Sorry, but why does the media hang on Wozniak's every word? Why do we care what he thinks? He hasn't been relevant in decades. What has he produced since he left Apple, while living on his AAPL stock? He's never been shown to have even a shred of insight into where things are going, or even a fundamental understand of what makes products and companies successful. He's certainly never under what has made Apple successful.
I agree with you that SW is over-rated, especially on the topic of Apple.
But on this one, I agree with him wholeheartedly. Fully self-driving cars are at least 7-10 years away. They have to first fix insurance/liability issues, and then hundreds (if not thousands) of state and local regulations related to vehicles and vehicle traffic have to be worked on one by one. On top of which, the US Congress will have to pass legislation.
I think it will all ultimately happen, but not before 2025.
Waymo is launching driver-less cabs this December. https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/11/13/waymo-expected-to-launch-paid-driverless-ridehailing-service-in-december I suspect we will see more and more self driving tech over time. It may be 7-10 years before you can go into a dealership and buy a car with no steering wheel, but already we have significant smart technologies in our cars. Self parking has been out for a few years. Lane warnings have been out, even cars that will bring you back into your lane if you ignore the warning. I suspect we will start seeing cars that will drive themselves on the freeway within a year. Tesla has one already but it's only called an assist. I mean a car that you enter the freeway, and pull out a newspaper while it sails along. This is coming only it won't be a massive fireworks in the sky it is here now. It will creep in one feature at a time until cars are autonomous and most people won't even notice. After all who objects to anti-lock breaks? They were the first automotive AI technology. Who objects to cruise controls that maintain a distance from the car ahead of you? That's another one.
As far as regulations needing to be changed. A lot of states and municipalities are doing this now.
Antilock brakes are an "automated" function, but certainly not "A.I."
Also, autonomous vehicles as we know them today are not examples of "artificial intelligence", they are examples of "machine learning".
Agreed. People think Finite Automata is AI. It's not. Google is leveraging massive data centers to create predictive behavior models and rating scenarios probabilities to weight which outcome to engage and they call it AI.
Real AI is not even at the stage of a Fruit Fly. Any expert working in the field who isn't bought by Silicon Valley freely admits we're at the larvae phase.
christopher126 said: Currently, there are approximately 36,000 highway deaths per year or about 102 per day. 50% are due to alcohol or some other drug induced impairment.
It's about 1 fatality per 100M miles driven. In that regard, I don't think all AI vehicles combined have booked enough miles for their even to be 1 death, and there have already been a few.
If we were really serious about improving safety, we'd do something about that impairment thing... or even give some reasonable driver training. This isn't about safety, though. That's just the sales-pitch.
DAalseth said: After all who objects to anti-lock breaks? They were the first automotive AI technology. Who objects to cruise controls that maintain a distance from the car ahead of you? That's another one.
There's nothing AI about either of those.
SpamSandwich said: Also, autonomous vehicles as we know them today are not examples of "artificial intelligence", they are examples of "machine learning".
Good point. That's a better way to talk about it... how hard it is to solve the machine learning challenge faced here. AI starts people thinking about sci-fi and terminator and 'self-aware' or systems that actually think, etc.
radarthekat said: As for when, did Woz the visionary speak to how many more turns of Moore’s Law it will take before processing capability of machine learning systems will far surpass the capabilities of humans for discrete tasks like driving?
Moore's Law has nothing to do with this. It's a quantitative problem, not a quantitative one.
...
GM already has a 2019 model with ZERO CONTROLS....no steering wheel or pedals........
No. They don't.
They've made press releases saying they PLAN to... but they don't yet... and likely won't.
No doubt. I think, was it Nissan made a bunch of futuristic videos too. But, I can make futuristic videos, as well. That doesn't mean I have a clue about how to actually do what is in the videos. It's marketing BS.
From a legal perspective I think states should limit autonomous vehicles to interstate highways for 3-5 years so the manufacturers can gain more real world experience.
I don't think they should be allowed on public streets/roads at all. If they can't drive 20 mph, why let them go 60mph?
I think the Woz has an overabundance of skepticism coupled with a high level of risk aversion.
