A group of ex-Google engineers have just launched Otto, an autonomous trucking startup:

Otto’s first vehicle is twice as long and six times as heavy as Google’s cute prototype car, but has exactly the same number of drivers: zero.

Founded by four ex-Google engineers — including Anthony Levandowski, the man who built Google’s very first self-driving car — Otto is applying Google’s all-or-nothing approach to commercial big rigs: ditch human drivers, avoid thousands of road deaths, help the environment, and if all goes well, make a ton of money along the way.

I can tell you who won’t be getting ‘a ton of money’—the drivers that used to drive those big rigs.

Are technology companies putting enough thought into ramifications of phasing out entire sections of the workforce?

[Side thought: I wonder if they got the name of their startup from the idealized thermodynamic cycle that describes the functioning of a typical spark ignition piston engine]