The first batch of ordinary people who switched to autonomous driving are alread

In November 2018, 33-year-old Zhang Jiaqiang made a decision that surprised his family, planning to leave Luoyang and become an older "Beijing drifter," venturing to Beijing to explore new opportunities. "Beijing is home to many well-known enterprises, including Baidu, Tencent, and ByteDance, with abundant job opportunities. Whether it's traditional or emerging industries, there's a vast job market."

Beyond pursuing better job prospects, Zhang Jiaqiang also had considerations regarding his children's education: if he could settle down in Beijing, he could then bring his children to Tianjin for school. Compared to the fiercely competitive college entrance examination (Gaokao) province of Henan, Tianjin has been described as offering the best value among all the Gaokao provinces in China.

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At that time, Zhang Jiaqiang's eldest daughter had already started first grade, and his youngest son was just one year old, giving him a relatively ample window of time to strive for success.

During the six years of his "Beijing drifter" life, Zhang Jiaqiang maintained the habit of returning home every two months. However, due to the reduced frequency of meetings, his family was still somewhat unaccustomed to the life of few gatherings and many separations. This further accelerated Zhang Jiaqiang's desire to achieve results in his new job and settle down with a home as soon as possible.

A recent public notice of new professions by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security has added a bit more confidence to Zhang Jiaqiang's prospects of working and buying a house. According to the announcement, the profession of smart connected vehicle maintenance and operation personnel, to which Zhang Jiaqiang belongs, as well as the related profession of smart connected vehicle testers, have both been included in the latest published list of professions.

This means that the niche career path Zhang Jiaqiang chose six years ago is now experiencing a surge in the number of practitioners. Especially with the advent of AI large model technology, the autonomous driving industry is also entering a critical period of development, with an increasing number of companies engaged in the autonomous driving industry and their capabilities becoming stronger. On recruitment software, searching for keywords "autonomous driving" and "safety officer for unmanned vehicles" shows a visibly higher demand for related recruitment this year compared to last year. Major companies have released a large number of safety officer recruitment needs, among which, Luobo Kuaibao has explicitly stated a preference for candidates with experience as a ride-hailing driver.

"Our backend receives an average of six to seven hundred resumes per day, all for the position of safety officer for Luobo Kuaibao's autonomous driving, and many job seekers have previously driven ride-hailing cars," a recruitment director from a human resources company told the Alphabet List on August 20th. "When screening resumes, we also give priority to job seekers with experience in driving ride-hailing cars."

With the demand comes the opportunity for more ordinary people to participate in the forefront of technology: 40-year-old Li Cheng from Wuhan, who had been a full-time stay-at-home dad for eight years, became an autonomous driving road test safety officer in 2022; 40-year-old Lu Weibing from Wuhan, who could no longer compete in the ride-hailing industry, became an autonomous driving ground safety officer in the same year; and 43-year-old Wang Juan from Wuhan, who had terminated her contract with a traditional car company, also became an autonomous driving road test safety officer in 2023...

The promising future of autonomous driving has even attracted a group of post-95s to join in. Liu Jianhua, born in 1998, began his career as an autonomous driving maintenance and operation officer in 2023, driven by his passion for autonomous driving technology.The public's acceptance of autonomous driving technology is seen by Liu Jianhua as a significant dimension for measuring the development prospects of autonomous driving. "At the beginning, some people were worried about the safety of autonomous driving and were hesitant to try it, but now look at places like Beijing, Wuhan, and Shenzhen, where unmanned vehicles have been increasingly accepted by ordinary citizens."

When a technology is recognized by more people and they are willing to try it, on one hand, it implies the broad development prospects of the technology; on the other hand, it often means the arrival of a new transformation in the labor market configuration.

The "replacement theory anxiety" caused by AI has also been widely mentioned as technologies like autonomous driving mature. Data released by CCID Consulting shows that AI will replace 85 million jobs, but "technological progress and the transformation of the relationship between machines and human labor will create 97 million new jobs in the future, far exceeding the jobs replaced by AI," said Fu Changwen, President of CCID Consulting.

Why are there still so many people worried that AI will reduce job opportunities? Perhaps, as Baidu founder Robin Li said, "This is because everyone can see the current jobs disappearing, but they cannot see what new job opportunities will be created. Just like those people 100 or 200 years ago, they could not see the new job opportunities that would emerge later."

Before deciding to start a life as an older "Beijing drifter," Zhang Jiaqiang, who entered the workforce in 2008, had already worked in Luoyang for 10 years.

