Yes, but my friends that own Tesla's actually believe that self-driving cars are almost here. When I say that it's at least ten years away and likely much long

Yes, but my friends that own Tesla's actually believe that self-driving cars are almost here. When I say that it's at least ten years away and likely much longer because it will take big breakthroughs (strong AI, lot's of knowledge about the world, etc.) they look at me like I'm crazy. I really hope it happens in my lifetime, but I remember talking about Greenblatt's chess program (see [1]) when I was at MIT in the 60's. The AI folks really thought that a chess program would be world champion within 10 years. They finally did it, but it took more like 30 years, and one of the reasons they were successful was that Moore's law eventually allowed a super computer (Deep Blue, at the time the 259th most powerful computer in the world) to evaluate 200 Million board positions per second[2]. Deep Blue's opponent, world champion Garry Kasparov) was most definitely not evaluating 200 Million board positions per second. I see driving as a much more complex task than playing chess, so maybe 30 years before we will put our children in cars to be driven across town. I will be happily surprised if it arrives sooner. [1] https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1465715 https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1465715 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Blue_(chess_computer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Blue_(chess_computer)