[vinayms]

This will go against the grain here on HN. I don't know how anyone can imagine self driving even succeeding in real world, leave alone in the so called third world, unless all vehicles are self driven and operate in a controlled environment. There are some really important things pending, like accurate NLP and computer vision, but no, we need something shiny and useless. I think some smart computer scientists are getting rich by carrot sticking some gullible billionaire investors. Good for them. I hope some of the really useful stuff piggy back on this rather lofty endeavor.

[buboard]

I 'm with you i think self-driving is an aspiration rather than a concrete goal. It literally means solving the quintessential problem of robotics which is a very very hard problem. We 'll probably have human level NLP before that.

Car driving is in decline http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2013/04/m...

A more concrete goal for transportation would be to reduce driving times even more by adopting remote work. That is reachable within the decade. In the meanwhile, car safety features should be ramped up, but autonomous driving so far doesn't seem very safe.