A friend of mine and I have been in a bit of a debate that I find interesting enough to share. The topic.. Autonomous Vehicles (AV’s) the current state, where we are headed and most importantly when are we going to get there?
His take:AV’s are here. The tech is being rolled out and the space is going to change our lives as we know it very soon.
His evidence:Cruise,$Tesla (TSLA.US)$, and Waymo are testing in places like Vegas, San Fran, and Arizona. Billions of dollars are being funneled into the technology and soon we will see AV’s everywhere.
My take:AV’s are in their infancy. Despite roll outs in select markets it’s more of a lack of regulation (asleep at the wheel perhaps??) that this is happening not that the tech is actually functional and on par with their human counterparts. These large corporations marketing departments are selling a dream that has yet to practically come into reality and true AV’s could be years if not decades away. This ultimately comes down to the fact that broad based AI needs to be solved to have an effective AV that can handle all the unknowns in the real world.
My evidence: Googly Eyes Being Added to AV’s to Reduce Pedestrian Accidents - I wish I was making this up. The idea is by putting cartoon eyes on AV’s it reduces “unsafe street crossings” because the PEDESTRIAN sees it coming and stays out of the way… seems like it’s fixing a different problem to me not fixing the AV’s ability to not have “unsafe street crossings”.
They keep doing dumb things
AV’s trapped in cul de sac’s AV’s block traffic AV Demo doesn’t start and passengers are scared AV’s hitting things a lot TSLA Promising FSD for almost 10 years