Isn’t it interesting that self-driving cars and the software that launched this phenomenon are not required to pass a driving test, yet humans are?
I am here today to challenge the basic premise that software backed by artificial intelligence can drive a car better than a human.
Take left turns without a traffic light.
Artificial intelligence has consistently failed to successfully complete this standard objective.
This somewhat riskier driving maneuver must take into account drivers on the other side of the road which humans can do, but the back-tested data in the self-driving software cannot predict external variables that could come into play.
This is why the software malfunctions on a left turn when a bird defecates on the windshield believing it’s an accident worthy of a full stop and yes a full stop right in the middle of oncoming traffic.
These types of poor decisions occur more often than you think with this “cutting-edge” technology.
The truth is that self-driving car technology is coming close to the point where I will be comfortable calling it a $200 billion tech scam.
This scam is right up there with the Madoffs.
Twenty years on, no real product to show for except many unintended road deaths and rich Silicon Valley software engineers that peddle this false theory that software is better at driving than humans.
What’s the current situation today?
The industry still amounts to little more than a bunch of glorified tech demos.
It’s basically a performance and that’s it.
In demos, you see what the creators want you to see, and they control for things that they'd rather you didn't.
To an AI, a slight change could be catastrophic. After all, how is it supposed to know what an appropriate response to a slight or sudden change is when it doesn’t understand everything it’s looking at?
How will it handle when the weather goes from sunny to hail, or when there’s deer in the headlights at the edge of the road?
It is unequivocally wrong to believe that software is better at real-time driving than a human, and therefore this industry will never mushroom into what investors think it might.
This will never be a multi-trillion dollar industry where tech companies can license out self-driving technologies to bidders around the world.
Self-driving cars are a 2-ton weapon ready to kill pedestrians, cyclists, and little kids.
The interesting thing to look for is whether these venture capitalists and investors double down on failed technology and pull strings to get this circus on public roads with the rest of us.
It’s entirely possible that this could happen in limited areas like the states Arizona and California.
At the very minimum, I don’t believe that all 50 states would ever green-light such rotten technology.
I would advise anyone to move away from those states and find a state where human driving is mandatory.
As for tech, the write-downs for this botched job won’t hurt much to big firms like Google.
However, add this to the dustbin of failed tech.
The metaverse is a project that appears to be headed for that same dustbin too.
Outdoing the smartphone is proving to be almost impossible and this is just another symptom of it.
Tech is still utterly reliant on smartphone revenue until someone can supplant it.
The search goes on with another grave in the rearview mirror.
PROBABLY NOT GONNA HAPPEN