In other words, he's far more wise than most of the commenters in this thread, and like 3/4 of the tech industry.
It's a qualitative problem, not a quantitative one. That's the reason it'll never be solved by brute force. The human brain and it's instinctive leaps of outcomes won't be matched by machine learning. Machine Learning is no match for our ability to adapt on the fly. AI proponents are touting the machine not being distracted by other extraneous noise, when the noise is being constantly filtered by the human brain. No one size fits all algorithm will ever match it, and solve as a baseline for all outcomes.
Sorry, but why does the media hang on Wozniak's every word? Why do we care what he thinks? He hasn't been relevant in decades. What has he produced since he left Apple, while living on his AAPL stock? He's never been shown to have even a shred of insight into where things are going, or even a fundamental understand of what makes products and companies successful. He's certainly never under what has made Apple successful.
I agree with you that SW is over-rated, especially on the topic of Apple.
But on this one, I agree with him wholeheartedly. Fully self-driving cars are at least 7-10 years away. They have to first fix insurance/liability issues, and then hundreds (if not thousands) of state and local regulations related to vehicles and vehicle traffic have to be worked on one by one. On top of which, the US Congress will have to pass legislation.
I think it will all ultimately happen, but not before 2025.
2035, if at all.
The States don’t need Federal approval to set their own regulations on autonomous vehicles. Mostly it comes down to whether or not they’ll require a person in the vehicle to act as a safety measure or not (although in the case of public employees, such as bus drivers, they are concerned about putting a large chunk of their population on welfare).
In 1895 there were two automobiles in the whole state of Ohio...
Due to the lack of cars, as one would imagine, there were no car accidents.
Except once, when these two, aforementioned, automobiles (again, the only two in Ohio) ran into each other!
Currently, there are approximately 36,000 highway deaths per year or about 102 per day. 50% are due to alcohol or some other drug induced impairment.
The first part (Ohio) above may be untrue, but it does make the point, albeit, in a rather circuitous way...if we could snap our fingers and have instantly driverless cars we would take the drunks out of the equation and save over 18,000 lives per year...just doing that would be worth it.
Imagine if it could reduce highway deaths completely....Hmmm.
Best.
P.S. In 2016, 2,433 teens in the United States ages 16–19 were killed and 292,742 were treated in emergency departments for injuries suffered in motor vehicle crashes. That means that six teens ages 16–19 died every day due to motor vehicle crashes and hundreds more were injured.
In 2016, young people ages 15-19 represented 6.5% of the U.S. population. However, they accounted for an estimated $13.6 billion (8.4%) of the total costs of motor vehicle injuries.
Or you could just shoot the drunks when prosecuted for their defect. One of the greatest problems in this country is accepting people with mental defects. Frankly the only place I can see where the death penalty makes sense is in dealing with the mentally ill. You could eliminate millions of innocent deaths simply by getting these people off the streets for good.
Sorry, but why does the media hang on Wozniak's every word? Why do we care what he thinks? He hasn't been relevant in decades. What has he produced since he left Apple, while living on his AAPL stock? He's never been shown to have even a shred of insight into where things are going, or even a fundamental understand of what makes products and companies successful. He's certainly never under what has made Apple successful.
I agree with you that SW is over-rated, especially on the topic of Apple.
But on this one, I agree with him wholeheartedly. Fully self-driving cars are at least 7-10 years away. They have to first fix insurance/liability issues, and then hundreds (if not thousands) of state and local regulations related to vehicles and vehicle traffic have to be worked on one by one. On top of which, the US Congress will have to pass legislation.
I think it will all ultimately happen, but not before 2025.
7-10 years is still a short time. If one were identifying the year autonomous driving became a thing, being off 7-10 years wouldn’t matter.
Woz didn’t say that tho. He implied it’s nowhere near happening.
I see everyone here disagrees with Woz. But Woz is where he is because he is a visionary. And sometimes being a visionary includes seeing things that can't be done. Eg, 50 years ago many people thought that a helicopter would be on everyone's front lawn. A visionary would have said "not likely" and been right.
