SmartAB™ Wisdom #49: The 2024 Death Knell To The Autonomous Driving Coffin?
The 2024 Death Knell to the Autonomous Driving (AD) coffin closes a painful chapter of AI exuberance fueled by the VC greed and FOMOs of automotive executives. And it was a very expensive chapter, I may add…
IMHO, John Caples, wrote the most brilliant branding and marketing tagline almost 100 years ago. He said: “They laughed when I sat at the piano, but when I started to play…”
So, in homage to John, I will say this: “They laughed when I disputed 8 years ago the arrival of self-driving cars. But after wasting billions of dollars and firing dozens of CEOs - nobody laughs anymore...” - not at my AI LinkedIn posts, nor at the “AI Boogeyman” books I wrote…
Back in 1987, I attended the IEEE First Annual International Conference on Neural Networks in San Diego, California. One of the plenary speakers that year was a brilliant scientist specializing in computational neuroscience at Salk Institute – Terry Sejnowski.
In his fascinating talk, Terry boldly stated that the level of computational neuroscience hasn’t even reached the level of the bee. I still remember the laughter in the room. For some reason, the audience thought that Terry was joking. Yet he wasn’t. He asked us all to remember that:
No existing plane can dynamically modify its flying pattern the way bees can… In addition, he gently reminded us that: computers still don’t mate…
30 years later, Yann LeCunn explained that we are now approaching the cognition level of a rat. And yet, despite all such well-known facts, the snake oil salesman popped out in spades and started paddling the Autonomous Driving predictions being... just around the corner…
So, in 2016, as I saw billions of dollars going down the drain, I spoke about it in my LinkedIn post: “On AI, Autopilots & Self-Driving Cars… Respect The Bee!!!” – see: https://linkedin.com/pulse/ai-autopilots-self-driving-carsand-bee-question-oleg-feldgajer/
But I didn’t stop there, and as billions of wasted dollars turned into tens of billions - I wrote another post and asked all the Autonomous Driving cheerleaders dispensing endless “imagine-the-future” narratives: “Are you ready to send your kid on a school bus WITHOUT a driver?” – see: https://linkedin.com/pulse/you-ready-fly-your-wife-children-next-year-commercial-oleg-feldgajer/
My concern was that without restoring common sense - too much energy, time, and money would be wasted… It would be wasted by both: employers and employees of many progressive businesses. In some cases, such bad decisions will bring devastating consequences. So, I wrote a book: “AI BOOGEYMAN - Dispelling Fake News About Job Losses.”
You can find hard and soft cover copies on Amazon - see: AI Boogeyman.
My goal was quite simple: to dismiss an unprecedented onslaught of doom and gloom predictions - from the unique perspective of a seasoned AI practitioner. And in my concluding remarks, I asked the following question:
“The last time I checked, there was no letter “B” nor “S” in the spelling of the words: “A R T I F I C I A L I N T E L L I G E N C E”. So, why should we let the “BS” in?
But this was all before the mass hysteria of AD kicked in & amplified the employment FUDs… tenfold.
So, I continued to pour a bucket of cold water on all the false prophets, as their so-called “prophecy” has now reached almost biblical proportions. And here is my message to all the long-faced “experts” predicting with great sadness the demise of humanity…
Twenty years ago, Robert I. Sutton, wrote a brilliant book and published a great article: “Don’t Be An Asshole”. It was published in HBR, on March 17, 2007... But this was almost 20 years ago, so I modernized his single rule to fit the new AD reality. And I propose two rules instead of one – applicable to the current wave of AD baseless predictions:
Rule No. 1 – Don’t Be An Asshole
Rule No. 2 – Never Forget Rule No. 1
Already 30 years ago, my startup: International Neural Machines Inc. (INM) - was the ONLY, product-oriented neural network AI company in Canada! At that time, I dealt with the complexities of risk management by running a whole slew of Fraud Detection and Money Laundering Detection projects at financial institutions - linked to Visa Fraud at Canadian banks, the World Bank, and the Workers Safety & Insurance Board (WSIB).
Besides, I’m extremely proud of the work I did at the Microelectronics and Computer Consortium (MCC) in Austin, Texas. MCC was the first, and - at one time - one of the largest, computer industry research and development consortia in the United States, headed by Navy Admiral, Bobby Inman. At its peak, MCC housed over 400 PhDs under one roof, and I was supervising for 3 years a large group of the world’s brightest neural network and Artificial Intelligence researchers – on behalf of $7B NCR Corporation.
