Thanks for the link– I totally agree with the skepticism on fully-autonomous vehicles. Like you mention, the last 10% will probably require human-equivalent cognition. For instance, how the hell will an autonomous Uber be able to double-park illegally to pick up passengers? It would have to know when and how to break the rules while keeping everyone safe– no trivial task. Short of that, we would need to redesign our cities around such services, at which point you have to ask, why not just create a robust system of public infrastructure without ceding control and profit to these private companies?
Add to that this series of articles that basically says there’s no reason to think that Uber itself will benefit at all from the tech (since their ride-hailing software is trivial to clone)… You really get a picture of the bullshit Uber and the like are peddling. These companies are not benevolent friends delivering us the ‘future’; it is ENRON level de-regulation with the slickest PR venture capital can buy.
