Where are the flying cars?
“Where are the flying cars? I was promised flying cars. I don't see any flying cars. Why?”
That was an IBM ad... from the year 2000.
Interestingly, the ad continues to resonate. One big reason it hasn’t happened? Billions of people all over the world have discovered they can work together on the web 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Therefore, you don't need flying cars.
Here’s the 2021 version, though:
Where are the self-driving cars? We were promised self-driving cars. We were told that by now, we would have self-driving cars.
It seems like every major car manufacturer started promising that. Of course the most outspoken promoter of self-driving cars is Elon Musk. He promised the self-driving car availability in August 2018.Then, in 2019, he promised to be ready by 2020. Well, it is 2021 and you cannot buy a self-driving car (or flying car, for that matter. Hovercraft don’t count).
Am I negative about self-driving cars, Tesla and Elon Musk?
Definitely not.
It’s an inspiring effort and as much as I’ve questioned one of Musk’s other projects, like StarLink, no one can discount his capabilities as a business leader.
It’s clear that the amount of technological advances required to have self-driving cars is significant. From sensors, cameras and computer chips all the way to the software required, the problem is difficult. Add to that the fact that any small failure can end up with human death. The stakes are really high.
When nobody has done something before, you have no idea what obstacle is waiting for you around the corner - figuratively and literally speaking. That's why any time estimates are very difficult to provide.
On the other hand, the side effects are already delivering real benefits. Examples - LIDAR (3-D laser scanning) technology was first introduced in 1961 for military applications, then during the Apollo mission and significant improvements were made for the self-driving cars. There were also benefits provided in agriculture, archeology, robotics, astronomy, ... the list is long.
When it comes to computer chip design to process the vast amount of data required for self-driving cars - Tesla engineers designed two specific chips. One is for image recognition and self-driving capabilities and the other, announced this week, is for AI training, to be used in the Tesla Bot.
Being on the bleeding edge is always difficult and it is always difficult to predict when you will achieve your desired goal.
Many times, when building new things, we fail, but it always is a learning opportunity and it always leads to new, exciting discoveries. And that's the desirable recurrent pattern.
Bonus Recurrent Pattern: Here is my prediction for what will happen with self-driving cars. Eventually, all the companies will realize how difficult it is to build the technology and that even the biggest and richest companies won't be able to do it on their own. Only then, they will come together and design a communication protocol, which will allow cars to talk with each other and build far more robust, safe and useful systems. Think about it as the Internet of Cars (IoC). If it works for humans, it should work for cars as well. That's the recurrent pattern in the making.