I love how they disingenuously imply that their end game is to have tons of self driving cars with a highly trained (and presumably highly paid) driver sitting in the driver's seat.
In reality, those drivers are there temporarily until the tech is good enough to phase them out (obviously). My guess is that the cars will be ready for full driverless before "driverless with backup driver" becomes big enough for anyone to notice.
Those drivers will provide value add services. Which is more valuable: a coffee shop or a coffee shop with a person in it? Why would you think a mobile coffee shop would be any different?
Except they can’t afford them, and at some point even the most witless and puerile of VC’s has a chance of realizing that the level of automation required for profitability is decades away.
I like asking my Uber drivers what they think about the future of self driving cars. I don't ask in a mean spirited way. Hardly any any drivers mention being phased out. I agree it's inevitable.
We've had "Johnny cabs" for decades now in science fiction. People are clear on the concept. Once they work cleanly, smoothly, safely, I predict really driverless cabs will become the norm in half a decade. They need to look, feel, and be safe is all. Cabs don't have to handle all terrain; they can be constrained to known, plotted streets.
So, from the video, I get the idea that a "self-driving car" is going to still have someone behind the wheel (a more-qualified someone than otherwise, it seems) so the self-driving part to ... increase safety? make you good about automation? allow more videos to be made? ...
No, it's just that they left off the most disruptive part (for pr reasons). And that is that the people sitting in the seat are merely there temporarily until the software gets to a point that no human intervention is needed. And most likely, even before that happens, drivers will be replaced with a remote driver from a central office whenever a problem occurs that the ai can't solve.
Exactly. We have this weird cultural fixation on having "someone" to blame. What's weird is that if it's a human that made the mistake, that's somehow OK. We give humans a free pass. "To err is human", after all. Shit happens.
But if an algorithm screws up and kills someone, that's unacceptable. We start imagining ways that a human would not have failed in the same scenario. We decry "killer robots" and "cold unfeeling machines". Even if that algorithm has already saved 99 lives from being lost to stupid, tired, drunk, inattentive humans, that 100th life is somehow more important.
>Friday reported that traffic violations by the company’s self-driving cars were caused by problems with the cars’ mapping programs, and not, as the company had previously claimed, by human error.
After video of one of the violations surfaced in December, the company not only blamed and suspended the human monitoring the system, but doubled down. The supposedly human-caused red-light violation, they said, “is why we believe so much in making the roads safer by building self-driving Ubers.”
And while running red lights was the most egregious problem with the cars, they were also unable to safely navigate bike lanes.
I hear ya. I'm not worried. People tend to underestimate how intelligent humans are and drastically overestimate how "smart" pre-programmed cars are going to be. The reality is, like "free money" it's also a control system, and most of us already know it. Consider the near total rejection of camera tickets when it's put to a vote. There's billions of $ in hype. I'll happily bet against it.
Something that concerns me slightly more is when we start growing 'subservient' neurons to drive us around. They will be smart enough to make it work, but the closed and connected 'trusted' silicon surrounding them would be a problem.
A short term problem is new drivers might become dependent and not learn the necessary skills... like pilots forgetting how to land.... but I doubt it. Gen Z is turning out just fine.
Note I live in one of the most freedom appreciating places on Earth, if you are in one of the nanny states that has already hooked the population on public transportation then all bets are off and ya, you should worry.
In reality, those drivers are there temporarily until the tech is good enough to phase them out (obviously). My guess is that the cars will be ready for full driverless before "driverless with backup driver" becomes big enough for anyone to notice.