[a_gentle_autist]

"I have a slightly different view. In the report that Google published, they said they've spent roughly $40 million on diversity efforts over the past 10 years.

They've spent, I'll guess, several hundreds of millions of dollars in the past two years on self-driving cars. If companies like Google truly wanted to solve this problem, they'd spend more than $40 million over 10 years and make a much more significant effort.

So my conclusion is that right now we actually don't want to solve it."

Stunningly frank observation, dumping money into a project that will never see the light of day. Ah, Google.

[chroma]

These priorities seem sane to me. Vehicles kill over a million people every year. Self-driving cars can drastically reduce that number.

[a_gentle_autist]

Ones that get to market, like those from Mercedes, VW, Tesla.

Google's car tech, and software, will never be adopted by an auto manufacturer. And Google will never sell cars.

[swashboon]

I am wondering why you think that Google technologies will never be adopted. From what I have seen of the industry there is a good chance they will be adopted.

Google also does not have to sell cars to consumers, it could modify cars to sell a service.

[bduerst]

That seems like the more appropriate market approach, right?

Cars are these large depreciating assets that spend 22 hours a day doing nothing, save for that one long road trip vacation you take.

Factor out driver salaries and driver insurance, you should save money with an on-demand fleet vs. making payments on your own vehicle.

[kenrikm]

They may just buy Uber (they are a big investor) and run their own fleet.. Lets not forget Google also has Google Shopping Express and their mapping cars.. making those self driving could be a huge thing for Google. Example: Shopping express car drives up, opens a compartment you retrieve your box and it drives off. Uber drives up you get in, it brings you to your destination you get out, no driver required.

[bduerst]

This falls to the classic Hume's Guillotine (is-ought problem).

It's very easy to speculate about what someone should be doing vs. what is actually needed, what is being done, and the network effects of both.

[kenrikm]

I think getting more minorities in STEM from an early age (K12) would be a good start.

[meowface]

I agree, but in many cases there's not that much most companies can do about this. Do all the initiatives you want and raise as much money as you like, you're not going to somehow overhaul an entire culture (in family life, in schools, among peers) in a few years.

[danilocampos]

This is called the pipeline fallacy and ignores that companies hire at dramatically lower rates (0%-2% for blacks, 2%-3% for latinos) than there are graduates (4%-8%, depending on your source) for a given underrepresented background

[meowface]

Lower rates than there are graduates or than there are applicants to each company? Given the former, there are still numerous potential explanations for why this could be the case, none of which necessarily involve bias or discrimination on the part of the companies or hiring staff.