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Originally Posted by Phanuthier
Well regardless of your social inequality concerns.... lots of companies are doing massive hiring and have large teams (in industry, not academia) to do this and launch it before 2020. The technology has been known for decades, but advancement takes some time. Maybe the first vehicles won't be fully autonomous (society sometimes wonders why science doesn't take a quantum leap forward, but realistically they take small steps in between big steps forward) but the eventual goal will be to automate the process as much as possible. The first 90% is the easiest, each 1% thereafter gets harder and harder.
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Lots of concerns beyond wealth distribution:
- Humans will always be the fly in the ointment. It isn't clear whether autonomous technology will ever be able to deal with the myriad problems that driving involves to same degree of success as the highly flexible human brain without extensive mapping. The goal will then be to remove humans from the system as much as possible.
- Huge changes to city infrastructure. Given that computers are still, you know, stupid. The mapping required will eliminate autonomous cars from using anything but main thoroughfares. It is not clear whether or not this will improve congestion. Cities will inevitably get uglier as a result.
- Costs associated with infrastructure mapping and upgrading. Massive. Who pays for this? Google? Taxpayers? (Hint: Taxpayers). Where does this money come from in an economy so totally disrupted?
- Unit economics of car ownership. Do you own your own autonomous car? Do you use a taxi service of autonomous cars?
- Myriad ethical problems.