Autonomous Driving Over The Last Eight Years…
As expected, and as I predicted already 8 years ago, AD is not going to happen anytime soon. Don’t get me wrong, I am a big believer in AI and a huge fan of Elon Musk, but am also a realist – see: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-deep-learning-good-when-shouldnt-used-oleg-feldgajer/
However, I strongly believed that it would take much longer to deliver human-like intelligence than some of the predictions of the investment banking industry and Elon Musk’s…
I often remind my readers that we officially declared the war on cancer in the… 1960s. President Nixon and Congress even passed such laws… Well, we haven’t beat cancer yet, and we are not going to replace our doctors anytime soon, either… So, if Elon Musk declared today that we are going to cure cancer this year – it wouldn’t have been achieved either…
The meaningful AD progress will take much longer - even if we are gifted with the best deep learning AI tools developed by Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, and Elon Musk. And now that the government has also begun to investigate the crashes attributed to AD - slowly but surely the 20/20 AD Vision from 8 years ago has become a ... 20/20 hallucination…
And for those who were still salivating at the thought of the self-driving cabs taking you back home from your favorite pub and a heavy binge-drinking, I posted: “Self-driving Hype vs Self-parking Reality Or... Form vs Substance in SmartCities” – see: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/self-driving-hype-vs-self-parking-reality-form-oleg-feldgajer/
In one of my recent posts: “SmartAB™ Wisdom #42: What Can Charlie Chaplin Teach Lawyers About AI And Self-Driving Cars?” – see: What Can Charlie Chaplin Teach Lawyers About AI And Self-Driving Cars? I covered extensively the AD problems at GM’s Cruise, Ford, Waymo, and Tesla.
And I also asked: Why Autonomous Driving Is Still A Project And Not A Viable Business? In response, I mentioned in my post that I was asked the very same question by several students at the local business school. And among 90+ students, one truly stood out… I was asked how I would explain the above statement to a layperson – without any AI background...
And this is what I said: “AD Systems incorporate hundreds of CPUs and s/w modules - including sensors, actuators, complex algorithms, ML systems, radars, LIDARs, video cameras, etc., etc. And even if each of such sub-systems is 99% accurate - the 100+ of them will drop the overall system accuracy to less than… 37%”.
Needless to say, a 37% success probability is less than 50% heads/tails probability while flipping a coin. So, your chances of getting into an accident are quite… random.
So, when can we finally begin to trust AD? My answer is quite simple: when the AD PROCESSES start adhering to other Quality Management standards – complying with Six Sigma certifications…
As I described in my previous posts: “Six Sigma is a process improvement strategy that improves Output quality by reducing Defects. It originated in the 1980s. Six Sigma is named after a statistical concept where a process only produces 3.4 defects per million opportunities (DPMO). Six Sigma can therefore be also thought of as a goal, where processes not only encounter less defects, but do so consistently (low variability).”
Six Sigma dictates that the margin of error can be up to six standard deviations from the mean. This results in a 99.999997% rate of accuracy, maximizing efficiency and reducing defects. This high percentage of accuracy makes Six Sigma an essential metric for measuring and controlling product quality.
Of course, the AD pundits will tell you right away that AD cars get into fewer accidents than human drivers do. But it is all relative, not absolute, and here is why: if humans drive a car 100,000,000 times each day and 10,000 accidents are reported – we are talking about 0.0001%... However, if only 1000 AD trips are taking place and there are 10 accidents reported, we are talking about 0.01% - which is 100X greater!
As it happened, over the last 8 years, I repeatedly offered my AD KEE (Knowledge, Experience, and Expertise) to the automotive sector embarking on Autonomous Driving development – including Tesla, Google, GM, and Ford…
And although in retrospect, Elon Musk, and all other automotive executives probably missed the most consequential advice in their corporate history – I am not surprised that they did… Why am I not surprised? Well, I’ve said it many times:
“The blessing of social media is your ability to reach talent across the globe. Its curse is the “noise” that makes it difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. And yet, it all boils down to people...”
If you don’t buy the above “agricultural” metaphor, perhaps finding “the needle in a haystack” idiom will speak to you better… Most dictionaries describe it as: “something impossible or extremely difficult to find, especially because the area you have to search is too large”.
So, let’s look at some numbers to get a better appreciation of how hard getting a bit of good advice truly is. As of today, Elon Musk has 158MM followers on X/Twitter. Even if only 1% of his followers decide to tweet him good advice, we are talking about 1.58MM tweets…
And if only 1% of such a group sends an important tweet each day, we are talking about… 15,800 tweets sent to Elon Musk every 24 hours. Further assuming that a good advisor/assistant can reliably assess and evaluate 100 important tweets each day – Elon Musk’s social media Advisory Board would include 158 advisors. Do you see the problem now?
