Comment by mg
3 years ago
$100B is not that much when you compare it to the value self-driving cars will create.
There are over 1 billion cars on the road which need humans to drive them. How much are they used? I don't know. Let's say one ride per day. When cars turn into a service business, the "driver" will be software. What will be paid to the driver? Let's say $1 per ride.
That is 1B * $1 * 365 = $365B per year. Give that a p/e ratio of 10 and the value is $3650B.
So we could spent 30 times more and still break even.
I would like to nit-pick and say you're estimating some novel metric. The value add would be somewhat higher than that because the alternative is a human driver, so the value-add of the software is approximately ($/h value of driver x hours) that it frees up to do something else. Plus all the evidence I see suggests that whatever the current state, sooner rather than later computers are going to be superhuman at driving (like they are at most other discrete tasks) and save a lot of lives. Plus reduced wear & tear on vehicles.
$365B in value is probably a serious undercall. The only reason to complain here is if only $100B has been put in to the venture so far.
I think computers will become superhuman at driving under the right conditions.
However, there will inevitably be conditions that require the use of general intelligence (rather than driving heuristics), and in those situations all you can do is pray the computer acts rationally despite not having GI.
I think self driving cars have already passed the test of "number of crashes" or "number of fatalities" per mile driven. But I don't think that's enough to sway the public, if every once in a billion miles a self driving car slowly drives off a cliff for no apparent reason.
Nothing says self driving cars can’t phone a call center for the 0.001% edge cases. Just add a cellphone connection and a Starlink receiver in the roof for a backup. At which point we would need to add some cell reception to some tunnels and cars can have literally global coverage.
High drips the problem drops from near AGI to not outrunning the cars ability to stop without hitting anything.
>I think self driving cars have already passed the test of "number of crashes" or "number of fatalities" per mile driven.
This is not definitively known. The distribution of conditions under which self driving cars operate is very different from the distribution of human driving. Self driving car miles are disproportionately on the highway, with little traffic, in perfect weather (i.e. by far the safest driving conditions). In addition, we don’t know how many disengagements (or remote interventions) would have resulted in an accident.
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>>Plus all the evidence I see suggests that whatever the current state, sooner rather than later computers are going to be superhuman at driving (like they are at most other discrete tasks) and save a lot of lives.
What is that evidence, exactly? I agree that we might eventually get there, but the scale seems to be 50-100 years at this point. We are as arrogant as the researchers in the 60s who famously announced that absolutely perfect image recognition is only 1-2 years away - except the problem is several orders of magnitude harder.
Typically from what I've seen computers go a long period being hopeless at a task, then slightly subhuman-par-superhuman very quickly. It seems to me that as far as algorithm-and-Hz cares human intelligence lives in a very narrow window and once computers get close to it they tend to jump over it.
I'd judge self driving to be slightly subhuman right now - there are definitely worse drivers on the road (typically impaired - drunk, near-blind or high). I'd expect superhuman performance this decade just based on that and the rate of improvement in anything AI related right now.
> will create.
just think of the huge economic value that faster-than-light travel will unlock!!
you're assuming your conclusion
But we know driving is possible because people can do it.
I don't think anyone here questions the fact the humans are able to operate motor vehicles.
I'm not sure I get your valuation model. "we're" not investing in self driving it's the car companies, because (presumably) they believe that self driving will make their cars more sellable compared with other brands.
If after another $50B or $100B spent some companies start to pull back on funding because they think diverting funds to other areas will give a better return (better batteries, cheaper manufacturing etc), it's likely others will too.
It's not only off topic, it's also wildly unrealistic (IMO). 1$/day may seem little, but that's for middle-class US standards, and it gets proportionally worse when you realize many people make more than one trip per day. What incentive do you have for people to pay that amount?
With self-driving cars, you don't have to own cars anymore. That $1 per day frees your $5.000 per year budget for owning a car.
No one is going to rent you a car for $1/ride, self driving or not in fact I doubt you could rent a bike for that much. Even if you eliminate the driver from the equation, you still have to pay for the value of the car, wear and tear, and fuel/electricity to run it. The $1 on top is an extremely optimistic cost of a self driving software only.
Let me put it this way - it would already be cheaper for me to just take an Uber to work than own my car. And yet, I(and I imagine most people will too) prefer to own my car.
A short taxi ride costs much, much more than 1$.
Are you interested in investing in my lead into gold startup? Just think of the value it will create.