> Tesla (owned by Tesla) has put on a facade of being operational, but it is not operational in the sense of the other two services, and faces regulatory headwinds that both Waymo and Zoox have long been able to satisfy. They are not on a path to becoming a real service.
* Elon has been making wildly exaggerated and over-optimistic claims for a decade and continues to do so
* Tesla has recently made huge strides in capability and has a clear path to full autonomy
And to be fair, many other car companies also promised self driving cars, e.g. Audi in 2014 promising driverless cars by 2016 [1]. It's just that Tesla is still executing on the promise whereas many other carmakers have fizzled out on their ambitions. As the Rodney Brooks article itself mentions,
> As a reminder of how strong the hype was and the certainty of promises that it was just around the corner here is a snapshot of a whole bunch of predictions by major executives from 2017.
[1] https://www.digitalspy.com/tech/a610930/audi-promises-to-del...
In particular, Jaguar Waymos are over 150k a pop. It seems far fetched that any of them will make ever break even. New generation is reportedly $75k per vehicle which is significantly better. I could not find any data for Zoox vehicle cost, but given how few of them there are it's a non-player.
Finally the elephant in the room. Outside of camera vs lidar holy war, Tesla seems well positioned to dominate supply side of the equation if the demand shows up. Robotaxis are reportedly under $35k, they own the factories and know how to build more, they also own the maintenance side.
(Or, probably, with Tesla tech. But you definitely can’t do it without.)
The word 'Tesla' appears 17 times in the article.
https://www.flyingmag.com/california-firm-first-flying-car-p...
> Dukhovny said the Model A will initially be certified as a “low-speed vehicle” on the ground, limiting it to about 25 mph on public roadways.
Sounds like they're just barely doing enough to meet the definition of "car" there, if it works at all. You'd think a video would at least exist if these are in production.
This sounds more like a personal aircraft where you can fold the wings in and propel it with a motor, not what people think of as "flying cars"
"A flying car can be purchased by any US resident if they have enough money."
and the prediction level being
"There is a real possibility that this will not happen at all by 2050."
This production fulfills his requirements of the prediction becoming true much sooner than expected. He could go get one today with unlimited money.
There is a large graveyard of EV companies that hit this milestone. And they had a relatively easy problem space as well as a massive addressable market.
For example, the author takes the stance that current self driving cars (Waymo, Zoox) do not count as self driving. The justification being that a human operator is involved some small fraction of the time.
By law, Waymo must report disengagements in California. In 2024, Waymo had ~10 thousand miles driven per disengagement, Zoox had ~28 thousand miles driven per disengagement [1]. I would say that this rate of human intervention qualifies as self driving.
[1] https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2025/02/03/2024-disen...
Looking into reports you mentioned in a child comment, CNN reports Cruise needed human assistance every ~5 miles [1]. And I certainly wouldn't call a system that needs assistance every ~5-10 minutes Level 4 self driving.
Subjectively, it appeared Waymo was significantly better than Cruise in 2023 but without data it's hard know what that means in terms of human intervention.
If Waymo needed human assistance every 10-20 minutes, I would agree that it also doesn't qualify as Level 4 autonomous.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/06/cruise-confirms-robotaxis-re...
The author engages in rules lawyering of the evaluation of the predictions. The original predictions are clear.
Another example of this is the author's prediction that no robot will be able to navigate around the clutter in a US home, "What is easy for humans is still very, very hard for robots."
The author evaluated this prediction as not being met, "...I don't count as home robots small four legged robots that flail their legs quickly to beat gravity, and are therefore unsafe to be around children, and that can't do anything at all with their form factor besides scramble".
The author added constraints not in the original prediction (safe around children, must include a form factor able to preform an action, ...) then evaluated the prediction as accurate because no home robot met the original constraint + the new constraints.
The author quoted two constraints (safe around children, must include a form factor able to preform an action) not specified.
The author projected that a lab demo of capabilities would not occur. I don't see safety for children as necessary for a lab demo.
The natural interpretation (for me!) was predicated on navigation - implying consideration and appropriate response to the clutter. Not merely ignoring it by being robust to the problems it engenders to movement/balance/etc.
Honestly, Brooks--who has been presented and self-presented as something of a skeptic with respect to autonomous self-driving--looks like something of an optimist at this point. (In the sense that your kid won't need to learn to drive.)
> The definition, or common understanding, of what self driving cars really means has changed since my post on predictions eight years ago. At that time self driving cars meant that the cars would drive themselves to wherever they were told to go with no further human control inputs. It was implicit that it meant level 4 driving. Note that there is also a higher level of autonomy, level 5, that is defined.
Useful predictions should also not in black or white but should be presented with an uncertainty, percentage of confidence if one can. It helps one to adjust ones prediction and confidence when new facts come along and I argue every serious predictors should do that.
I feel like we are on the verge of it, some say we already had it, but the singularity where hardware, learning, software, sensors and vision, all collide with enough headroom to make real-time our time. Now if we could only solve for our monkey brains.
This is incorrect. The cited reference says "N <= 35". That N is the number being factored, not the number of bits in the number. Also, footnote a of that paper points out (correctly) that the circuits that were used likely needed knowledge of the factors to create (e.g. as explained in https://arxiv.org/abs/1301.7007 ). As far as I know, only N=15 has been factored on a quantum computer in a no-shenanigans way.
It's conceivable that current ion trap machines could do a no-shenanigans N=21.... but anyone judging progress in quantum computing by largest-number-factored is looking at the wrong metric (for now). You won't see that metric move meaningfully until quantum error correction is done spinning up.
- Another one from Italy too
- Weird space event
- Odd geometry based discovery on Cosmologics
- Also, DNA's codons' layout will have something to say too
- Rust on Linux takes over Intel iGPU drivers (sadly). Tons of Linux distros either get OpenBSD's Xenocara or NetBSD's base X.org to get stuff working.
- Trump is impeached and declared mentally challenged due to an age related dementia in order to avoid prison time (and to avoid a global economy crash).
Lol, what a joke. I'd rather get someone to read my hand and tell me what's going to happen.
dang•1d ago
Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42651275 - Jan 2025 (185 comments)
Rodney Brooks Predictions Scorecard - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34477124 - Jan 2023 (41 comments)
Predictions Scorecard, 2021 January 01 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25706436 - Jan 2021 (12 comments)
Predictions Scorecard - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18889719 - Jan 2019 (4 comments)
My Dated Predictions - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16078431 - Jan 2018 (50 comments)