Disregarding good advice can have far more dire consequences on the bottom line. In the same way, useful recommendations may prevent investors from losing billions of dollars…
So, it’s time to call the spade… spade. With all the technology described by Mobileye and intel, the AD vehicle will look more like a Russian tank from WWII - than a slim SUV. This is a “misconception”… to put it mildly.
Autonomous Driving Today
At this point, no automaker is completely abandoning research and development into self-driving vehicles, but executives are looking at mounting expenses and asking pointed questions about the return on that investment”...
As recently reported by Forbes: “Self-Driving Investment Crash: 58% Drop In
Autonomous Vehicle Dollars”, the author says: “The self-driving vehicle has crashed. Not the car itself, although that happens, but certainly the investment craze that enveloped the venture capital world over the past few years. In 2021, investors
poured a record $9.7 billion into autonomous vehicle development. Last year however, that dropped by almost 60% to just $4.1 billion.”
“With the sharp pullback of investments in 2022, AD was particularly impacted as investors began to question the path to commercialization for many of these companies,” says a new report by F-Prime Capital.
Google’s robotaxi startup Waymo has laid off staff, self-driving company Aurora is looking at cash preservation, Ford and VW’s Argo AI is shutting down, and multiple other autonomous vehicle startups and projects are consolidating their positions, partnering to reduce costs and risks, or reducing headcount, the report says.
While additional investment into self-driving vehicles has dropped, that does not mean the sector isn’t seeing innovation. Existing players such as Tesla with its Full Self Driving and General Motors with its Super Cruise are continuing to innovate and — importantly— gather more data on driver and driverless vehicle operation.”
And The Losses Are Still Climbing…
As recently reported by AFR, “$300m to ‘zero’: Blackbird-backed start-up stalls”… “Venture capital investors in $300 million self-driving car sensor start-up Baraja have written down their stakes to zero, leaving the Sydney-based company facing a grim future after mass redundancies and a staff exodus.
Baraja was once a doyenne of the deep tech sector that aims to commercialise original inventions, but its lead investor, Blackbird Ventures, has slashed its valuation to nil across several funds.
“It felt like a real company because there was so much VC money, but obviously we weren’t selling enough,” said one former Baraja employee, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Baraja, which makes lasers to help cars “see”, known as LiDAR, achieved a valuation of $300 million in 2021. But it was losing money rapidly despite receiving almost $50 million from Blackbird, and being heralded by the VC investor as among its likely winners.
In the 2022 financial year, the most recent for which financials are available, Baraja lost $41 million on revenue of just $412,046. The Australian Financial Review reported in February 2023 that Baraja raised a further $30 million to cover its operating costs, but made 75 per cent of its staff redundant.
Blackbird Ventures partner Rick Baker, who has been putting money into Baraja since 2016, defended its prospects but acknowledged that carmakers’ slower deployment of autonomous technology had challenged Baraja’s fortunes.
“While the global market slowdown has meant the company has had to adjust its roll-out plans, the team continues to develop its technology and has made significant progress,” Mr Baker said.
“We have confidence that it will be a valuable company in the long term and remain strong supporters of Baraja and its team.”
Sources close to Blackbird said the firm had marked down its stakes in Baraja to $0 across multiple funds. Blackbird has told its own investors that Baraja is a troubled business it is paying close attention to, they said.
Baraja chief executive Federico Collarte declined to answer questions about Baraja’s workforce, valuation or strategy. In a statement, Mr Collarte said Baraja had completed the first production run of its laser-seeing chips with new technology last year, which had cost tens of millions to develop.
“After the restructuring in February 2023, the company is well capitalised and re-energised with a new strategy and focus on the commercialisation of the technology,” he said.
If Baraja’s bet on its new technology is successful, its investors stand to profit by revising their valuations.”
“The former employee said Baraja initially “had the pick of the litter” for hiring. But the company’s culture soured along with its business prospects. The employee described Baraja’s leaders as well-intentioned, but added: “I wish they’d handled the [partial] closure in the Australian side better”.
Baraja’s problem, they said, was that it was caught with an ambitious promise that its engineers found impossible to deliver.
Tesla boss Elon Musk has previously branded LiDAR “a fool’s errand” and “unnecessary” for self-driving cars, though rivals such as Google’s Waymo are adopters.
Baraja operated for a time out of offices leased from the CSIRO, whose VC firm Main Sequence is also an investor. It remains a shareholder, with about 5 percent of Baraja, according to ASIC filings. Blackbird owns about a third.