That...that isn’t what a product visionary means at all.
Also, Woz wasn’t a product visionary. He was a good hardware engineer, but he didn’t have any idea what consumers wanted or would pay for.
I think letting a care drive for you will turn your brain into mush, Driving is problem solving activity, you need to be at you best and be able to solve problems in real time. If you let a car drive you everywhere, it just another sedentary activity which will cause you to decline in your ability to solve problems.
Also, if you think mechanization/automation of the US and shipping manufacturing jobs over seas killed jobs. Making all transportation autonomous will kill more jobs than you could imagine.
Your argument here is mush. We thrived without cars for thousands of years, clearly able to solve problems. If you think driving makes you smarter then NASCAR fans should be brilliant. We all should be brilliant. We aren’t.
Yes, it is a bit of stating the obvious that self-driving cars aren't ready for prime time, yet, but assistive technologies are improving rapidly and they do prevent accidents. Roads haven't been built for self-driving cars because they weren't a possibility when these roads were built. I expect that new roads will be built with self-driving cars in mind. I also think that many roads will be improved a bit and certified for self-driving cars. I may not be able to drive from San Jose to downtown LA with my eyes closed, but I would expect to be able to do at least the highway portion of the trip while taking a nap in the near future.
I wouldn't trust an autonomous system on an unpaved and unmarked road or offload yet, because there are too many decisions to be made which could result in disaster. But on highways and city streets, definitely.
Until that 80 year old in her 1987 Buick hits the accelerator instead of the brakes and T-bones you and your autopilot car.
So what? She’d t-bone anyone regardless of driver. No one claimed autonomous cars will make people accident proof!
I figure it will be almost 100 years before society can fully experience wide range of benefits promised by autonomous vehicles. It will take that long to replace all the non-autonomous cars (which will continue to be sold for decades), to upgrade/adapt as many of the roads as we can, build in all the sensory infrastructure required and to have a population fully accustomed to using them. Once we are there, car accidents will be greatly reduced, elders will be able to remain mobile without endangering themselves or others, along with all the other things promised by the pundits. I really do think they will be a big benefit for almost everyone.
I do think people have gotten overly excited by the very real promise of these cars. This is a huge undertaking. Not just designing the cars, but the whole upheaval that they will cause. Sure, it is sort of similar to the transition from horses to cars, but in many ways it is totally different and a much bigger deal. It's gonna take time - lot's of it. No way around it.
radarthekat said: Here’s a mind experiment... imagine trying to create autonomous vehicles that move no more than 3mph. All of the requirements for sensing their immediate environment would remain, but the issue of them having accidents resulting in deaths would be greatly eliminated. I’m thinking this would be doable today, from what we’ve seen from the results of the DARPA challenge, from Waymo’s advances, Tesla autopilot, and others. Can we agree on that?
Okay, how about 4mph? See where this is going? A couple more turns of Moore’s law and cancer starts to get cured, weather predictions might be accurate enough that we don’t need more accuracy (do you need to know if it’s going to rain in two weeks?), crime heat maps become good enough to pre-position law enforcement in advance (already there for some types of crime), and our mind experiment becomes safe at any speed (to paraphrase Ralph Nader in the 1960s).
Well, people would be less likely to get killed at 3mph whether there are humans or AI at the helm. But, that doesn't mean the AI is doing any better, it's just the nature of accidents and vehicle safety. It might run into the side of a semi at 3mph too, but just give more reaction time to duck for the occupant.
So, no, I don't fundamentally agree. That's what I mean by qualitative vs quantitative. The problem is that AI - or better machine learning - is taking a heavy moving object through a very complex environment, following a flawed program of how to do so and react. It isn't actually intelligently responding to the environment the way a human would. Apples and oranges.
And, Moore's law isn't doing anything in your examples above. Programmers and scientists (i.e. minds) are, which just enables the actual people with minds to use computers as tools in more complex situations. But, the computer isn't advancing because of Moore's law, the real minds are advancing it.
