| > Driving is not a closed domain problem. There will always be fat tail circumstances where statistical methods will break down. Some of it is. Walmart has already deployed some self-driving semis in Arkansas that go between a warehouse and a store. There are a significant number of routes like this, always taking the same path back and forth between two places in a relatively controlled environment. > Why invest in hugely expensive automation in an open problem domain that you can not even perfectly model when you can just pay a driver $25 an hour to do it better? Driving time is a big one. There are strict limits on how many hours drivers can be driving on a given day. That means you've got a huge, expensive machine sitting idle for most of the day. Self-driving can get you double the usage of an expensive asset. > Why not automate warehouses? This is happening already. https://www.wsj.com/story/amazon-takes-steps-toward-warehous... > It is literally an easier technical problem to land a man on the moon than to design an autonomous road vehicle that can do better and be more cost effective than humans in all circumstance. Nobody's saying it has to work in all circumstances. You can choose where to deploy self-driving vehicles. If you stick to the American Southwest, you still have an enormous opportunity, but you eliminate one of the big challenges for autonomous vehicles - snow and other difficult weather. |