>I'm convinced the self-driving cars are still a ways off as well.
Technology-wise, absolutely they are. The problem is that in actuality, they aren't. Companies will continue to push as hard as they can for as wide of a launch as they can, while governments (and any kind of sorely-needed oversight) will be ages behind.
> Fully self driving cars are far further off in the future than most in the sector would publicly admit.
Full self driving have NOT been solved for highways in a desert.
This is literally the easiest real world scenario imaginable. Highly and strictly regulated environment, and no obscurities like snow happening. I don't think there is a hope we will get any close to self drive with current technology.
Is the sudden object in front of me a block of concrete that fell of or stray page from newspaper floating by on a wind gust? Hard bake or ignore it?
We cant possibly capture all edge cases of real life. You need systems that have cognitive capabilities to deal with real life
Or optionally different type of transportation that is not so complex to navigate and understand. There are already fully automated metro lines. Maybe solution is to change the problem itself.
> Noone thought self-driving cars would actually work.
Many people thought self driving WOULD work and that we'd be further along than we are now. We have vastly overestimated how far we'd be, and vastly underestimated how much time and effort it would actually take.
Self driving cars as they exist today are still mere toys compared to where the industry thought they were going to be. Look at Cruise, Waymo, Zoox, Uber's ex-self driving car division and others.
We are not anywhere near the self-driving autonomous cars we had hoped for.
> I still see no real self driving cars, just highly assisted driving where a human always has to be prepared to take over in case something severe happens.
There's no human driver in the car. At most, the cars can stop/pull over and ask for remote navigation from humans (but not remote operation).
>>> I've seen actual self-driving cars on actual roads.
No you haven't. You've seen supervised cars with pilots ready to take over when needed. No manufacturer yet has dared release a truly hand-and-eyes-free vehicle onto public roads.
> I am skeptical that full self-driving cars will happen in the next few years, but he is completely wrong when it comes to the long term
I think when someone says 'will never happen' they mean 'not in the foreseeable future'.
Obviously the environment, usage and science can change such that full self driving could happen. I mean in the 1600s nobody could imagine a Boeing 747 flying loaded with hundreds of people, sure.
But the hype around self driving (by all the dreamers) has been that it's more or less 'right around the corner' not in 30 or 40 years or even 20 years.
> It turns out we're not really planning for self driving cars at all. Most cities seem not to be forecasting driverless cars in their future.
So what? Nobody knows exactly how self-driving cars are going to operate in cities, because they aren't here yet. In the meantime, it's fine to continue as normal.
> Because I see self-driving cars so often here that it's a non-event
No, you don't. You see cars which have a hands-free driving mode. Every single one of them still absolutely requires a driver.
I've been closely involved in automated transport for years, and the current hype cycle is getting exhausting. There are several orders of magnitude of difficulty between a car which allows drivers to take their hands off the wheel some of the time (or even most of the time), and a car which does not require a driver. We are many years, and possibly decades, away from the latter.
> Indeed self driving cars have so much upside they are inevitable. Sure the tech is hard, and we're not there yet, but the payoff is too big not to keep working on it.
As are fusion reactors that generate more energy than the total that goes in. Or room-temperature super conductors, or AGI, or Quantum computers, or…
Not all technologies that appear possible will be achieved in practice. It’s not inevitable. I would argue it’s not even likely at this point.
> However, IMO, it will never happen because it needs a full artificial general intelligence.
I don’t think that’s true - but it certainly needs more than a couple of poor resolution cameras and some underpowered hardware powered by hype. You can see how poor the vision of these systems is by just watching a few Tesla autopilot videos and seeing cars flash into/out of recognition on the screen.
The first actual self driving car won’t be the one that does it with bargain basement hardware prioritising low cost over efficacy and safety.
-- so your doubts are anachronistic to say the least.
> Self-driving cars have way too many hurdles to overcome before they reach that point. I mean, Europe hasn't even moved over to automatic transmission yet.
> this is why I don't believe self driving cars will become mainstream any time soon
Firstly your assuming cars will be down with any level of frequency to concern people. This I doubt as cars are amazingly reliable these days and electric (which should grow with driverless tech) should be further due to less things to go wrong.
Secondly, driverless increases the chance of the non-owner model (probably some all you can eat Uber type model) where you have hundreds of cars at your disposal.
I think true self driving will delay a little due to the huge number of scenarios systems are going to need to account for almost perfectly. From this I guess we will get increasingly 'assisted driving' on freeways and know roads. But even this will disappear fast as cars with driverless tech requiring people to drive unknown areas will be uploaded and compiled to make this a known area fairly fast if there is any level of traffic.
>> It’s great to explore this topic. You can have a lot of fun in picking a random industry and imagining the effect that self driving will have.
Yes, it will be interesting to see the public's reaction in a few years, when the promised revolution fails to materialise.
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[1] I say this with some insight borrowed from people in the automotive industry. A commenter in another thread has recommended the following Medium post:
We’re still very much in the early days of making self-driving cars a reality. Those who think fully self-driving vehicles will be ubiquitous on city streets months from now or even in a few years are not well connected to the state of the art or committed to the safe deployment of the technology. For those of us who have been working on the technology for a long time, we’re going to tell you the issue is still really hard, as the systems are as complex as ever.
> The self driving stuff is (in my view) all a red herring.
I agree, but for another reason...
There isn't much copyrightable or patentable in the self driving world. If someone makes a self driving car which is good enough to drive unsupervised, then it'll only be a year till all other manufacturers can do the same.
Yes we do. They exist and are on the road. Just look at Tesla, Waymo, etc. These cars are able to be given a destination and they will drive themselves there. There are limitations, but that doesn't make them not self driving.
It's not, and that's why we won't see actually practical self driving cars for a while yet.
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