Will AI vehicles keep improving as we write better software, use better sensors, and input more of our corrective knowledge into the system? Sure. The question is... how big that solution set is, compared to the problem set. There is no AI-magic afoot here.
radarthekat said: Did you mean “qualitative not quantitative?” Because if you did, you would be only half correct. It’s both. On one hand the system needs to be able to make appropriate decisions based upon data it’s presented (continue forward, speed up, slow down, turn, etc), but it won’t have time to carry out those decisions in time to evade an obstacle or make a necessary adjustment if the speed is too fast for the data provided, such as if the data provided only covers the ten feet in front of the vehicle. More data is needed. The system needs to be processing what’s out 100 feet, 200 feet, and farther depending upon its speed and other factors. Lots of data is needed (quantitative) and appropriate decisions need to be made against that data (qualitative). This is a simplistic representation of the problem, which is multi-variant and intractable, but not unsolvable. Start at 3mph, as I suggested in my mind experiment from
my previous comment, processing data from just 50 or 100 feet around the vehicle. Learn from that, advance the tech, layer on new data, from farther out away from the vehicle, let the system learn that, increase safe drivable speed, just like a human driving student.
OK, yes, I agree here. But, the the problem isn't always that it needs to 'see' 200 feet instead of 100 feet. Sure, that will help... so yes, it is both. The problem is in the 'making a decision' stage, because it isn't and never will. It will follow the program.
Or, to put it another way... the Tesla that ran the guy into the side of the semi, or into the cement barrier in California, would happen over and over and over again given the same set of circumstances. Until some actual minds (a.k.a. humans) fix that problem, it will remain. So, they fix that one... but what about the next one?
So, yes, speed presents a problem that Moore's law will help solve, but it isn't the fundamental problem. The AI won't 'learn' any more at 3mph than 100mph. It isn't' learning, it's just building a data-set. Then humans react to that data set.
wizard69 said: Actually setting up a base on the moon would be far easier than getting an automobile to operate with human levels of safety. The moon might involve more expensive hardware but most of the technical issues are solved.
As has has already been seen, robot cars fail miserably when it comes to accident avoidance. AI tech simply is t advance enough to perform emergency maneuvers beyond breaking or giving up. Actually a lot of humans can’t handle this well either so we shouldn’t blame robot cars. The classic problem if what to do when someone runs out in front of you is something that requires a quick reaction and often selecting the least of many evils.
Yeah, the moon base is isn't just way, way easier, it's a different kind of problem.
AI cars do have something on humans in terms of awareness and reaction time, but the difference is that the human would actually be trying to make the best decision, where as what the AI car does depends on the existing parameters in the program.
wizard69 said: The only recourse we really really have to joblessness is immigration controls and population controls. Unfortunately half the population won’t accept one and the other half will not accept the other. Sad times really.
Actually, I disagree here. We're quickly approaching a point where lack of population will become a problem. Anywhere society has advanced, or been allowed to advance, population expansion tends to drop, and actually drop to such a point that having bigger families is encouraged. The problem is that many of the parts of the world that are still greatly expanding in population have been kept from technology or suffer from worldviews that keep them from advancing.
Technology tends to create more and better quality jobs, not take them away. A great example of this, is I heard someone recently complain about online/phone/touchscreen ordering at restaurants as 'taking jobs away' because of less counter people, but then one of the restaurant managers said that actually, they are now employing more people because those forms of automation have increased their demand/output. (That's not necessarily a great example of tech producing substantially better jobs, but you get the point. In other industries, it has produced better jobs.)
And, the problem with the 'halves' in the USA, is that 80% of both halves haven't been taught how to think for themselves, and have been brainwashed by horrible media, etc. So, they just react in lockstep with their particular ideologies, driven by the messaging. So, yes, sad times for sure... but purposely created sad times that could be changed.
wizard69 said: Or you could just shoot the drunks when prosecuted for their defect. One of the greatest problems in this country is accepting people with mental defects. Frankly the only place I can see where the death penalty makes sense is in dealing with the mentally ill. You could eliminate millions of innocent deaths simply by getting these people off the streets for good.
