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by Scholmo 68 days ago
Planes are probably the most controled machines we have. Everything gets checked twice or more, everything gets tracked and there is a clear requirement to do it like this because, as you said, its not possible for humans to control a fighterjet or a big plane.

Cars are non of that and we have billions of them on the street.

Cars also became a lot more expensive due to their complexity which def creates problems for a lot of people who can't afford all of that. I'm really torn by this because I think its very good that my side mirror shows me if there is a car next to me but in our capitalistic economy, we are excluding a lot of people from affordable cars. Drive by wire needs to be cheaper and easier to fix/repair.

Btw. Waymos are slowly learning to drive on highways so I might agree that they drive saver than humans in certain controlled envs. For sure not in any environment.

1 comments

But that is the "tradeoff" people are going for. What irritates me about Waymos is that they are not really cheaper than taxis and Uber. If we want people to become more mobile ... Waymo does not appear to be the answer.

And that was always the trade that was proposed. Sure, Waymo's (and Uber) will displace a LOT of taxi jobs, but they'll be way cheaper than taxis. Well ... they're not. And at that point, from an economic perspective, this is just taking things away for not much in return.

Once again people get a lot of possible choices and once again they choose for the more expensive one, putting more people out of business, out of a job, and as you say out of society. Now they're saying "yeah but this is good for autistic people and women, who can now travel by taxi without ever seeing anyone". How, exactly, does anyone think that's a good thing for society? Seriously?

Plus I'm a bit of the opinion, if Waymo is already breaking their own proposed social contract now ... imagine what they'll do in 10 years.