Dude, where’s my self-driving car?

A good look at The Verge about the history of false claims made by the Silicon Valley hype machine around self-driving cars:

"In 2015, the then-lead of Google’s self-driving car project Chris Urmson said one of his goals in developing a fully driverless vehicle was to make sure that his 11-year-old son would never need a driver’s license.

"The subtext was that in five years, when Urmson’s son turned 16, self-driving cars would be so ubiquitous, and the technology would be so superior to human driving, that his teenage son would have no need nor desire to learn to drive himself.

“Well, it’s 2024, and Urmson’s son is now 20 years old. Any bets on whether he got that driver’s license?”

https://www.theverge.com/24065447/self-driving-car-autonomous-tesla-gm-baidu

@technology #cars #technology #cars #urbanism #UrbanPlanning

  • n2burns
    3·
    4 months ago

    Thanks for the links. As I read it, none of that is saying their ratio is below 1:1, just that they switch between vehicles as needed.

    And the “what their operators do” link sounds like they are the equivalent of a driving instructor sitting in the passenger seat, giving instructions but not “directly controlling” the vehicle.