Yikes... or, how about we just remove the privilege of driving if you can't demonstrate the ability to safely operate a vehicle, or the responsibility? The problem is that would probably remove half the cars from the road, and how would all those people get to work?
davgreg said: Anyone who has driven and paid attention to the many cars with driver assistance technologies knows that there are many gaps as there are with almost any human developed software logic.
Yeah, that's another problem, though I think it depends on how wisely and well designed that assistive technology is the first place. For example, those 'blind spot' lights in the mirrors are horrible. They just train their drivers not to really check, and they don't work all that well. It might be fine, though, if better designed.
But, something like true antilock breaks are typically a good thing (unless people become overconfident with them). They got a bad rap, because like above, so many carmakers put crappy ones in for decades.
It is how a machine handles something it has never dealt with before that is really key to safe robot cars. Personally I think we will need breakthroughs for in hardware design to better support AI.
Yeah, that's where the breakthrough needs to happen, but I don't think there will ever be such a breakthrough. I can't even conceptualize how such a leap could be made. (And, neither can any of the smartest people in the world working on the problem of consciousness.) True AI is based on a sci-fi concept of mimicking a human brain well enough that consciousness emerges. And, that project will fail, as consciousness doesn't emerge from a brain.
dewme said: The worst possible leader you could possibly have would be one who is older & reckless, willing to sacrifice anyone below them because the leader already has it all and nothing to lose no matter how ruinous their decisions/actions are on others. It happens.
Well, regardless of age, the problem I see here is that we have a lot of money driven recklessness pushing this whole thing. And, given the track record looking at other sectors (like banks, for example), they pretty much know there won't be any real penalties to pay.
mdriftmeyer said: It's a qualitative problem, not a quantitative one. That's the reason it'll never be solved by brute force. The human brain and it's instinctive leaps of outcomes won't be matched by machine learning. Machine Learning is no match for our ability to adapt on the fly. AI proponents are touting the machine not being distracted by other extraneous noise, when the noise is being constantly filtered by the human brain. No one size fits all algorithm will ever match it, and solve as a baseline for all outcomes.
Sorry, yeah... that was a typo. I meant to say it is a qualitative, not quantitive (though Moore's law not helping). I think we mostly agree.
Steve Wozniak doubts fully self-driving vehicles are 'quite possible yet'
Not exactly sure why stating the bleeding obvious is so contentious.
Because the majority of the public seems to have been won over by the media blitz, and is all in. Otherwise, they'd be in the streets with pitchforks to try and stop this insanity (or at least voting out the idiot politicians who are making it possible).
I figure it will be almost 100 years before society can fully experience wide range of benefits promised by autonomous vehicles. It will take that long to replace all the non-autonomous cars (which will continue to be sold for decades), to upgrade/adapt as many of the roads as we can, build in all the sensory infrastructure required and to have a population fully accustomed to using them.
Look at how much society has changed just in the last decade. Don't underestimate the willingness of a culture to do really stupid things with the right motivation. And, if lawmakers get involved, it could go really quickly.
There is a big difference between what is needed for a self driving car in a warm climate urban environment and one that can take a back country road in rural Montana in the snow or one buried in leaves in Vermont. Or black ice in the panhandle of Texas in January.
Anyone who has driven and paid attention to the many cars with driver assistance technologies knows that there are many gaps as there are with almost any human developed software logic.
I do not want one, do not want to pay the extra amount of money these systems will cost, do not want to be the victim of this unnecessary technology, etc.
I like driving and am fairly good at at- even in pretty crappy weather. I do not see a self driving car as a bonus, but as a danger. The fact that GM has shown a prototype of a car without controls just shows another reason why I would not buy their products anyhow. This same company sold knowingly defective ignition switches for well over a decade that caused many "accidents" and killed many people.
Then there is the whole legal problem. If an autonomous car that belongs to you kills someone is the liability on the manufacturer or the owner? Are you going to be able to sue GM or the person stupid enough to trust GM in the first place?
Setting aside GM and just focusing on the issues, I see a path forward for self-driving cars. First, such systems could require a human driver when conditions are detected that would compromise safety under full autopilot control, such as you describe above regarding snow-covered Montana roads. But even there, at some point in the continuous march of technology, the car is going to be better than the driver.
