Self-driving car a let-down for Wozniak

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak made the news when he told car industry executives he doesn’t expect to see self-driving cars in his lifetime. 

Wozniak is 69. You can do your own grim maths calculation here. A self-driving car may yet pull up in my lifetime, hopefully your’s too. 

The tech sector has a long history of misplaced ‘coming real soon now claims’.

One of my first jobs covering technology was in 1981. I went to a press conference showing an early speech recognition computer. It could just about understand ten words some of the time if you spoke very carefully. 

At the press conference we were told computers able to recognise and understand everyday speech are just two years away. They’ve been just two years away ever since. 

Self-driving cars are not that different. In fact the reason for misplaced optimism is much the same. That is, people are terrible at forecasting future technology. 

In 2015 Elon Musk, Tesla’s boss, predicted his cars would be capable of “complete autonomy” by 2017. 

Last year General Motors said it would offer a range of driverless cars this year.

Waymo, which is part of Alphabet (Google) has been testing driverless taxies in Phoenix Arizona this year. Waymo choose Phoenix because it has wide, flat roads. 

In theory it is one of the easiest places in the world to drive. In practice Google still sits human drivers behind the wheel; just in case. 

One reason for overconfident forecasts is that tech company leaders believe their own hype about progress in artificial intelligence and related technologies. 

Progress is difficult. Much of today’s AI uses brute force; improvement can be a long, hard slog. That doesn’t sound anything like as good at a rah rah sales event as whipping up excitement about what could be possible. 

Hear me talk to Kathryn Ryan about this on RNZ Nine-to-Noon.