By Tristan Greene
Tristan Greene is a sailor who writes about consumer-friendly artificial intelligence advances, Amazon and political policy concerning tech.
The CEO of Nvidia, Jensen Huang, today boldly announced fully autonomous vehicles will be on the road in no more than four years. This may shock some, but theres an ever-expanding list of companies in agreement. At this point, anyone who doesnt see driverless cars as imminent is in denial.
This is a pretty big deal because Nvidia, who you may know as the manufacturer of high-end graphics cards for computer gaming, is actually one of the biggest players in the space. Nvidia has quietly become, arguably, the most important chip manufacturer for AI systems.
When cars do reach level 4/5 autonomy (capable of driving on some/all roads without a human) itll likely be Nvidia chips powering the AI inside of them.
But if you had a nickel for every time a journalist or expert made a prediction about driverless cars youd have enough change to buy a Tesla. The truth of the matter is none of us are psychic, so youre better off relying on what the people actually building autonomous vehicles think.
Heres just a few of the automotive manufacturers which have asserted cars capable of operating without a human inside of the vehicle will be on the road within the next five years:
Other major tech companies loom in the picture as well with Apple, Google, Uber, and numerous Chinese companies all working on driverless car projects expecting to yield fully autonomous vehicles within the next few years.
Theres countless startups dedicated to perfecting various facets of the technology. This means, unless all these companies big and small are risking their reputation on a pipe-dream, were no longer looking at the arrival of our new rides in years, but in quarters.
Therell still be naysayers who think regulations and laws will hamper the arrival of driverless cars (they wont), or those who believe the technology isnt there yet (it is). And to be fair, most of them caveat their denial by pointing out that itll be years before classic cars are replaced, or not everyone will want to buy a driverless car.
To those curmudgeons Ill say: people still ride horses, that hasnt stopped Ford from doing okay; and I dont want to own a taxi cab but they still serve a purpose. In the end I believe doubt will be won out by the millions of lives that are saved by letting computers handle the complicated stuff.
Everyone has an opinion on autonomous car technology, but the most important statement is a fact: 94% of all automobile accidents are caused by human error.
The sooner the better Mr. Huang; were dying out here.
This article was originally published at The Next Web.
Featured Image Courtesy- USDOT