In the meantime, cars without human control interfaces could be limited to well known/mapped routes and slower speeds. Maybe limited to city environment car-sharing service. Such cars would simply not accept requested destinations that would require them to navigate unproven roads/conditions.
I figure it will be almost 100 years before society can fully experience wide range of benefits promised by autonomous vehicles. It will take that long to replace all the non-autonomous cars (which will continue to be sold for decades), to upgrade/adapt as many of the roads as we can, build in all the sensory infrastructure required and to have a population fully accustomed to using them. Once we are there, car accidents will be greatly reduced, elders will be able to remain mobile without endangering themselves or others, along with all the other things promised by the pundits. I really do think they will be a big benefit for almost everyone.
I do think people have gotten overly excited by the very real promise of these cars. This is a huge undertaking. Not just designing the cars, but the whole upheaval that they will cause. Sure, it is sort of similar to the transition from horses to cars, but in many ways it is totally different and a much bigger deal. It's gonna take time - lot's of it. No way around it.
Look into the concept of the coming Technological Singularity and read up on the timeline created by Ray Kurzweil. You may end up adjusting your estimate.
radarthekat said: But even there, at some point in the continuous march of technology, the car is going to be better than the driver.
Maybe... so long as it is something that the march of technology is actually capable of doing.
SpamSandwich said: Look into the concept of the coming Technological Singularity and read up on the timeline created by Ray Kurzweil. You may end up adjusting your estimate.
That guy is a nut-case (especially in this regard).
There are more than 250 million registered vehicle in the U.S. Each year around 15 million new light vehicles are sold. So if we threw a switch and only made fully autonomous vehicles next year, it would take 15 years to replace them all. That ain't gonna happen. It's just too big of an economic and technological change to happen any time soon.
Like I said, for the change over to be complete, where all cars are self-driving, all roads are suitably upgraded, and all new people, it will take about 100 years. And in case you don't know how words work, that means no manual drive cars anywhere (except antique).
THE problem is expecting big, luxury SUVs to maneuver autonomously through dense city traffic. The solution? Downsizing! There’s much more to gain by downsizing. What about energy efficiency. Having an affordable EV and therefore zero-emission personal mobility made widespread. Smart mobility. Save billions on new roads. More Fahrvergnügen too (the sleeker the car, the more road space to play around with).
I wish all these companies would put more effort into the EV thing instead of this stilly AI stuff. Having some good EV options would actually make a difference. And, yeah, I hate all the big SUVs around, primarily because they are hard to see around. People always park them on streets near the corners too, so you end up having to almost blindly pull out and such.
Comments
Real AI is not even at the stage of a Fruit Fly. Any expert working in the field who isn't bought by Silicon Valley freely admits we're at the larvae phase.
Steve Wozniak doubts fully self-driving vehicles are 'quite possible yet'
Not exactly sure why stating the bleeding obvious is so contentious.Woz didn’t say that tho. He implied it’s nowhere near happening.
That...that isn’t what a product visionary means at all.
Also, Woz wasn’t a product visionary. He was a good hardware engineer, but he didn’t have any idea what consumers wanted or would pay for.
Your argument here is mush. We thrived without cars for thousands of years, clearly able to solve problems. If you think driving makes you smarter then NASCAR fans should be brilliant. We all should be brilliant. We aren’t.
I do think people have gotten overly excited by the very real promise of these cars. This is a huge undertaking. Not just designing the cars, but the whole upheaval that they will cause. Sure, it is sort of similar to the transition from horses to cars, but in many ways it is totally different and a much bigger deal. It's gonna take time - lot's of it. No way around it.
So, no, I don't fundamentally agree. That's what I mean by qualitative vs quantitative. The problem is that AI - or better machine learning - is taking a heavy moving object through a very complex environment, following a flawed program of how to do so and react. It isn't actually intelligently responding to the environment the way a human would. Apples and oranges.
And, Moore's law isn't doing anything in your examples above. Programmers and scientists (i.e. minds) are, which just enables the actual people with minds to use computers as tools in more complex situations. But, the computer isn't advancing because of Moore's law, the real minds are advancing it.
