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It's worth stepping back and considering the landscape of self driving. First, the fact that it's within reach is amazing. It's one of those wierd cases where

It's worth stepping back and considering the landscape of self driving. First, the fact that it's within reach is amazing. It's one of those wierd cases where regular people instinctively put it in the "mars colony" category of futurism while sober insiders had to bring us back to a more optimistic view. Now, there is a lot to worry about in the current landscape of giant tech companies, and this article is another example. But, there are things to awe at too. Having self driving within reach... it's a result of massive effort. Amazing technology, and complexes of technology it is built on. This includes the manufacturing technology producing the cheap components. All of this cam from (1) fairly blue sky intiatives (2) with extremely long and uncertain payback periods and (3) tremendous strategic money-where-your-mouths are foresight. When I realized what G where doing with street-view, I thought it was crazy. More a sign of overexuberance and too much money. Turns out, it was en route to maps dominance which was en route to transportation dominance (and phone dominance). IDK if this is unprecedented, but it's fairly unrivaled in today's world. We don't see IBM or Intel, Toyota or McKesson thinking this big or this far. Definitely not banks or money businesses. Not cities or countries, generally. I mean an equivalent in health/medicine would be taking the ideas from TED talks. A personalized health revolution. Nanobots or curing death like Aubrey de Grey keeps talking about. I'm already hearing the "regulations" explanation. Medicine is restrained by surgeon generals, parliaments and national health setups. I don't think that argument holds at this scale. Self driving cars require re-rwriting our transport rules, and probably massive the physical infrastruucture. The technology will have sucked up billions decades before it makes a penny. The guiding idea is that "if we have a true self driving car, the other stuff will sort." Same applies to medicine. If it's better enough, it'll take. It's hard to peer back and determine of something was inevitable or not, but I suspect self driving wasn't. It could have happened (could will happen? tenses are hard) decades later, if not for the fairly outrageous decisions of a small number of people.

oblio 9y ago
> First, the fact that it's within reach is amazing. It's one of those wierd cases where regular people instinctively put it in the "mars colony" category of futurism while sober insiders had to bring us back to a more optimistic view. I think a Mars colony is closer than self driving cars. You need basically strong AI for fully self-driving cars. You just need a ton of money and an incentive for Mars colonies. Most of the science for going to Mars is already there, as well as the tech. I don't think we even truly have the science for wide spread, all-weather, all-terrain self driving cars.
- Feniks 9y ago
  Yeah, self driving cars may work in Arizona but how about rush hour Amsterdam or New York? In my country it might work for long haul trucks on highways in the near future. But I dont see a use case beyond that.
  - oblio 9y ago
    And rush hour Amsterdam or New York are probably easy mode compared to rush hour Cairo or Delhi :)
    - joncrane 9y ago
      To be fair, the chaos the traffic situation is probably inversely proportional to the labor cost of driving.
    - rainbowmverse 9y ago
      A lot of self-driving thought seems to go into deciding when to obey rigid rules and when to break them like everyone else. We can't assume the pure chaos of Cairo or Delhi requires the same model. Self-driving might only need basic Roomba-level collision avoidance and basic pathfinding for a place where the humans navigate with the expectation that every object, moving or not, is a collision waiting to happen. Think about how much of rules-based driving is about avoiding hitting people who aren't following the rules. If you start off assuming there are no rules, the model is simpler: everything the sensors pick up could come flying at you at any moment, so plan accordingly, and stop or slow down if you can't find a path that avoids an impact.
    - dalbasal 9y ago
      Hard to say what roadblocks will be there, 3 steps ahead. I suspect that if the US' easy cities become self-drivable, all cities will. But, maybe not. In any case, I don't think we should be assuming infrastructure will remain the same. If self driving does replace driving, the infrastructure will change. Point problems (eg, computer can't handle these 43 tricky roads or intersections, those problems will be solvable be changing the road. It might just be adjusting so gns or minor parking rule changes. There's a chicken-egg problem, which is why getting some of the way on existing infrastructure is smart. It also avoids scaring finance ministers, but ultimately infrastructure will meet driverless cars part way.
lambdadmitry 9y ago
I can't help but think that self-driving cars is the penultimate American thing. They aren't effective or needed in properly built cities (think London) and they won't make THAT much good to the society eliminating taxi drivers. If we dig into the vision of what people want to achieve with them, it's mostly manifestations of American problems (poverty, systemic racism, homelessness, segregation, insular indifference to others' problems, crazy urban sprawl) which people don't want to confront directly, instead opting for "let's spend HUMONGOUS amount of money to keep everything more or less the same". There is a solution for most problems people try to solve with self-driving cars: more cycling, better public transport, denser cities. Look at London: car use is heavily discouraged (20mph speed limit, congestion charge, expensive parking) and still the whole thing works like a charm.
- humanrebar 9y ago
  > ...still the whole thing works like a charm. I find dense cities don't work for everyone. Car towns are still nicer for the disabled, the elderly, and families with young children. Especially if stairs or snow enter the picture. There is probably a way to build dense cities that work for people that need wheels and canes to function, but rebuilding cities to provide ramps, elevators, wide doors, and secure motor scooter parking is also expensive. There is also a last-mile problem for public trolleys and buses to be both available to the disabled and efficient for general use. That's why I think self-driving vehicles have a lot of promise. It probably makes more sense to have a larger fleet of smaller busses and then another set of small busses or vans for people who need a ramp up into the bus, locking mechanisms so their chair doesn't roll around, etc.
  - Steltek 9y ago
    I'm going to have to firmly disagree on all points. Car towns are the worst for the elderly. Most elderly don't feel comfortable driving but in the US, they're all but forced to do it to escape the house. Anywhere else, they can get out and socialize. Getting physical and mental exercise. You're also likely to find nicer single-floor homes (good condos with elevators) rather than "old people warehouses". As for snow, do you really want drivers with failing eyesight and reaction time to be driving on snow and ice? Or even shoveling out their car, for that matter? I have young children. How many articles have we seen here about kids walking to school or childhood independence? Being car-bound makes that extraordinarily difficult or impossible. At this point, I struggle to think of an advantage of a "car town" for kids. Less time spent getting dressed in the winter, maybe? I suppose when they're older and even more "free range", I'll have to worry about how far they've gotten on the bus or train without me. I'll consider that being a victim of success though.