After graduating with a major in mechanical design, manufacturing, and automation, Zhang Jiaqiang's first job was at a locomotive factory in Luoyang, where he was responsible for equipment manufacturing and maintenance related to locomotives. After six years, he moved to a new company to design mixer trucks, tanker trucks, water trucks, etc., and stayed for nearly four years.

In November 2018, after passing an interview, Zhang Jiaqiang joined Baidu Apollo. Initially, he applied for the position of structural design engineer but later joined RoboTaxi, becoming a software test engineer. "However, it is also 30% relevant to my previous major because here it's not just about testing; you also need to have a certain understanding of the vehicles, including the structure and layout of some sensors on the vehicle, as well as mechanical disassembly, etc."

As a maintenance and operation staff member for RoboTaxi, Zhang Jiaqiang is like a "doctor" for autonomous vehicles. Before the autonomous vehicles truly provide transportation services, he is responsible for detecting potential risk points in the vehicle's hardware and software. His specific work mainly focuses on three aspects: 1) the deployment, upgrade, and debugging of the vehicle's software; 2) the calibration of sensors on the vehicle, including LiDAR and cameras; 3) vehicle quality inspection and closed-loop testing.

Since RoboTaxi's unmanned vehicles undergo software version iteration every month, and there is a functional upgrade once a week, Zhang Jiaqiang's daily maintenance and operation work typically involves completing the installation of new version iteration systems for three to four vehicles, as well as the calibration of accompanying sensors such as LiDAR and cameras.It is through the mutual cooperation between the R&D side and the operations and maintenance side that the new iterations of algorithms developed by researchers can be installed on test vehicles in the first place, in order to continuously enhance the actual operational capabilities of autonomous driving.

After the vehicles are equipped with the latest iterations of autonomous driving algorithms, it is the turn of road test safety officers like Li Cheng and Wang Juan to conduct on-site inspections.

Unlike Zhang Jiaqiang's active choice, they are more joining the ranks of "Radish Run" after encountering career changes in middle age, driven by the courage to try something new. Li Cheng, who had been a full-time stay-at-home dad for eight years, took up his first job as a driving school instructor after his child started elementary school in 2020. He occasionally co-ran a ride-hailing service with friends, but the instability and lack of upward mobility in these jobs always haunted him. Similarly, after leaving the car company where she had worked for half her life in 2018, Wang Juan was also a bit disoriented, continuing to work in the fuel car field, with the uncertainty of being laid off suddenly one day.

A new policy on the ground opened up new career choices for the two. In 2022, Wuhan issued the first commercial pilot policy for unmanned autonomous driving vehicles in the country, allowing autonomous driving vehicles without safety officers inside to provide commercial services on public roads.

With the license in hand, "Radish Run" launched fully unmanned travel services that year. Li Cheng and Wang Juan successively became road test safety officers for "Radish Run."

Unlike the "Radish Run" vehicles carrying passengers, Li Cheng's job is to test the higher-level internal test versions launched by the R&D side. "We will feedback the problems encountered during the road test to the R&D. After all these problems are resolved, these internal test versions will gradually be released for use by unmanned vehicles."

From January 2023 to the present, with the efforts of "Li Cheng and his peers," "Radish Run" has gradually completed the coverage of Wuhan's open test roads for intelligent connected vehicles.

After a day of operation, the vehicles must finally undergo inspection by ground safety officers like Lu Weibing.

Lu Weibing, who has sold cars at a 4S store, started his own auto repair shop, and has been running a ride-hailing service for several years, applied to become a vehicle safety officer for "Radish Run" in October 2022. After a month as the main driver safety officer, he switched to a ground safety officer.In the evening, during the vehicle collection process, as a ground safety officer, Lu Weibing needs to take photos and conduct quality inspections of the vehicles, checking for any damage to the exterior, then cleaning the vehicles, charging them, and repeating this cycle.

Compared to their previous jobs, working as an autonomous driving safety officer has not only provided them with a new job but also a new set of experiences that come with it.

As more and more ride-hailing drivers join the ranks of safety officers at Luobo Kuaibao, Li Cheng, who has experience in ride-hailing, can well understand their choices. According to research, apart from the first-tier cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, most ride-hailing drivers in other areas earn around 300 yuan per day after working 10-12 hours. However, at Luobo Kuaibao, they can earn a similar monthly salary but only need to work 8 hours a day, with a stable and guaranteed income regardless of the weather.

Lu Weibing, who has been driving a ride-hailing car in Wuhan for four years, has a deep understanding of this. In 2017, when he first started ride-hailing, the competition was low, and he could earn over 8,000 yuan per month by working about 10 hours a day. By 2022, with an increasing number of ride-hailing drivers and growing competition, Lu Weibing's monthly income shrank to over 6,000 yuan with the same daily working hours, which was no longer enough to cover his family's monthly expenses of over 6,000 yuan.

