Are we forgetting that this only happened because they got in huge trouble with regulators and had to withdraw their cars from the street for like a year? I wouldn't take their statement at complete face value and don't see any reason for pessimism for Waymo.
Yup, there is zero chance that the market is too small. The only issues are whether a company can the technology to work and obtain regulatory approval.
Size of the market is for all practical purposes function of price. The competition to robotaxis is first and foremost humans. The major question is if robotaxi companies can provide the service at the cost of ubers *profitably*.
"In the early 1980s AT&T asked McKinsey to estimate how many cellular phones would be in use in the world at the turn of the century. The consultancy noted all the problems with the new devices—the handsets were absurdly heavy, the batteries kept running out, the coverage was patchy and the cost per minute was exorbitant—and concluded that the total market would be about 900,000. At the time this persuaded AT&T to pull out of the market, although it changed its mind later. "
And in the more recent past, we asked Juicero if squeezing a small volume of bags by hand could be done more cheaply by machines, and they told us "absolutely!"
We know how big the taxi market is and it's growth rate. There is clearly room for a few businesses here alone. Then consider driverless will go beyond taxi to general transportation like trucking which is massive market. Also likely play a significant variable in what cars consumers choose.
I think the risk here is software tends to a winner (or small number of winners) gets all market.
That has to be a major risk/reward concern on the companies investing in this tech.
> that seems already underway, with Uber[Eats] drivers being the "robots".
One of the primary benefits of automation is actually a reduction of costs. Uber eats did reduce delivery costs a bit, but probably not to the same order of magnitude true automation could achieve. Historically, you could always "automate" by having some guy do it, but the difference between having a bunch of people copy a book and a mechanical printing press do it is revolutionary.
Doesn't work if someone else violates your privacy in the first place by posting it publicly. To take it to the extreme, someone could break into your house (where you presumably do have a reasonable expectation of privacy), take photos of you and upload them publicly.
Well yes, but if you're assuming that, then that other person who violates your privacy could also choose to allow the photos to be used for AI training even if there is an opt-in or -out.
Probably not immune but the US economy was able to latch onto software, which is still where world economy is heading, especially with AI leading the trends now.
