What comes after a driverless world?

There are a lot of future talks about self-driving vehicles.

There are many resources available online on this. I won’t bore you with the details here, as this blog is not meant talk about what’s already prevalent. Instead, I want to share my thoughts on some of the more long-term possibilities for self-driving cars, beyond what is currently being discussed by today’s tech companies, media, and its moguls.

So, what comes after the fully self-driving vehicles emerge and we are all driving around in driverless taxis to get to our desired destination?

I believe cars at that point will become an appliance. Being an appliance then opens possibilities for people to proliferate these automated technologies to our day to day lives. If cars are fully automated, then it could open possibilities for people to explore other key tasks to be outsourced to automated entities. Which could lead the way to a robotics revolution.

For an app to become mainstream, you need more than just brute force engineering. You need trust from the masses. People need to believe that this technology is essential for their advancement. Not something that is cool to have but will bring us game changing experience to their lives.

It takes time for new technologies to be widely adopted. Self-driving cars have the potential to change our lives in ways we can’t even imagine.

If we can trust AI and self-driving cars with our lives on the road, then what’s stopping us from expanding the use of robots to other aspects of our lives?

Building a robot that can fully automate a human task is a complex and expensive process. It requires a lot of technology and engineering, such as sensors and advanced microprocessors. Humans also have a deep-seated need to be surprised and delighted. A robot that can carry out human tasks must at least meet this basic human need.

It will take time, perhaps decades, to develop robots that are truly remarkable enough to replace humans. But more impressive than the technology required is the need to convince people to trust robots to do their jobs better and more effectively than they can.

Like everything else that’s good in the world, it takes faith and trust.

Chong