After being hired as a safety officer at Luobo Kuaibao, in addition to an improvement in salary, the most significant change was in his mood.

"Ride-hailing often encounters many driver-passenger conflicts, coupled with long working hours and high labor intensity. Sitting in the car every day, the psychological pressure is great, and you can't earn money or respect. At least with Luobo Kuaibao, it's a decent job, and I find it challenging to fulfill my responsibilities to the best of my ability," Lu Weibing shared.

With the change in mindset, a long-lost sense of professional pride has also been rekindled in them.

Although they can only reunite with their families once every two months, Zhang Jiaqiang's second-grade son now has a certain understanding of autonomous driving. "The children admire me very much. Sometimes when I'm holding a computer and typing some English commands that he doesn't understand, he feels it's very high-end... especially my younger son, who loves to brag a bit, will proudly tell his classmates that his dad works on autonomous driving in Beijing."

Such a sense of pride also happens to Wang Juan. Her younger son also thinks that his mother's industry is very impressive, "He tells his classmates every day where his mom works."The pride brought by the new job has gradually dispelled the initial concerns of Li Cheng's family. When Li Cheng started working at Wuhan's Luobo Kuaibao in 2022, his family was initially not supportive, thinking that autonomous driving was just a scam, and with the responsibility of caring for both the elderly and the young, they were also worried about any potential accidents that might happen to Li Cheng.

Now, after two years on the job, the family's attitude has completely changed. "My wife takes it to work every day, sometimes 5 or 6 times a day," Li Cheng said with a smile.

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In addition to reaping a new job, these ordinary people who were among the first to dive into autonomous driving have also begun to reap greater career development opportunities.

After an eight-year "stay-at-home dad" gap, Li Cheng was selected as an instructor just two months after joining in July 2022. By January 2023, Li Cheng was further recognized as an outstanding instructor and Luobo's brand ambassador. In March of the same year, Li Cheng was promoted to a lecturer and began to become a team leader for new recruits.

As one of the first instructors at Wuhan Luobo Kuaibao, to date, about 90% of the unmanned vehicle safety officers in Wuhan, from interview to commencement to graduation, have been completed by people like Li Cheng, with a rough estimate of no less than 500 people.

Similarly, Wang Juan, who works as a road test safety officer, has also become a team leader for new recruits after more than a year on the job, starting a new chapter in women's career development at the age of 43.

Lu Weibing, who has been working for a year, has successfully become the ground crew leader at Luobo Kuaibao. Zhang Jiaqiang, who joined the earliest, has also begun to provide technical support for some remote area operations and maintenance, including routine consultation and remote diagnostics.

Behind the move to team management positions, their love for this new job is indispensable. In this regard, Zhang Jiaqiang, who has the goal of buying a house and settling down, is undoubtedly more dedicated.

When Zhang Jiaqiang joined Luobo Kuaibao as a software test engineer in 2019, he encountered his first big challenge since starting a new job - at that time, the software testing used the Linux operating system, and the work scenario required the use of Apple computer terminals or Linux computer terminals. However, Zhang Jiaqiang, who had previously been engaged in integrated design, had always used Windows computers in his previous work. Since then, Zhang Jiaqiang began to self-study the Linux operating system. After three years of self-study, Zhang Jiaqiang even wrote a small maintenance software program called "Operations and Maintenance Toolbox," which was promoted by the company for use nationwide.Before this, operation and maintenance tools needed to be installed on the vehicle, and each time a new car was encountered, it had to be reinstalled. With the "Operation and Maintenance Toolbox," it is only necessary to install the program on your own computer, and the tool can then proceed with system deployment. "Previously, it took an hour to install two to three cars, but with this tool, thanks to batch deployment, more than 10 cars can be installed in an hour."

In this relatively long-term process of iterative development of autonomous driving technology, some new professions that we are not yet aware of are also on the verge of being created.

After the advent of the internet economy era, the McKinsey Global Institute published a research report around 2011, which pointed out that new internet technologies are likely to automate some existing economic activities, but the resulting job losses would be offset by the greater wealth and consumption brought about by the use of the internet. Through a survey of more than 4,800 small and medium-sized enterprises, the McKinsey Global Institute found that after the application of internet technology, for every job lost, 2.6 new jobs were created.

Now, the new generative AI era has begun to show signs of replacing the internet era, and behind the changes brought by autonomous driving, there must also be greater opportunities hidden.