Autonomous cars will clog up existing cities by cruisnig around looking to pick up rides or deliver shit and mill around endlessly or occupy every piece of parking in prime real estate to make sure they are quickly available wherever demand is high (i.e. where people want to or have to be). In time they will phase out human driven cars which will lead to higher speed limits and more infrastrcuture that supports autonomous driving. Meaning fewer "difficult" intersections, straighter roads, no bike lanes or pedestrian sidewalks. Everything optimized for autonomous cars to endlessly mill around. People will be blocked from being near autonomous cars as those will be going too fast for human reflexes to cope with so areas where cars drive will not have sidewalkss nor bike lanes. This will lead to urban areas that are even more car dependent with only pockets of urbanism that support human scale. To get anywhere one will need to hail one of those autonomous taxis and then zoom in it to a destination where it's again safe to walk in whatever pocket of human activity. Since cars need a lot more land area than humans the urban infrastructure will mostly cater to them and not to people because the expectation and argument will be that you can always get your ass shuttled to wherever you need to be.
Meanwhile, in real life San Francisco, I much prefer being around Waymos as a pedestrian and cyclist than human drivers. While most human drivers are competent and considerate, a small percentage are not -- and given the number of encounters in a single trip, I have these dangerous interactions weekly.
Despite being a noticeable presence on the roads, Waymos have not contributed to congestion at all as far as I can tell.
This article [1] claims a "3-line improvement" on the vision chart. It wouldn't be helpful for me (moving from 20/600 to 20/300, I'd still need correction) but would be a huge win for someone in the 20/50 to 20/80 range, correcting to 20/40, the minimum for driving without correction.
- Electric motors were invented in 1827 and one of the first things the inventor did was a toy electric car in 1827. The first proper electric car was 1890, and they were popular as golf carts and milk floats through the 1900s. What they were lacking was good enough batteries. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_vehicle#History
- Autonomous cars: human chauffeurs and taxis (and trains) so we can be moved around without doing the driving, go back to the first cars. We haven't had the technology to build them (and arguably don't and won't have until we get near AGI).
- Data centers in space ... ???? Bueller? Bueller?
- Humanoid robots were seen in Fritz Lang's Metropolis film in 1927, they've always made sense. What doesn't make sense is lying about having built humanoid robots and then having to admit they were being remote controlled, cough Tesla.
Fred Lambert at Electrek has become an unreliable reporter on Tesla. I don't know where his bias stems from, but it's unmistakeable.
Lambert claims David Moss couldn't find a Robotaxi ride without a safety driver. True enough, there aren't a lot of them on the road. That doesn't mean they don't exist or were "pulled back."
Here's Moss's latest tweet on the subject: "ANOTHER UNSUPERVISED:
2 in a row now here in Austin, TX of Tesla Robotaxi’s completely autonomous without chase cars.
You can see 2 cars in the clip with no one in it & anyone can book it!
If the cost per ride is 35% cheaper than Uber/Lyft, then that money stays in the local economy, just in the hands of the consumer rather than the gig worker. Currently WayMo is more expensive, but I see that changing as they scale. And certainly CyberCab is promising to be much cheaper.
Jhonen Vasquez was previously best known for Johnny The Homicidal Maniac, an insanely dark graphic novel. I'm still stunned that the powers that be thought he should write an animated children's show. That said, I love Invader Zim. Taquitos!
Peter Lik has a strategy sort of like this. It's still a limited edition of, say, 100, but the price increases as the edition sells out. The last print to sell may be 100x or more the first.
He wrote several more books (including a sequel/second edition of Code Complete). None of them had the same impact, though: https://stevemcconnell.com/books/
