[khgvljhkb]

We who browse HN like the idea of self-driving cars, but does anyone have a nuanced perspective on their usefulness? I don't know much about AI compared to many here. It has been said that things which humans learn at very young age are hard to automate (identifying things you see, walking, social things) while things we learn as adults are easy to automate (accounting, telegraphs, file cabinets).

Car driving definitely contains elements that we learn as kids (seeing things in motion, identifying what is a human and what is a rock) while some things are learned as adults (what does that sign mean, how to count KM/H, how transmission works).

Are we really close to autonomous vehicles on the streets?

[thomasahle]

For one thing, the truck market seems incredibly ripe for automation. That should be a fairly easy, profit driven decision. Not many feelings involved.

Except for protests from truck drivers of course.

[chrischen]

Pay off the current generation of truck drivers and tell the next generation to not pursue a career in truck driving. That ways we won't waste millions of dollars arguing with them when what they really want is to be paid (but they'll make up bullshit reasons for about how automated truck driving is bad).

[Spivak]

I really like this idea. Continue paying all your drivers to be ride along with the autonomous car for safety reasons and an emergency override. They'll probably get really low insurance rates for having a human assisting. And when they leave or retire don't replace them. That's about the smoothest structural unemployment transition I've ever heard. It won't happen though because just firing, and fighting the protests/lawsuits is probably cheaper.

[omegaham]

Close as in widespread deployment, coming soon to a parking lot near you? No.

Close as in "doing proofs of concept and being adopted for experimental tasks?" Yes.