[Apocryphon]

And yet, it is a common criticism that Silicon Valley is focused on building cat photo sharing apps, or on demand services, or whatever is the current defining stereotypical trend, than tackling the “big problems”, such as cancer. So certainly our economic structure incentivizes frivolous wants, which make investors happy and founders wealthy.

[tlb]

Many, many people in SV are working on cancer and other really valuable things. Progress is slow because it's hard, not because nobody works on it.

[Apocryphon]

Mythical Man-Month and all that, but progress would probably be a little less slow if more people and organizations are incentivized to work on the same problem. See the progress on self-driving vehicles.

[brokenmachine]

>See the progress on self-driving vehicles.

Self-driving vehicles are complete hype - so far from a reality it's ridiculous that people here still seem so bullish on them.

Please show me a single vehicle that is anywhere close to being able to drive unassisted in all weather conditions and on any roads that a human would drive.

[chillacy]

> unassisted in all weather conditions and on any roads that a human would drive

If that's your goalpost for impact then of course it looks bleak. A mechanical loom doesn't have to be able to handle every type of thread and pattern a human can to change the nature of production, goods, and employment. Likewise a truck that can drive on freeways on 80% of days (and nights) would already be huge.

[brokenmachine]

A mechanical loom can be made so it doesn't kill people when it makes a minor mistake, and doesn't have to dodge unpredictable humans and random wildlife or other obstacles while working.

That freedom to mess up is a luxury that self-driving cars don't have, and makes all the difference.

People on here seem to think that a self-driving car only has to be safer than a human in order to be viable (which is bar that isn't close to having been reached in itself), but in reality humans are held legally responsible when their driving kills people.

If a self-driving car kills someone, then the manufacturer is responsible, not the owner of the car who wasn't driving so can't possibly be responsible.

Otherwise we need to have a conversation as a society on what liability we will accept, because I know that I don't want to be the one paying for the deaths caused by these car companies playing fast and loose with people's safety in order to capture the "autopilot" market.

[chillacy]

You seem to be bringing up the danger and uncertainty around liability as an obstacle for the adoption of self driving vehicles, thus making them "far from a reality" / "complete hype", right?

As sad as it is, I'm not so sure that the economic incentives around automating truck drivers won't win over a few lives in the end. I'd be curious what vegas odds would be on self driving cars. I wouldn't bet against it.

[grahamburger]

People are bullish on them because they don't need to get anywhere near that bar to be useful. A car that can drive itself only on well maintained freeways during the day in good weather is still incredibly useful.

[brokenmachine]

...And even that still isn't close to happening.

All we've seen so far is tarted-up driver assist systems that sometimes suddenly decide they don't want to be in control anymore, killing the actual driver or whoever happens to be unlucky enough to be in front of the vehicle.

It's all hype.

The problem is too difficult to solve with current technology without drastically changing the roads and removing humans altogether.

Rio Tinto was able to get it working with a drastically limited scope on closed roads with infinite money.

>Autonomous haul trucks are operated by a supervisory system and a central controller, rather than a driver. They use pre-defined GPS courses to automatically navigate haul roads and intersections and to know actual locations, speeds and directions of other vehicles at all times.

https://www.riotinto.com/media/media-releases-237_23991.aspx

[Apocryphon]

Regardless of their product viability, doubtless an immense amount of advancement has occurred in the last five years because of interest- economically driven- in the field. Imagine if similar incentives existed for other hard problems.

[gowld]

What's the point of curing cancer if there's nothing fun to live for?