Picture this. It's the end of the day and you're headed home from work. You enter your car and sit comfortably. It automatically verifies that it's you and starts to take you to your home. You don't even need to tell it where you want to go.
Then, as it starts driving itself, you take a quick nap as you're tired after a long day of work. Or, you take out your tablet and start catching up on that show you had missed the previous day. After some time, the car arrives at your home, without you ever having to do anything.
This is a future that has been promised to us for many, many years now. And although we have made a lot of progress with autonomous cars, there is still a lot of room for improvement.
However, the ever-eccentric Elon Musk has claimed that fully self-driving cars are just around the corner. Will his prediction prove to be over optimistic like most of his other predictions? Or will he be right this time?
Level 5 Autonomy
Elon Musk recorded a video message for the opening of Shanghai's annual World Artificial Intelligence Conference. In it, Musk said that Tesla will be able to present to the world a car with Level 5 autonomy by the end of this year.
Basically, this means that it will be a fully self-driving car and the scenario described above could become a reality (even if partially). If true, this would mean Tesla would be in a league of its own.
Currently, Tesla cars are perhaps the most popular electric car brand with partial self-driving capabilities. In fact, other vehicle manufacturers are working hard to catch up to Tesla after ridiculing it for ages. (That's what happens when you stand against the tide of technology).
Also, Tesla became the most valuable car manufacturer in the world. And from the looks of it, the company is just getting started. If they can really deliver on their promise, the other manufacturers will be left in the dust.
I personally think that 2020 is too optimistic of a target. At the earliest, they might get it done by 2021. The artificial intelligence system that Tesla uses still needs to learn a lot about real world scenarios. And that could take years. But, it's encouraging to see them push their boundaries.
We love to see self driving cars in the market soon but a big question is if the vehicles are safe enough to handle current traffic challenges on road.
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Yes, that's the real question. Fully self-driving cars will have to account for every single event on the road. The AI in them would need to be as smart as humans or even more.
Though I prefer to enjoy driving cars myself (and not just be a passenger), I'm certainly excited to see autonomous driving come into the market. It's a great piece of technology, and hopefully it'll also get bad drivers off the roads, eh? Tesla's grasp on technology is pretty fantastic given they're a startup who'd mostly spent its time in the red for a while. Yet, I'm not sure if Elon is being realistic at this point.
As you say, fully autonomous driving won't be able to come that soon, maybe in a year or two at the very least. Besides, even if it comes around then, what guarantees does it have that it'll be safe? Great to push the threshold of what we knew was possible, but there's also some moral questions in play. Can Tesla release a fully autonomous system to the public, without using people's lives to unwillingly test this technology? Could they guarantee not putting people's livelihoods in harms way? Best of luck to them, and let's see what Tesla will come up with.
Elon has always been super optimistic and I think that's okay. In fact, that might have been one of the reasons for their fast progress. But yes, technology requires its own time to get assimilated into the human society. For instance, even if the tech is ready, the regulators would have to approve it and that might take even more years. So, I think that fully self-driving cars where humans don't have to do anything at all will take at least 5 years (from a tech and legal perspective)
Agreed, quite true all around. Elon's optimism and determination reminds me Steve Jobs back in the day, rest his soul. They both can be a bit of a pushy arse at times, but their visions have no doubt brought great things. Regulators would have to do their best, and that also includes people's confidence in wanting to use self-driving tech in the first place. I think 5 years is a good time-frame to see this adoption.
Totally agreed! :)