SYDNEY — Miner Rio Tinto will use driverless trains to deliver its iron ore to ports in Western Australia in what it said will be the world’s first automated, long-distance, heavy-haul rail network.
Rio said a US$518 million investment would see the launch of the first driverless train in the vast and mineral-rich Pilbara region in 2014 with the full project scheduled for completion a year later.“Expanding Pilbara iron ore production is a high-return and low-risk investment for Rio Tinto that will enhance shareholder value,” said Rio’s chief executive for Australia and iron ore, Sam Walsh.
“Automation will help us meet our expansion targets in a safe, more efficient and cost-effective way.”
The Anglo-Australian mining giant, which is facing sustained demand from Asia for raw materials, said automation would improve efficiency and allow the company to address the significant skills shortage facing the industry.
But the announcement has raised fears that the 500 workers Rio employs on its Pilbara trains will be axed, with the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Workers’ Union describing the skills shortage line as propaganda.
“This is all about profitability at the expense of workers and workers’ jobs,” the union’s Gary Wood told the ABC.Read it at Raw Story
Australian firm plans network of driverless freight trains
by Agence France-Presse
6 comments:
Uh, yea, its about profitability. Is that a bad thing? All technology has increased profitability and removed some job - should we roll it all back?
Roll it all back. Profits are only one aspect. Do you want a completely unmanned million ton vehicle running through your backyard? The computer, no doubt can make faster decisions and better reactions until it doesn't. The folks on Air France flight 447 thought they were safe in a plane that used the computers decision making process over that of the pilots actions. It went well until the pitot tubes were filled with gunk. Then the automated process on the plane did the logical action using the instrument readings. It stalled the plane and crashed. The sensor told it to. But don't worry the engineers modified the software.
@ CybrWeez
Productivity gains from technological innovation should be committed to increasing distributed prosperity, making possible greater leisure as freedom of choice in allocating one's time — instead of further enriching an already super-rich elite, thereby increasing social unrest and political turmoil.
No brainer.
Testable hypothesis here:
Rio said that as it expanded its businesses, the number of people it employed would increase overall but the skills required would be a little different.
"Our business, no matter what, even with the autonomous train programme will still need more employees in five years time than we need today in total," Rio Tinto's Pilbara iron ore chief Greg Lilleyman told the state broadcaster.
@TomatoBasil, feel free to write better software. Or think of ways to make it fall back to human actions more robustly. Whining accomplishes little.
marris: Rio said that as it expanded its businesses, the number of people it employed would increase overall but the skills required would be a little different.
Humanity is now moving into the knowledge economy from the industrial economy, just as humanity moved from the agricultural economy to the industrial economy previously. Used to be that almost 100% of the human population was connected with the agricultural economy. Now it is about 1%. Just as the agricultural workers were "reallocated," so too will the industrial workforce.
Just a industrial workers were able to negotiate greater distribution of productivity gains to give them more choice than agricultural workers had generally had, so too will there be a similar transition going into the knowledge economy. We just can quite envision what it will look like yet.
But I am overall positive about this. Collective consciousness is rising globally, spurred by technological advances in communication and greater availability of knowledge.
I agree with Ravi Batra that humanity stands on the brink of a new golden age once we deal with the obstacles, and this is now coming to a head globally. But that doesn't mean there won't be a pretty severe phase transition, as the TPTB attempt to perpetuate the status quo. However, history has a liberal bias. Freedom is increasing overall, in spite of the fits and starts.
Roll it back Tomato? Like, get rid of farm machinery, iron plows, hell, plows themselves, in order to provide jobs? Nonsense! Throughout the centuries, technology has increased prosperity (you did know we live in a ridiculously easy time in history right?). This is another example.
Yes, it enriches the super wealthy now, and that's why I think the next step is to figure out how to live in a world that's on its way to full automation (where our needs are supplied by machines). All those manufacturing jobs people bemoan are lost to China, they'll be lost to machines soon enough, forget about them. What comes next?
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