IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2019 - 8

for the U.K. to leave the European Union are also so keen to load
its citizens with student debt: this
implicitly imposes a form of 21st
century indentured slavery by taking
away one of their rights, i.e., the free
movement of labor. The gig economy [12] does no favors for those
on zero-hours contracts, but driverless cars reduces even this perilous
employment (i.e., no couriers or taxi
drivers are required), thereby creating an ever larger pool of labor,
further depressing wages, workers'
rights, pensions, and so on.
The Opinion section of this issue
contains one article predicting that
driverless cars will make passenger rails obsolete, and a number of
responses. Underlying this important debate (and many thanks to the
contributors who have participated
and made it possible in these pages),
is the belief that in the end, this is
not just a question about whether
driverless cars will make passenger
rail obsolete, or whether driverless
cars will be one of a plurality of transport modalities, or a question about
the investment decisions, technological developments, and social
i mp l ic a t i o n s t h a t a r e i mp l ie d

by either outcome. The deeper
question is one of ownership and
transparency: who owns the infrastructure; who owns the "things"
which move on the infrastructure,
who owns the platform(s) that do the
aggregation and service provision,
and who owns the information generated by normal behavior (i.e., commuting). There needs to be more
vocal public inquiry, more strategic
planning and proactive regulation,
and some much better-informed
decision-making about the headlong,
eyes-down pursuit of driverless cars.

[3] A. Winfield, K. Michael, J. Pitt and V.
Evers, Machine ethics: the design and governance of ethical AI and autonomous systems. Proceedings of the IEEE, 107(3):509-517.
[4] N. Milanovic. Life, by subscription.
TechCrunch, 2016. https://techcrunch
.com/2016/03/18/life-by-subscription/
[5] A. Nowak, P. Lukowicz and P. Horodecki.
Assessing Artificial Intelligence for Humanity. IEEE Technology and Society Magazine,
37(4):26-34, 2018.
[6] N. Sipe and D. Pojani, For Mobility as a
Service (MaaS) to solve our transport woes,
some things need to change. The Conversation,
19 Novemmber 2018. https://theconversation.
com/for-mobility-as-a-service-maas-to-solveour-transport-woes-some-things-need-tochange-105119
[7] J. Pitt (editor), This Per vasive Day. IC
Press, 2012.
[ 8 ] I . L ev i n , This Per fect Day. Random
House, 1970.
[9] J. Pitt, A. Rychwalska, M. RoszczynskaKurasinska and A. Nowak, Democratizing
Platforms for Social Coordination. IEEE
Technology and Society Magazine, 38(1):4350, 2019.
[10] C. Wolmar, Are Trams Socialist?: Why
Britain Has No Transport Policy. London Publishing Partnership, 2016.
[11] J. Pitt, J. Clippinger and C. Sorensen,
Values, Axial Currencies, and Computational Axiology: Digital Currencies Can Do
More than Buy Stuff. IEEE Technology and
Society Magazine, 37(3):56-63, 2018.
[12] N. Kobie, What is the gig economy and
why is it so controversial. Wired Magazine, 14
September 2018. https://www.wired.co.uk/
article/what-is-the-gig-economy-meaningdefinition-why-is-it-called-gig-economy

Author Information
Jeremy Pitt is Professor of Intelligent
and Self-Organizing Systems at Imperial College London, U.K. Email:
j.pitt@imperial.ac.uk.

References
[1] G. Monbiot. Cars are killing us. Within
10 years, we must phase them out. The
Guardian, 7 March 2019. https://www.the
guardian.com/commentisfree/2019/
mar/07/cars-killing-us-driving-environmentphase-out
[2] G. Monbiot. The car has a chokehold on
Britain. It's time to free ourselves. The Guardian, 1 August 2017. https://www.theguard
ian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/01/
car-chokehold-britain-polluted-inefficienttransport-system-motor-industry

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Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2019.2919038

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

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JUNE 2019

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2019