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9 Questions that Reveal Why Self-Driving Cars Aren’t Ready
Famous roboticist Rodney Brooks says we aren’t close to full autonomy
Companies have been promising self-driving tech for 80 years now. Despite what some may think, we’re not remotely there yet.
Press releases and news articles about autonomous vehicle (AV) companies tend to overstate the stage of development of fully self-driving technology or, at least, obscure details that would remind analysts, investors, and consumers that we’re still far from that goal.
Rodney Brooks, the famous roboticist founder of iRobot (which invented the Roomba), made a list of predictions on AI, robotics, and self-driving tech in 2018. Each January since then, he revisits his predictions to assess whether he was right, too optimistic, or too pessimistic.
His predictions are characterized by going against the all too common hype, reflecting his “realistic” — as he calls it — stance. He was accused of “being a pessimist,” but now, four years later, he’s starting to think that “I too, reacted to all the hype, and was overly optimistic in some of my predictions.”
