Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk has said he believes that humans will eventually no longer be allowed to drive cars because we're not good enough at it.
At Nvidia's annual developers conference, he said that he believed artificial intelligence can do a much better job than humans, adding: "It's too dangerous, you can't have a person driving a two-tonne death machine." "It would be like an elevator," he said. "They used to have elevator operators, and then we developed some simple circuitry to have elevators just automatically come to the floor that you're at.
The car is going to be just like that."
Tesla vehicles have some self-driving capabilities, like the "autopilot" mode introduced in the Model S that uses sensors to change speed, brake, and keep you in lane. Musk said in 2014 that the next generation would be "90 percent capable of autopilot". "We'll take autonomous cars for granted in quite a short time,"
Musk told a crowd of 4,000 at the San Jose McEnery Convention Centre. "I almost view it as a solved problem. We know what to do, and we'll be there in a few years."
However, he warned that change on a global scale wouldn't happen overnight. "I think it is important to appreciate the size of the automotive industrial base," he said. "There's two billion of them." He said he believed that we're still 20 years out from the roads being full of autonomous cars.
Musk said that one of the biggest challenges to deal with in autonomous cars is security concerns. Tesla is working hard to make its vehicles hack-proof. "We've put a lot of effort into that, and we've had third parties try to hack it," said Musk.
Nvidia invited Musk along to share his thoughts because it's developing its own software for self-driving cars. Drive PX is a computer that processes data from up to 12 cameras in real-time, identifying people, road signs and other objects. A developer kit will be released in May, costing $10,000 (£6,800).
In Britain, recent legislation on self-driving car trials placed no geographical, licensing or insurance limitations on companies performing autonomous vehicle tests.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
