Self-driving is a software problem, not a hardware problem
βI saw that all the teams treated this like a hardware problem. They looked at this and say, we have to build a bigger wheels and bigger chassis and so on. And I looked at this and said, about wait a minute. The challenge really is to build a self driving car. They can drive for the desert. I can get a rental car. They can do it just fine, provided as a person insight and the challenges we need to take the person out of the driver's seat and replace it by computer. That is not a problem with bigger tires. That's actually be a software problem.β
Autonomous technology threatens nearly five million American jobs
βFour point eight million Americans drive for a living. It's one of the most common jobs we have, and these workers do not plan to surrender to the California tech companies. They're doing this because they stand to make an unfathomable amount of money if they eliminate driving jobs for working class of people. These drivers are represented by unions backed by politicians and in cities across America blue cities. They're organizing. So far they're winning.β
Internal cultural clashes slowed Googleβs early development cycle
βThe main difference in their approach is how quickly they want to move. Anthony is very okay with risk. He gets one of these cars and he's driving it back, and he lives in Berkeley, works in Palauto. He's just using this car like the Bay Bridge every day, probably outside the bounds of what the team actually wanted, and he's not necessarily logging data. He's just enjoying his self driving car and taking it all over the place.β
DARPA contests catalyzed the modern autonomous vehicle industry
βTony Tether, who had been a door to door salesman in his use definitely has that flare in that way of thinking, says, let's have a contest. Let's see who can put all of these ingredients that we've developed together into a proper self driving car. His original idea is we'll drive him down the Las Vegas Strip that's almost immediately next because it's insane.β
Robots are significantly safer than average human drivers
βI had experiences of losing people in my life to traffic accidents, and I felt we lost over the million people in the world to traffic accidents. Wouldn't it be amazing if Dabok invented something that would save a million lives a year.β
Googleβs Larry 1K project validated real-world autonomous potential
βSebastian, I think you should build a self diving car that can drive anywhere in the world. And my immediate reaction was, no, taking the technology we build for this empty desert and put it in the middle of Market Street in San Francisco is going to kill somebody. And Larry would come back the next day with the same idea, and I would give them the same answer, and both of us got increasingly more frustrated. God damn it, it can't be done, and eventually came and said, look, Sebastian, OK, care, I get it. You can't do it. I want to explain to Erk Schmidt the CEO at the time and Sergey Britt my cofounder, why it can't be done?β
βWeimos says, and I think this is correct, that it's roughly eighty brass safer in terms of crashes are severe enough to turn down an airbag. Crashes severe enough to cause an injury, and also crashes involving vulnerable road users like pedestrians or bicyclists. So far it's been better than human drivers, and so far, I think the case for allowing them they continue. The experiment is very strong.β
Uberβs aggressive testing led to industry-altering fatal accidents
βIn the last moments of Alane Herzburg's life, the robot spent an indefensible five point six seconds trying and failing to guess the shape in the road there was a human body pushing a bike. Over those five point six seconds, the robot kept reclassifying our whishing an unknown object a vehicle a bicycle. During that time, spent wondering the car did not slow down. Soon after Elaine Hertzberg's death, Uber halted its testing program.β