Is Autonomous Driving Closer Than We Think?

about 4 years ago

One thing about Elon Musk, he is good about setting deadlines. He is also very good about missing them. With Musk, you have to take his deadlines on a sliding scale.

Jim Keller is the former head of Tesla's autopilot hardware division. He is also the one who designed the company's self driving chip.

Keller is a bit of a mercenary in the industry, working at the likes of Apple and Intel. It appears he is a guy who goes in, gets the job done, and moves on.

He is optimistic about the possibility of autonomous driving in the short term. His and Fridman has a bit of a disagreement on the timeline with Fridman not believing much is possible in the short term.

In response to the deadlines missed he had this to say:

“Progress disappoints in the short run, surprises in the long run.”

What is interesting about this is the fat that Keller things that driving is a simple task. To me, I feel it is complex but he seems to think it is just a matter of getting the proper data sets and training the AI.

This is one of the leading AI minds in the world, at least from the chip perspective.

So the question is whether autonomous vehicles are really closer than we think?

If it is, we are going to see things change very quickly. The roll out of this technology is going to be rapid. To me, the question is whether it was a mid 2020s type thing or not. I always thought we were looking at a few years before we saw anything resembling a fully functioning autonomous vehicle.

Keller did not put any deadlines out there but the interview makes it seem like we are not looking at much more than a year or two. Of course, another question is does he have information outside of what Tesla is doing. I would imagine they run in small circles out there and he might have an idea of where Waymo and some others stand.

While we tend to focus upon automobiles, this technology is going to affect all of transportation. Not only are we looking at autonomously moving people around but, also, cargo. There are a lot more products shipped than people moved. Automation in this area is going to completely alter supply chains.

It is going to be interesting.

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