, even without the alleged intellectual property theft.
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+1
Then add huge discrepancies in judgment about when something is sufficiently functional (Google wants strong general assurances of self driving tech. Otto wants to limit the complexity space as much as possible to get something, anything, On The Road as soon as possible. The Uber guys reckon: “Dude, I run red lights all the time when I’min a hurry. I wouldn’t buy a robocar that didn’t! Waiting in line is for the little guys….”)
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“Uber Under Attack for Sexism, Running Red Lights, Stealing Google’s Technology”
That headline genuinely made me laugh. I never realised Uber was such a badass company. Reminds me of like 18th century British pirate / mercantilist company tactics.
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