oblio 9y ago

> First, the fact that it's within reach is amazing. It's one of those wierd cases where regular people instinctively put it in the "mars colony" category of futurism while sober insiders had to bring us back to a more optimistic view. I think a Mars colony is closer than self driving cars. You need basically strong AI for fully self-driving cars. You just need a ton of money and an incentive for Mars colonies. Most of the science for going to Mars is already there, as well as the tech. I don't think we even truly have the science for wide spread, all-weather, all-terrain self driving cars.

Feniks 9y ago
Yeah, self driving cars may work in Arizona but how about rush hour Amsterdam or New York? In my country it might work for long haul trucks on highways in the near future. But I dont see a use case beyond that.
- oblio 9y ago
  And rush hour Amsterdam or New York are probably easy mode compared to rush hour Cairo or Delhi :)
  - joncrane 9y ago
    To be fair, the chaos the traffic situation is probably inversely proportional to the labor cost of driving.
  - rainbowmverse 9y ago
    A lot of self-driving thought seems to go into deciding when to obey rigid rules and when to break them like everyone else. We can't assume the pure chaos of Cairo or Delhi requires the same model. Self-driving might only need basic Roomba-level collision avoidance and basic pathfinding for a place where the humans navigate with the expectation that every object, moving or not, is a collision waiting to happen. Think about how much of rules-based driving is about avoiding hitting people who aren't following the rules. If you start off assuming there are no rules, the model is simpler: everything the sensors pick up could come flying at you at any moment, so plan accordingly, and stop or slow down if you can't find a path that avoids an impact.
  - dalbasal 9y ago
    Hard to say what roadblocks will be there, 3 steps ahead. I suspect that if the US' easy cities become self-drivable, all cities will. But, maybe not. In any case, I don't think we should be assuming infrastructure will remain the same. If self driving does replace driving, the infrastructure will change. Point problems (eg, computer can't handle these 43 tricky roads or intersections, those problems will be solvable be changing the road. It might just be adjusting so gns or minor parking rule changes. There's a chicken-egg problem, which is why getting some of the way on existing infrastructure is smart. It also avoids scaring finance ministers, but ultimately infrastructure will meet driverless cars part way.

lambdadmitry 9y ago

I can't help but think that self-driving cars is the penultimate American thing. They aren't effective or needed in properly built cities (think London) and they won't make THAT much good to the society eliminating taxi drivers. If we dig into the vision of what people want to achieve with them, it's mostly manifestations of American problems (poverty, systemic racism, homelessness, segregation, insular indifference to others' problems, crazy urban sprawl) which people don't want to confront directly, instead opting for "let's spend HUMONGOUS amount of money to keep everything more or less the same". There is a solution for most problems people try to solve with self-driving cars: more cycling, better public transport, denser cities. Look at London: car use is heavily discouraged (20mph speed limit, congestion charge, expensive parking) and still the whole thing works like a charm.

humanrebar 9y ago
> ...still the whole thing works like a charm. I find dense cities don't work for everyone. Car towns are still nicer for the disabled, the elderly, and families with young children. Especially if stairs or snow enter the picture. There is probably a way to build dense cities that work for people that need wheels and canes to function, but rebuilding cities to provide ramps, elevators, wide doors, and secure motor scooter parking is also expensive. There is also a last-mile problem for public trolleys and buses to be both available to the disabled and efficient for general use. That's why I think self-driving vehicles have a lot of promise. It probably makes more sense to have a larger fleet of smaller busses and then another set of small busses or vans for people who need a ramp up into the bus, locking mechanisms so their chair doesn't roll around, etc.
- Steltek 9y ago
  I'm going to have to firmly disagree on all points. Car towns are the worst for the elderly. Most elderly don't feel comfortable driving but in the US, they're all but forced to do it to escape the house. Anywhere else, they can get out and socialize. Getting physical and mental exercise. You're also likely to find nicer single-floor homes (good condos with elevators) rather than "old people warehouses". As for snow, do you really want drivers with failing eyesight and reaction time to be driving on snow and ice? Or even shoveling out their car, for that matter? I have young children. How many articles have we seen here about kids walking to school or childhood independence? Being car-bound makes that extraordinarily difficult or impossible. At this point, I struggle to think of an advantage of a "car town" for kids. Less time spent getting dressed in the winter, maybe? I suppose when they're older and even more "free range", I'll have to worry about how far they've gotten on the bus or train without me. I'll consider that being a victim of success though.