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While the article doesn't actually use the word "never", neither does it hedge and say "anytime soon". The central logic seems to be that humanity is starting

While the article doesn't actually use the word "never", neither does it hedge and say "anytime soon". The central logic seems to be that humanity is starting from scratch building self driving cars, versus all the years of experience decades ago trying to automate spacecraft and submersibles. Oddly, I reach entirely the opposite conclusion. The article reminds us that even decades ago, with rudimentary computers, engineers developed systems that landed men on the moon and returned them to earth. This article has made it even easier for me to imagine a car taking a fully autonomous trip to a McDonald's drive through, given the state of deep/machine learning, low cost computers a million times faster, and big advances in sensors, Yes there will be a person supervising the car for a while, of course that's true. But it's only a matter of time before our children are surprised that humans were allowed to drive cars, causing millions of deaths.

agumonkey 11y ago
Landing on the moon is to physics what car traffic is to chaos theory.
- minority-one 11y ago
  And it's weird how people bring up the idea of an elevator to the moon more often than they bring up putting cars to run on rails. They could be 100% self-driving that way, and accidents would probably be nil.
- paulsutter 11y ago
  True, but cars can already navigate traffic autonomously. And there is much more to landing men on the moon than physics. Check out Tesla's live shipping code: http://jalopnik.com/teslas-autopilot-system-is-awesome-and-creepy-and-a-sig-1736573089 http://jalopnik.com/teslas-autopilot-system-is-awesome-and-c... Are you predicting that cars will never be fully autonomous?
  - agumonkey 11y ago
    As a website commenter I'm not sure I should predict anything. To explain a bit more my previous message, as complex as going to the moon was, it seems a problem scientists knew how to define. One vehicle, 2 planets, the system is describable. Traffic with lots of agents potentially interacting with every other agent, hence my chaos analogy, lots and lots of variable, ... is blurry. There's successful research to describe multi agents collision avoidance but I've never seen it used on the field yet. ps: reminds me airplanes vs car accident rates. Even if flying is inherently complex in itself, there's almost no traffic and almost no obstacle in air. Nobody would crash a car alone in the desert.
    - paulsutter 11y ago
      Good point on air vs car accident rates. By the way, I find that making a prediction causes me to net out the different aspects of an issue quickly, and snaps me out of the mode of enumerating pros and cons. That's why I asked.
    - kqr 11y ago
      > Even if flying is inherently complex in itself, there's almost no traffic and almost no obstacle in air. Different aircraft are by and large keeping to the same standard routes, altitudes and holding patterns, which is why mid-air collisions are a thing. (The reason they keep to standards is to make air traffic control easier.)
      - agumonkey 11y ago
        Aight, I pushed it, but how is air density ? and direction, I'm sure routes are designed to avoid blending traffics (incoming) as much as possible.

agumonkey 11y ago

Landing on the moon is to physics what car traffic is to chaos theory.

minority-one 11y ago
And it's weird how people bring up the idea of an elevator to the moon more often than they bring up putting cars to run on rails. They could be 100% self-driving that way, and accidents would probably be nil.
paulsutter 11y ago
True, but cars can already navigate traffic autonomously. And there is much more to landing men on the moon than physics. Check out Tesla's live shipping code: http://jalopnik.com/teslas-autopilot-system-is-awesome-and-creepy-and-a-sig-1736573089 http://jalopnik.com/teslas-autopilot-system-is-awesome-and-c... Are you predicting that cars will never be fully autonomous?
- agumonkey 11y ago
  As a website commenter I'm not sure I should predict anything. To explain a bit more my previous message, as complex as going to the moon was, it seems a problem scientists knew how to define. One vehicle, 2 planets, the system is describable. Traffic with lots of agents potentially interacting with every other agent, hence my chaos analogy, lots and lots of variable, ... is blurry. There's successful research to describe multi agents collision avoidance but I've never seen it used on the field yet. ps: reminds me airplanes vs car accident rates. Even if flying is inherently complex in itself, there's almost no traffic and almost no obstacle in air. Nobody would crash a car alone in the desert.
  - paulsutter 11y ago
    Good point on air vs car accident rates. By the way, I find that making a prediction causes me to net out the different aspects of an issue quickly, and snaps me out of the mode of enumerating pros and cons. That's why I asked.
  - kqr 11y ago
    > Even if flying is inherently complex in itself, there's almost no traffic and almost no obstacle in air. Different aircraft are by and large keeping to the same standard routes, altitudes and holding patterns, which is why mid-air collisions are a thing. (The reason they keep to standards is to make air traffic control easier.)
    - agumonkey 11y ago
      Aight, I pushed it, but how is air density ? and direction, I'm sure routes are designed to avoid blending traffics (incoming) as much as possible.