Will AI vehicles keep improving as we write better software, use better sensors, and input more of our corrective knowledge into the system? Sure. The question is... how big that solution set is, compared to the problem set. There is no AI-magic afoot here.
OK, yes, I agree here. But, the the problem isn't always that it needs to 'see' 200 feet instead of 100 feet. Sure, that will help... so yes, it is both. The problem is in the 'making a decision' stage, because it isn't and never will. It will follow the program.
Or, to put it another way... the Tesla that ran the guy into the side of the semi, or into the cement barrier in California, would happen over and over and over again given the same set of circumstances. Until some actual minds (a.k.a. humans) fix that problem, it will remain. So, they fix that one... but what about the next one?
So, yes, speed presents a problem that Moore's law will help solve, but it isn't the fundamental problem. The AI won't 'learn' any more at 3mph than 100mph. It isn't' learning, it's just building a data-set. Then humans react to that data set.
Yeah, the moon base is isn't just way, way easier, it's a different kind of problem.
AI cars do have something on humans in terms of awareness and reaction time, but the difference is that the human would actually be trying to make the best decision, where as what the AI car does depends on the existing parameters in the program.
Actually, I disagree here. We're quickly approaching a point where lack of population will become a problem. Anywhere society has advanced, or been allowed to advance, population expansion tends to drop, and actually drop to such a point that having bigger families is encouraged. The problem is that many of the parts of the world that are still greatly expanding in population have been kept from technology or suffer from worldviews that keep them from advancing.
Technology tends to create more and better quality jobs, not take them away. A great example of this, is I heard someone recently complain about online/phone/touchscreen ordering at restaurants as 'taking jobs away' because of less counter people, but then one of the restaurant managers said that actually, they are now employing more people because those forms of automation have increased their demand/output. (That's not necessarily a great example of tech producing substantially better jobs, but you get the point. In other industries, it has produced better jobs.)
And, the problem with the 'halves' in the USA, is that 80% of both halves haven't been taught how to think for themselves, and have been brainwashed by horrible media, etc. So, they just react in lockstep with their particular ideologies, driven by the messaging. So, yes, sad times for sure... but purposely created sad times that could be changed.
Yikes... or, how about we just remove the privilege of driving if you can't demonstrate the ability to safely operate a vehicle, or the responsibility? The problem is that would probably remove half the cars from the road, and how would all those people get to work?
Yeah, that's another problem, though I think it depends on how wisely and well designed that assistive technology is the first place. For example, those 'blind spot' lights in the mirrors are horrible. They just train their drivers not to really check, and they don't work all that well. It might be fine, though, if better designed.
But, something like true antilock breaks are typically a good thing (unless people become overconfident with them). They got a bad rap, because like above, so many carmakers put crappy ones in for decades.
Yeah, that's where the breakthrough needs to happen, but I don't think there will ever be such a breakthrough. I can't even conceptualize how such a leap could be made. (And, neither can any of the smartest people in the world working on the problem of consciousness.) True AI is based on a sci-fi concept of mimicking a human brain well enough that consciousness emerges. And, that project will fail, as consciousness doesn't emerge from a brain.
Well, regardless of age, the problem I see here is that we have a lot of money driven recklessness pushing this whole thing. And, given the track record looking at other sectors (like banks, for example), they pretty much know there won't be any real penalties to pay.
Nothing new... just an attempt at a media splash.
I think we mostly agree.
Because the majority of the public seems to have been won over by the media blitz, and is all in. Otherwise, they'd be in the streets with pitchforks to try and stop this insanity (or at least voting out the idiot politicians who are making it possible).
Look at how much society has changed just in the last decade. Don't underestimate the willingness of a culture to do really stupid things with the right motivation. And, if lawmakers get involved, it could go really quickly.
In the meantime, cars without human control
interfaces could be limited to well known/mapped routes and slower speeds. Maybe limited to city environment car-sharing service. Such cars would simply not accept requested destinations that would require them to navigate unproven roads/conditions.
That guy is a nut-case (especially in this regard).