Last updated: February 20. 2013 3:34AM - 126 Views  Story Tools:
Font Size:  Social Media:  (AP) They seem right out of a
Hollywood fantasy, and they are: Cars that drive themselves have
appeared in movies like I, Robot and the television show Knight
Rider.  Now, three years after Google invented one, automated
cars could be on their way to a freeway near you. In the U.S.,
California and other states are rewriting the rules of the road
to make way for driverless cars. Just one problem: What happens
to the millions of people who make a living driving cars and
trucks jobs that always have seemed sheltered from the onslaught
of technology?  All those jobs are going to disappear in the
next 25 years, predicts Moshe Vardi, a computer scientist at
Rice University in Houston. Driving by people will look quaint;
it will look like a horse and buggy.  If automation can unseat
bus drivers, urban deliverymen, long-haul truckers, even
cabbies, is any job safe?  Vardi poses an equally scary
question: Are we prepared for a