I find it somewhat amusing there are still people bought into the self-driving hype other than in limited circumstances.
Does anyone actually believe these companies at this point? Who actually aren't saying much any longer.
I'd be far less surprised if Google shutdown Waymo in a year or two than if they actually introduced a door-to-door driving service in an urban area without a safety driver present.
Would you believe someone who in 1970 said, "We landed a man on the moon. In 50 years we'll surely have flying cars!"
I'm sure a lot of people believed that in 1970 but look where we are now. Technology accelerates at a much faster pace but often times in ways that you don't expect. The people in 1970 probably didn't imagine smartphones with a global 4G network but instead of flying cars we got this.
Or fusion power. Or natural language conversations with computers (as opposed to largely rote voice recognition).
Deep learning/machine learning have made remarkable advances in recent years--primarily because of both computational (esp. GPU) and storage/data advances.
However, in spite of a lot of money and talent expended on understanding organic brains and human-level cognition over the decades, progress has been slow and there's a general belief among scientists who work in AI spanning CS and neuroscience that there are aspects to human learning and reasoning that we just don't really understand yet.
And that more deep learning, data, and programmed rules won't get you to autonomous vehicles outside of some limited domains. (Which is valuable by itself; it just doesn't get you to robo-taxies.)
The problem isn't in the availability of technology but the (lack of) problem it solves. People can barely drive on roads safely and there are infinitely more regulations and skills required for flying, even with the relative little amount of air traffic. If anything, autonomous vehicles could be precursor for individual aerial transport.
I would actually love to be wrong but nothing I can see convinces me that I am. I don't see the path to getting door-to-door in congested areas with pedestrians and cyclists that isn't even more dangerous for them than it is today.
I actually do think highway driving can be automated relatively easily but that still assumes a competent licensed driver behind the wheel.
There's a difference between believing in start up hype and looking at the evidence on the ground. It's an even larger leap in claiming it's decades away while the technology is in testing right now.
Self-driving in good weather on specific roads (probably limited access highways) is indeed a very useful goal for both convenience and safety. It just won't satisfy the people who want to be driven everywhere and never have to even own a car.
