Can you provide a source for this?

The Google “Driverless Car” technology is not yet at the point where it can “make a complete journey through all known possible road conditions without any human intervention” (not even nearly), although it does appear to be somewhat farther along than the major car manufacturers. One of the major problems with the Google system is that it cannot drive a new route by itself without intervention – it needs to have a human drive its routes at least once in a while (essentially to re-program the system with any changes encountered on the route). This may also imply that the system may have some difficulties with dealing with unusual weather conditions or other novel situations, for example, though Google obviously doesn’t want to talk about their system’s limitations.

A true “driverless car” would obviously be a huge advance – most likely many fewer accidents and fewer traffic jams, plus freeing up the driver to do other things while they commute, and allowing people like the blind and the elderly much more independence – but that’s all still a ways off. We’re getting there though. But even the intermediate technologies like what’s outlined in this article should improve the situation enormously – even reducing accidents by 10% would save thousands of lives every year, not to mention its potential for improving travel times.

Google will only remain king if they can license their technology to the auto manufacturers. Retrofitting a car with a self-driving kit will be more expensive than an auto maker putting a kit in the car while it’s still on the conveyor belt. If the car makers can come up with a system as effective as Googles they are likely to not license Googles tech and then Google will be the ones that have lost their R&D money. Could be Google might start making cars? :)

The cabs will perhaps require a credit card to enter in the first place, then the company will know who enters the cab or at least one of the passengers. This way any damages caused to the cab can be charged to the culprit right away. There will also no doubt be internal monitoring of who is in the cab, like there is in cabs in some countries already.

PS. The rude customers will no doubt be the reason the artilect wars starts ;)

The new recipients of wellfare become a new class of government employee called “consumers” where their purpose (for lack of a better one) is to keep money in circulation by “consuming” and the economy from crashing.

One by one each class of labor dissappears, the supply of taxable income for wellfare also dissappears as the cost of living approaches zero. The end state is that mechanization of the human life support system becomes complete, reducing the price of goods and services to nothing and the job supply to nothing.

This creates an era similar to the era before the invention of the economy and jobs, when apple on the tree was worth the energy required to reach out, grab it, and “consume” it. Only in this case the apple will reach out to us.

But “eating” will be so totally 2010, by that point.

Any sane person would not miss these tragic days where their loved ones can be wiped out of existence by some drunk, selfish human who cannot think about the consequences of their actions beyond their own primal needs.

Driverless cars should be receiving massive amounts of investment but sadly our politicians cannot think more than a year into the future, and the truth is that thousands of lives are being lost due to the lackadaisical approach we have to AI research.

Look – a driverless car isn’t driverless until it can make a complete journey through all known possible road conditions without any human intervention. Google are the only ones in possession of this technology, all the other companies are licking their wounds and hyping their inferior technologies that they’ve ploughed so much money into, because they see the Google driverless technology on the market horizon and realise that all of their products are already redundant and they won’t see a return on their R&D.

Too bad, should have started earlier. Google is king now.