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That's not true about self driving research plateauing. Tesla, Waymo and Cruise have all made significant progress in the last five years. What other categorie

by ilaksh 4y ago

That's not true about self driving research plateauing. Tesla, Waymo and Cruise have all made significant progress in the last five years. What other categories of high tech reached their absolute peak right when everyone started to notice them? We can extrapolate because there are clear trends. And a long history of inventing new things when we hit a bottleneck. It's like someone looking at a car in the early 1900s and saying "this may be the peak of automotive technology, who knows".

resource0x 4y ago
Or someone looking at Apollo Moon landing in the late 1960s and saying: "this may be the peak..."?
- Towaway69 4y ago
  And have we been back to the moon? For moon landings it was peak technology.
  - falcor84 4y ago
    I would like to think that the Apollo missions were to manned space exploration as Marco Polo's journeys were to inter-continental exploration. In other words, an immensely difficult undertaking which was ahead of its time, but served as a proof of concept to inspire future generations. I'm not particularly an Elon fanboy, but I believe that Starship or another reusable rocket system will eventually lead to extensive and cost-effective human exploration of the Moon and Mars over the coming decades.
Towaway69 4y ago
Ironically cars have basically not changed since the 1900s: 4 wheels, a steering wheel and a polluting oil-based engine. Sure we're now (100 years later) moving to computer steering and rare-earth elements batteries but the 4 wheels remain! We have peaks in technology, then tend to profit before the innovation restarts - when profits sink.
- tormeh 4y ago
  EVs predate ICEs. ICEs were really hard to make into something reliable and pleasant to use.
- gcanyon 4y ago
  What would you use to replace the 4 wheels? To the point, cars still have 4 wheels for the same reason wagons had four wheels before cars existed: 3 wheels are much less stable, 5 adds significant complexity, and nothing other than wheels would be as efficient.
  - Towaway69 4y ago
    Hoover crafts, helicopters, planes, ... all have no wheels (for transportation). I wasn't meaning to be specific about the 4 wheels, I was trying to point out that innovation happens when necessity makes it necessary - why do we have batteries in cars even though the very first cars[1] were electric? [1]= April 1881 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicl...
    - gcanyon 4y ago
      >>> Ironically cars have basically not changed since the 1900s: 4 wheels, a steering wheel and a polluting oil-based engine. >> What would you use to replace the 4 wheels > Hover crafts, helicopters, planes None of those are "cars" Computer technology has not been capable of self-driving until now. Some would say it still isn't. Likewise, battery tech has been practically useless for cars for over 80% of the time cars have existed. Sure, electric vehicles held the land speed record in 1899 -- when the record was 105km/hour. The practical range of an electric vehicle was less than 100 miles as recently as what, fifteen years ago? In the past 100 years the top speed of everyday vehicles has increased by 2-3 times, the mileage has doubled, and vehicle comfort, safety, and reliability have increased by an insane amount. To say that no progress has been made is absurdly mistaken.
- ilaksh 4y ago
  They have changed. The basic utility is to go from point A to point B. They now do that about 3-10 times faster and more comfortably and reliably than they did when they started. If generative AI gets 4 times better than will matter a lot.
paxys 4y ago
> What other categories of high tech reached their absolute peak right when everyone started to notice them? Just in the last decade – crypto/blockchain/web3, VR/AR, metaverse, smart glasses, 3D TVs, foldable phones, modular phones, chatbots, hyperloop, package delivery robots/drones. Every single one of these areas had all the top tech talent behind it, billions in VC funding, flashy demos and outsized public hype, but ultimately they all fizzled out due to technology barriers or lack of demand or a real use case. Actual world-changing innovations may seem obvious in hindsight, but every grand prediction and bet about the future of tech is a lot more likely to fail than succeed. > It's like someone looking at a car in the early 1900s and saying "this may be the peak of automotive technology, who knows". And that may have been a fair assessment for the time without the benefit of a crystal ball. Someone else who said the same thing when looking at blimps was 100% correct. In fact if you asked people of that time where the future of transportation would go, a large majority would have said "flying cars", because that was the obvious technological evolution at the time just as self driving tech is for us right now.
- ilaksh 4y ago
  Blockchain technology never stopped continuing to improve. Same with VR/AR, the hardware keeps getting more comfortable and more capable. Package delivery drones have yet to be deployed at a large scale but are gradually increasing usage. Arguably there have been many successful metaverses including things like Second Life, World of Warcraft, Minecraft and Roblox. The VR part of metaverse hasn't taken off yet due to comfort, expense and poor mixed reality capabilities. And we are still waiting for large scale open metaverses not controlled by a company. That probably will come eventually once we get better hardware and wider adoption more people understand the concept of the metaverse.

by ilaksh 4y ago

resource0x 4y ago

Or someone looking at Apollo Moon landing in the late 1960s and saying: "this may be the peak..."?

