The ‘hard problem’ of self-driving technology

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There is considerable reason for skepticism that autonomous vehicle technology will pan out any time soon,[1] but that isn’t stopping some big high technology players from pouring money into it.[2]

Count me among the skeptics for three reasons:

  1. Having been a computer programmer myself, I’m all too well aware of the heady feeling that accompanies persuading a recalcitrant computer to do my bidding. There is a sense of power there that leads to over-confidence, even arrogance. I’ve seen this time and time again over a period of decades. Programmers still write crappy code. And now they’re going to want us to rely on that crappy code to get us safely from point A to point B.

  2. Recognition of the shortcomings of artificial intelligence idiocy[3] is not yet the norm in the industry. There’s, at best, a limited (perhaps to Waymo) understanding that it may not be sufficient to solve the problem of self-driving cars.[4] See reason number one above.

  3. There’s a difference between the executives who are setting the goals and the programmers and engineers who have to make it happen. We see this in particular with self-driving technology.[5]

That third point demands a fair amount of exploration because it’s the executives who are making the promises:

In 2015, Elon Musk said self-driving cars that could drive “anywhere” would be here within two or three years.

In 2016, Lyft CEO John Zimmer predicted they would “all but end” car ownership by 2025.[6]

At one point, no later than 2016, then-Uber chief executive officer Travis Kalanick “said the development of self-driving cars is ‘existential’ to Uber.”[7] Uber and Lyft have both since sold off their self-driving development units[8] and if you’re looking to Elon Musk for credibility, well, we just don’t have anything to talk about.[9]

Executive overreach is a longstanding problem: I remember when I was finally included in an all-hands meeting at Linuxcare[10] as the dot-com boom was about to bust, listening to the CEO who with his co-founders had reclaimed control of the company from ruinous (and ultimately fatal) venture capital mismanagement, and thinking to myself that this guy really believes his own bullshit. I also realized that a significant part of his job was sales.

Which means this overreach is probably even longer-standing than that. I remember my father complaining when I was a kid about sales people who promised more than he could deliver within cost and time constraints. I saw some of that myself at Linuxcare.

Words, we must always remember, are not substance. So far with self-driving technology, we’re seeing more words than substance.[11]

Everything I’m seeing on this informs me that autonomous vehicle technology is a hard problem.[12] And everything I’m seeing in high technology is that arrogance and over-confidence increase with corporate rank.

The latter won’t solve the former.

  1. [1]Christopher Mims, “Self-Driving Cars Have a Problem: Safer Human-Driven Ones,” Wall Street Journal, June 15, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/self-driving-cars-have-a-problem-safer-human-driven-ones-11560571203; Christopher Mims, “Self-Driving Cars Could Be Decades Away, No Matter What Elon Musk Said,” Wall Street Journal, June 5, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/self-driving-cars-could-be-decades-away-no-matter-what-elon-musk-said-11622865615↩
  2. [2]Mark Gurman, “Apple’s Car Obsession Is All About Taking Eyes Off the Road,” Bloomberg, June 24, 2021, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-24/big-tech-s-car-obsession-is-all-about-taking-eyes-off-the-road↩
  3. [3]David Benfell, “Our new Satan: artificial idiocy and big data mining,” Not Housebroken, April 5, 2021, https://disunitedstates.org/2020/01/13/our-new-satan-artificial-idiocy-and-big-data-mining/↩
  4. [4]Christopher Mims, “Self-Driving Cars Could Be Decades Away, No Matter What Elon Musk Said,” Wall Street Journal, June 5, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/self-driving-cars-could-be-decades-away-no-matter-what-elon-musk-said-11622865615↩
  5. [5]Christopher Mims, “Self-Driving Cars Could Be Decades Away, No Matter What Elon Musk Said,” Wall Street Journal, June 5, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/self-driving-cars-could-be-decades-away-no-matter-what-elon-musk-said-11622865615↩
  6. [6]Christopher Mims, “Self-Driving Cars Could Be Decades Away, No Matter What Elon Musk Said,” Wall Street Journal, June 5, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/self-driving-cars-could-be-decades-away-no-matter-what-elon-musk-said-11622865615↩
  7. [7]Ryan Felton, “Uber Is Doomed,” Jalopnik, February 24, 2017, https://jalopnik.com/uber-is-doomed-1792634203↩
  8. [8]Igor Bonifacic, “Lyft is selling its self-driving unit to Toyota for $550 million,” Engadget, April 26, 2021, https://www.engadget.com/lyft-sellss-level-5-self-driving-toyota-woven-planet-204353240.html; Kia Kokalitcheva, “Uber says it’s likely to pay Waymo or revamp its self-driving tech,” Axios, November 7, 2019, https://www.axios.com/uber-says-its-likely-to-pay-waymo-or-revamp-its-self-driving-tech-ffa6e420-4273-4cf1-8161-fc40e25b61da.html; Kirsten Korosec, “Uber in talks to sell ATG self-driving unit to Aurora,” TechCrunch, November 13, 2020, https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/13/uber-in-talks-to-sell-atg-self-driving-unit-to-aurora/; Heather Somerville, “Uber Sells Self-Driving-Car Unit to Autonomous-Driving Startup,” Wall Street Journal, December 7, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/uber-lyft-face-a-no-sharing-economy-11603710180↩
  9. [9]David Benfell, “Elon Musk, groan, again,” Not Housebroken, February 28, 2021, https://disunitedstates.org/2020/03/22/elon-musk-groan-again/↩
  10. [10]“All-hands meetings” were limited to employees. I started at Linuxcare as a contractor.↩
  11. [11]Christopher Mims, “Self-Driving Cars Could Be Decades Away, No Matter What Elon Musk Said,” Wall Street Journal, June 5, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/self-driving-cars-could-be-decades-away-no-matter-what-elon-musk-said-11622865615↩
  12. [12]Igor Bonifacic, “Lyft is selling its self-driving unit to Toyota for $550 million,” Engadget, April 26, 2021, https://www.engadget.com/lyft-sellss-level-5-self-driving-toyota-woven-planet-204353240.html; Kia Kokalitcheva, “Uber says it’s likely to pay Waymo or revamp its self-driving tech,” Axios, November 7, 2019, https://www.axios.com/uber-says-its-likely-to-pay-waymo-or-revamp-its-self-driving-tech-ffa6e420-4273-4cf1-8161-fc40e25b61da.html; Kirsten Korosec, “Uber in talks to sell ATG self-driving unit to Aurora,” TechCrunch, November 13, 2020, https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/13/uber-in-talks-to-sell-atg-self-driving-unit-to-aurora/; Christopher Mims, “Self-Driving Cars Have a Problem: Safer Human-Driven Ones,” Wall Street Journal, June 15, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/self-driving-cars-have-a-problem-safer-human-driven-ones-11560571203; Christopher Mims, “Self-Driving Cars Could Be Decades Away, No Matter What Elon Musk Said,” Wall Street Journal, June 5, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/self-driving-cars-could-be-decades-away-no-matter-what-elon-musk-said-11622865615; Heather Somerville, “Uber Sells Self-Driving-Car Unit to Autonomous-Driving Startup,” Wall Street Journal, December 7, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/uber-lyft-face-a-no-sharing-economy-11603710180↩

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