[ssharp]

It's just speculation that he'd be anti-automated vehicles. I agree with you in regards to environmental protection but you can't extrapolate that into thinking Trump will be against everything you're in favor of.

Until Trump proves otherwise, I'll continue to think he's not going to act like current Republican leadership, because he didn't act like that during the primary or general election and his platform doesn't line-up with someone who would be against self-driving vehicles.

[pavlov]

We just don't know yet. His public talks have been to a white blue-collar audience, so if you take the things he's said there to represent his platform, then it's pretty clear that he's not in favor of replacing drivers with automation.

But what is he saying in private to people like Peter Thiel? We have no idea... And amusingly, Hillary was heavily criticized by Trump proponents for stating the obvious about public vs. private stances. Every bit of Hillary's private talks was dug up, but we know essentially nothing about Trump's real intentions. (Maybe Wikileaks could get on the case? Hah.)

[ssharp]

He's largely talked about tax breaks and trade reform to encourage more companies to bring things back to the U.S. that are currently done overseas. I don't recall him ever talking about eliminating technology that replaces human labor. I think it's way too big of a leap to speculate on that until he shows signs of moving in that direction.

There's a lot to dislike about him and I don't think it's fair to speculate on positions of his he's given no evidence to merit speculation on.

[shanusmagnus]

This interpretation is stunning to me. The Trump base is not savvy Republican mucky-mucks -- it's _exactly_ the people who would be directly and immediately impacted (for the worse) by these technologies. It's a very clear path from "Tesla, Google, and Uber created automated trucking technology that eliminated 2.3 million jobs" to "Donald Trump did nothing to stop the destruction of 2.3 million jobs."

One might make subtler arguments about how this (and much) technology indirectly benefits all of civilization in myriad ways, even in the face of causal fallout like that mentioned above, but we have not one scrap of evidence that subtle arguments will either be employed or considered.

[celticninja]

I just meant that he could take that stance and it would be in line with his statements pre election. Personally I don't see it happening because the biggest drivers in automated driving are currently Google and Tesla, both are US companies. If the leading lights in this sector were Volkswagen and Beijing Automotive Group then he could certainly fall the other side of the argument.