Towaway69 4y ago
And have we been back to the moon? For moon landings it was peak technology.
- falcor84 4y ago
  I would like to think that the Apollo missions were to manned space exploration as Marco Polo's journeys were to inter-continental exploration. In other words, an immensely difficult undertaking which was ahead of its time, but served as a proof of concept to inspire future generations. I'm not particularly an Elon fanboy, but I believe that Starship or another reusable rocket system will eventually lead to extensive and cost-effective human exploration of the Moon and Mars over the coming decades.

Towaway69 4y ago

Ironically cars have basically not changed since the 1900s: 4 wheels, a steering wheel and a polluting oil-based engine. Sure we're now (100 years later) moving to computer steering and rare-earth elements batteries but the 4 wheels remain! We have peaks in technology, then tend to profit before the innovation restarts - when profits sink.

tormeh 4y ago
EVs predate ICEs. ICEs were really hard to make into something reliable and pleasant to use.
gcanyon 4y ago
What would you use to replace the 4 wheels? To the point, cars still have 4 wheels for the same reason wagons had four wheels before cars existed: 3 wheels are much less stable, 5 adds significant complexity, and nothing other than wheels would be as efficient.
- Towaway69 4y ago
  Hoover crafts, helicopters, planes, ... all have no wheels (for transportation). I wasn't meaning to be specific about the 4 wheels, I was trying to point out that innovation happens when necessity makes it necessary - why do we have batteries in cars even though the very first cars[1] were electric? [1]= April 1881 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicl...
  - gcanyon 4y ago
    >>> Ironically cars have basically not changed since the 1900s: 4 wheels, a steering wheel and a polluting oil-based engine. >> What would you use to replace the 4 wheels > Hover crafts, helicopters, planes None of those are "cars" Computer technology has not been capable of self-driving until now. Some would say it still isn't. Likewise, battery tech has been practically useless for cars for over 80% of the time cars have existed. Sure, electric vehicles held the land speed record in 1899 -- when the record was 105km/hour. The practical range of an electric vehicle was less than 100 miles as recently as what, fifteen years ago? In the past 100 years the top speed of everyday vehicles has increased by 2-3 times, the mileage has doubled, and vehicle comfort, safety, and reliability have increased by an insane amount. To say that no progress has been made is absurdly mistaken.
ilaksh 4y ago
They have changed. The basic utility is to go from point A to point B. They now do that about 3-10 times faster and more comfortably and reliably than they did when they started. If generative AI gets 4 times better than will matter a lot.

paxys 4y ago

> What other categories of high tech reached their absolute peak right when everyone started to notice them? Just in the last decade – crypto/blockchain/web3, VR/AR, metaverse, smart glasses, 3D TVs, foldable phones, modular phones, chatbots, hyperloop, package delivery robots/drones. Every single one of these areas had all the top tech talent behind it, billions in VC funding, flashy demos and outsized public hype, but ultimately they all fizzled out due to technology barriers or lack of demand or a real use case. Actual world-changing innovations may seem obvious in hindsight, but every grand prediction and bet about the future of tech is a lot more likely to fail than succeed. > It's like someone looking at a car in the early 1900s and saying "this may be the peak of automotive technology, who knows". And that may have been a fair assessment for the time without the benefit of a crystal ball. Someone else who said the same thing when looking at blimps was 100% correct. In fact if you asked people of that time where the future of transportation would go, a large majority would have said "flying cars", because that was the obvious technological evolution at the time just as self driving tech is for us right now.

ilaksh 4y ago
Blockchain technology never stopped continuing to improve. Same with VR/AR, the hardware keeps getting more comfortable and more capable. Package delivery drones have yet to be deployed at a large scale but are gradually increasing usage. Arguably there have been many successful metaverses including things like Second Life, World of Warcraft, Minecraft and Roblox. The VR part of metaverse hasn't taken off yet due to comfort, expense and poor mixed reality capabilities. And we are still waiting for large scale open metaverses not controlled by a company. That probably will come eventually once we get better hardware and wider adoption more people understand the concept of the metaverse.