On: Toyota's Gill Pratt on Self-Driving Cars and the Reality of Full Autonomy

[greggman]

Hmmm, so as cars get cheaper (no driver needed) maybe we'll see mobile billboards by the thousands.

I wonder how many other possible unintended consequences there will be

[ehnto → greggman]

What a horrible waste of work that would be. In the sense that the energy and time taken from other road uses just for a little advertising would be obnoxious.

Adverts only continue to exist because they ultimately find the sweetspot between inconvenience and payoff. A road mobile billboard is inconveniencing everyone and the payoff is nil. In contrast to a YouTube advert where the payoff is the youtube video, a mobile billboard has no payoff.

[gregpilling → greggman]

So like the trucks going up and down the Las Vegas strip, but hundreds and hundreds of them . Moving billboards everywhere. Unintended consequences indeed.