Truck driving jobs could be first casualty of self-driving cars

Truck drivers are stuck in the middle of the first major battle in Congress over whether self-driving cars and other artificial intelligence-enabled technologies could take away people's jobs.

The battle: On one side, you have Democrats claiming that rolling out automated trucks too quickly will hurt employment and safety; on the other, you have Republicans who want to quickly move a legislative package meant to speed up the deployment of self-driving technology.

The bigger picture: Truck drivers might be the first set of workers caught in the tug-of-war between old jobs and new technologies. But with Google, Amazon, IBM, and numerous other companies staking their future on artificial intelligence, they won't be the last.

Sound smart: This may be seen as a discrete debate over one subset of a technology that's gotten a lot of positive press attention. But it's really an early skirmish in a larger war over what the impact the quickening pace of AI development means for Americans' paychecks.

Go deeper: Read the full story by Axios' David McCabe here. And, as a refresher, check out the look Axios took earlier this year at places where jobs could be lost when automated trucks are deployed.