Maybe hundreds is too much but 100 billion spent over years is not necessarily an exaggeration. Google and Cruise together have spent like 20B to get to where w

Maybe hundreds is too much but 100 billion spent over years is not necessarily an exaggeration. Google and Cruise together have spent like 20B to get to where we are right now (easily googled) which IMHO is not the 95% mark where the returns get much harder. The cars are heavily geofenced and need help from service personnel regularly. Correct me If I am wrong but getting to the point where humans are completely unnecessary is still a research problem. We need more research and more breakthroughs which costs a lot of money and is non-linear (you are not guaranteed results). It could very easily take 100B to get to a point where a car can ferry people anywhere they want with zero human assistance (no service personnel to guide out of traps etc). >Since when has software or even advanced AI research ever cost that much to develop? Since now? If software is eating the world, you should expect software research to also eat up a lot of money. As the low hanging fruit is picked, further gains are going to cost a lot more.