> “That’s just proven to be a loser of an approach in a lot of other domains,” Mindell says. “I’m not arguing this from first principles. There are 40 years’ wo

> “That’s just proven to be a loser of an approach in a lot of other domains,” Mindell says. “I’m not arguing this from first principles. There are 40 years’ worth of examples.” Well, that's the problem. Everything the author says is supported by the last N decades in engineering. That argument is so flawed it is astounding that it is coming out of someone from MIT. In looking at his bio it seems he has dedicated quite a bit of time to teaching and researching the history of engineering. It might just be the case that he isn't fully up to date on topics relevant to automation. Does he have an up-to-date CS/AI background? How about computing or chip design? Saying that automation has failed to deliver in the past N decades is like the Wright Brothers saying "let's not bother because powered flight has failed to be developed in the past N decades". That is not how engineering works. Today hundreds of millions of people have phones in their pockets that are orders of magnitude more powerful than the computers decades ago. We have better, smaller, cheaper sensors of all kinds. We have accumulated knowledge in relevant CS and AI fields. Today we have cars that can actually drive themselves to various degrees under their own computing power (without having to communicate with a supercomputer in a building). And this is just the beginning. Fully auto-drive cars will happen. Of course, they will retain the ability to be human driven as well for some time, probably decades. There are many reason for which that makes sense. I am fairly confident we will get to the point where the average self-driver will be safer than the average human driver. All you have to do is point at a teenager behind the wheel. Commutes will be shorter (due to driving efficiently using data) and safer and, with electric cars, healthier (you won't have to breathe the crap coming out of all those exhaust pipes). Besides, think of the wasted potential of millions of people staring at a road for hours rather than doing something more useful. If you commute one hour per day you'll get back 250 hours per year.