The bubble around self-driving cars turns into a \u2018trough of disillusionment\u2019; firms refactor for much later arrival<\/p>\n
Mercedes-Benz unveiled its dream of a fully autonomous multipurpose vehicle this week. The announcement was full of buzzwords\u2014the modular Vision Urbanetic \u201cenables on-demand, sustainable and efficient movement of people and goods\u201d and \u201creduces traffic flows, relieves inner-city infrastructures and contributes to an improved quality of urban life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hardly a week goes by without fresh signposts that our self-driving future is just around the corner. Only it\u2019s probably not. It will likely take decades to come to fruition. (Even a car like this Mercedes is more a sketch of what\u2019s to come than an actual blueprint.) And many of the companies that built their paper fortunes on the idea we\u2019d get there soon are already adjusting their strategies to fit this reality.<\/p>\n
Uber, for example, recently closed its self-driving truck project, and suspended road testing self-driving cars after one of its vehicles killed a pedestrian. Uber\u2019s chief executive even announced he would be open to partnering with its biggest competitor in self-driving tech, Alphabet Inc. subsidiary Waymo. Meanwhile, Waymo CEO John Krafcik recently said it will be \u201clonger than you think\u201d for self-driving vehicles to be everywhere.<\/p>\n
\u201cSelf-driving technology has the potential to make our roads safer and cities more livable, but it will take a lot of hard work, and time, to get there,\u201d says an Uber spokeswoman.<\/p>\n
In the past two years, Tesla CEO Elon Musk planned, then scrapped a coast-to-coast autonomous road trip. And Lyft CEO John Zimmer\u2019s 2016 prediction that self-driving cars would \u201call but end\u201d car ownership by 2025 now seems borderline ridiculous.<\/p>\n
There are many reasons the self-driving tech industry has suddenly found itself in this \u201ctrough of disillusionment,\u201d and chief among them is the technology. We don\u2019t yet know how to pull off a computer driver that can perform as well or better than a human under all conditions.<\/p>\n
It turns out that the human ability to build mental models isn\u2019t something that current AI can just learn, no matter how much data it\u2019s fed. And even once we have the technology, we\u2019ll still have to deal with all those unpredictable humans in cars, on bikes and scooters, and on foot. The more self-driving vehicles hit the road, the more pressing the safety concerns and legal and regulatory issues will become.<\/p>\n
This means worries\u2014mainly in academic circles\u2014that America\u2019s truck drivers will face \u201ceroding job quality\u201d because of autonomy are premature. It means cities don\u2019t yet need to wonder what will become of their mass transit. And it means Uber and Lyft aren\u2019t likely to ditch human drivers soon, and their investors should value them accordingly.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, we\u2019ll have to adjust to the reality that autonomous driving could be headed for narrower\u2014but still transformative\u2014applications. And if our desire for driverless taxis and delivery vans is strong enough, we might need to create dedicated roads for them.<\/p>\n
Cars can\u2019t learn to drive simply by being trained on data about how real humans do it, no matter how much data you have, says Gary Marcus, New York University professor and former head of Uber\u2019s AI division. \u201cThat\u2019s why companies like Waymo have to break [self driving] into pieces that can be engineered rather than treating it like one giant data problem,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n
In Chandler, Ariz., Waymo actually set up a self-driving car service. It deserves credit for solving an enormously difficult problem\u2014creating a driverless, fully autonomous taxi service. But the company accomplished this in part by carefully constraining the circumstances under which their vehicles drive.<\/p>\n
The service only operates in an area the team has thoroughly mapped. Chandler is \u201cwell laid out and has modern roads and conditions,\u201d says Nathaniel Fairfield, principal software engineer at Waymo.<\/p>\n
Self-driving cars generally rely on the lidar detection system, whose lasers can be foiled by inclement weather. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t rain a whole lot there and there\u2019s no snow,\u201d Mr. Fairfield says. Chandler also has less than 4,000 people per square mile, making it about 1\/20th as dense as Manhattan.<\/p>\n
Mr. Fairfield notes that Waymo is also constantly training its vehicles under far more difficult conditions. But this tells us nothing about when self-driving technology will come to places with actual seasons, less-than-perfect roads or higher population density.<\/p>\n
Over a lifetime of driving, humans become expert at countless subtasks, from noticing distracted pedestrians to questioning the judgment of construction workers waving them through a work site. While much has been made of the total number of miles that various self-driving systems have racked up, conquering these little annoyances actually requires an enormous amount of intellectual labor by many teams of engineers.<\/p>\n
While auto makers and investors are pouring huge sums into this field, competition is likely to remain thin until this results in another Waymo\u2019s worth of effort on the technology. Waymo has been at it since 2009, with some of the best-compensated engineers on earth.<\/p>\n
Even when (or if) we get a working, go-anywhere self-driving system, we would face myriad legal and behavioral challenges, says Meredith Broussard, author of \u201cArtificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World.\u201d<\/p>\n
When a Tesla slammed into the back of a stopped firetruck at 60 miles an hour, the driver sued the auto maker, claiming the company misrepresented the capability of its Autopilot software. Who is liable when a self-driving car gets into an accident? We have yet to resolve the issue, which could lead to a sea change in how we insure vehicles.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also not true that we must transition to self-driving cars because human-piloted ones are so lethal, Prof. Broussard says. Countless innovations have made cars radically safer since the 1950s and continue to do so. Meanwhile, new distractions, such as smartphones, can be addressed more cheaply, without resorting to full autonomy.<\/p>\n
Our love affair with self-driving cars is a form of \u201ctechno-chauvinism,\u201d Prof. Broussard says. \u201cIt\u2019s the idea that technology is always the highest and best solution, and is superior to the people-based solution.\u201d<\/p>\n
While we work all of that out, we\u2019ll also need to start spending big money refashioning our cities, bike lanes and sidewalks so that they are friendlier to self-driving vehicles. This would have to coincide with the rollout of widespread and robust 5G wireless internet that could power a massive vehicle-to-vehicle communications infrastructure. If every car driven by every human was tracked, along with every autonomous vehicle, then perhaps humans and machines could share the road.<\/p>\n
After all, it\u2019s not keeping to a lane that\u2019s hard. It\u2019s predicting what all those capricious and distracted human drivers around you might do next. That\u2019s what keeps the computer programmers up at night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The bubble around self-driving cars turns into a \u2018trough of disillusionment\u2019; firms refactor for much later arrival Mercedes-Benz unveiled its dream of a fully autonomous multipurpose vehicle this week. The announcement was full of buzzwords\u2014the modular Vision Urbanetic \u201cenables on-demand, sustainable and efficient movement of people and goods\u201d and \u201creduces traffic flows, relieves inner-city infrastructures […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":5040,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"amp_status":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[15,241,330],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n