I don't think that we will see totally autonomous cars _in_our_lifetime
Now you're moving the goalposts to suit your argument.
Supersonic flight was abandoned because it is expensive and prohibitively noisy. Will some set of obstacles also arise to stymie autonomous vehicles? Maybe, but we wont know till we try.
The regression in medicine is due to pure stupidity. Will the same or similar type of stupidity raise its head to block self-driven cars? Again the answer is maybe. Maybe not. We wont know till we've tried.
many, many, many people pay the ultimate price to prove you wrong every day
You misunderstood what I said. My point was that if a computer controlled car's computer fails it can be made to fail-safe. Shut down and coast to a stop. The same cant be said for planes.
Of course we will have scenarios of computers being mis-programmed and causing death. The point being that once a bug is found and eliminated it wont reoccur. Not to mention that a human will never drive as well or recover from trouble (such as a fishtail) as well as a computer. Our interfaces are simply too slow, clumsy, prone to fatigue, prone to mis judgement due to adrenaline etc. the list goes on.
I get what you're saying about optimistic extrapolation being a trap... but we don't have to extrapolate far from where we are today. The google self driven cars have already driven tens of thousands of miles with the only recorded accident occurring when the vehicle was under human control.
Not only that but Nevada has already licensed the cars for testing on its roads. Now you can argue that the testing is not 100% authentic. From what I understand the routes are pre-programmed and 2 occupants must be in the car at all times. But to say that this tech wont go anywhere for the next 50-60 years (however long you intend to live :) ) ... seems to lack imagination.
This isn't everyone using personal jet-packs or interstellar travel we're talking about here.
> You misunderstood what I said. My point was that if a
> computer controlled car's computer fails it can be made to
> fail-safe. Shut down and coast to a stop. The same cant be
> said for planes.
Just because you are at ground-level you are not safe if you lose control of the vehicle.
> The point being that once a bug is found and eliminated it
> wont reoccur.
We already have a software industry and we know that this doesn't happen: bugs do not occur only once and then get eliminated forever. There are people making a living writing books about mistakes that people repeat over and over in software.
Now you're moving the goalposts to suit your argument.
Supersonic flight was abandoned because it is expensive and prohibitively noisy. Will some set of obstacles also arise to stymie autonomous vehicles? Maybe, but we wont know till we try.
The regression in medicine is due to pure stupidity. Will the same or similar type of stupidity raise its head to block self-driven cars? Again the answer is maybe. Maybe not. We wont know till we've tried.
many, many, many people pay the ultimate price to prove you wrong every day
You misunderstood what I said. My point was that if a computer controlled car's computer fails it can be made to fail-safe. Shut down and coast to a stop. The same cant be said for planes.
Of course we will have scenarios of computers being mis-programmed and causing death. The point being that once a bug is found and eliminated it wont reoccur. Not to mention that a human will never drive as well or recover from trouble (such as a fishtail) as well as a computer. Our interfaces are simply too slow, clumsy, prone to fatigue, prone to mis judgement due to adrenaline etc. the list goes on.
I get what you're saying about optimistic extrapolation being a trap... but we don't have to extrapolate far from where we are today. The google self driven cars have already driven tens of thousands of miles with the only recorded accident occurring when the vehicle was under human control.
Not only that but Nevada has already licensed the cars for testing on its roads. Now you can argue that the testing is not 100% authentic. From what I understand the routes are pre-programmed and 2 occupants must be in the car at all times. But to say that this tech wont go anywhere for the next 50-60 years (however long you intend to live :) ) ... seems to lack imagination.
This isn't everyone using personal jet-packs or interstellar travel we're talking about here.