The former Baraja employee recalled their experience favourably, but said staff had learned: “Don’t be blinded by the stock options … Be happy with your salary because a lot of these things don’t work out. Until [they do] it’s Monopoly money.”
CTV News recently reported that “Tesla, rivals get low marks for automated-driving technology. Tesla's TSLA.O Autopilot and Full Self Driving technology and nine other assisted-driving systems marketed by major automakers received "poor" ratings from the U.S. Insurance Institute for Highway Safety in a new study.
The IIHS, a safety research arm of the insurance industry, also said there is no evidence that Autopilot or other assisted-driving systems have real-world safety benefits, based on crash data.
"We are able to look at insurance claims data. We have been able to look at vehicles with and without these (systems) and determine there is no reduction in claims as a result of these more advanced systems," IIHS President David Harkey told Reuters.
By comparison, there is evidence that automatic emergency braking systems cut rear-end collisions by 50 per cent and cut incidents of a vehicle hitting a pedestrian by 30 per cent, he said.
Tesla and its chief executive, Elon Musk, have said that a Tesla operating with Autopilot engaged is about 10 times safer than the U.S. average and five times safer than a Tesla without the technology enabled.
Federal regulators are investigating nearly 1,000 accidents in which Tesla's Autopilot was in use. A civil case scheduled to go to trial next week in California will be the latest test of Tesla's strategy of blaming crashes on drivers who fail to heed the EV maker's warnings to pay attention to the road when Autopilot or Full Self Driving technology are engaged.
The IIHS study rated 14 assisted-driving systems from nine automakers against standards it developed. The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has no formal standards governing advanced-driver assistance systems, or ADAS in industry terminology.
"There are no federal regulations, nor is there good consistent guidance," Harkey said. "That was our reason for putting these safeguards together."
Of the systems IIHS tested, only one earned an acceptable rating: The Lexus Teammate with Advanced Drive, offered last year on a small number of Toyota Motor's 7203.T luxury Lexus LS hybrid sedans.
"Toyota continuously aims to increase vehicle safety," Toyota said in a statement. "As a part of that effort, Toyota, among other things, considers performance in third-party testing programs like NHTSA’s New Car Assessment Program and IIHS’s Top Safety Pick program.”
GM's Super Cruise and Nissan's 7201.T "ProPILOT Assist with Navi-link" offered on the 2023-2024 Ariya electric vehicle received "marginal" overall ratings. "We are evaluating the results from the first-ever Partial Automation Safeguards test and will continue to work with IIHS in all matters related to customer safety," Nissan said.
GM said in a statement that Super Cruise "is meant to serve as an enhancement to the driving experience," not as a safety feature. Different assisted-driving systems from Tesla, Mercedes-Benz MBGn.DE, BMW BMWG.DE, Nissan, Ford F.N, GM, Hyundai's 005380.KS Genesis brand and Geely's GEELY.UL Volvo Cars brand received "poor" overall ratings, although all achieved "good" scores on certain elements of the IIHS tests, the group said.
"This new IIHS testing methodology does not assess the performance of the driver assistance systems, instead it focuses on safeguards to prevent misuse," Mercedes said in a statement. "We take the findings of the IIHS partial driving automation safeguard ratings very seriously."
Automakers could boost safety ratings by adopting existing technology for functions such as driver-monitoring or attention warnings that achieved "good" scores, Harkey said.
Tesla and other automakers are improving the capabilities of their systems, the IIHS said. Tesla revised its Autopilot software following a federal recall agreement, and IIHS will test the updated system, Harkey said.
"We are certainly going to take in the results of these tests as our cars and these systems continue to evolve," BMW spokesman Jay Hanson said on Monday. BMW now offers in certain U.S. models a more sophisticated driving-assistance system than the one tested by the IIHS.
The Genesis GV80 SUV that launches in the U.S. this spring will be the first model in the Hyundai luxury brand with an in-cabin camera to monitor the driver's face and eyes while assisted driving is engaged. "This enhancement will also be rolling out to future Genesis products in the coming months and years," the company said.”
So, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that AAA recently reported: “Fear of Self-Driving Cars Persists as Industry Faces an Uncertain Future.”
“According to AAA’s latest survey on autonomous vehicles, most U.S. drivers either express fear (66%) or uncertainty (25%) about fully self-driving vehicles – a fear that has not decreased since spiking last year. However, interest in semi-autonomous technologies such as Reverse Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) and Lane Keeping Assistance remains high. The results infer that to alleviate concerns, the industry should continue to advance vehicle technologies reasonably and with overall consistency in performance.
“There has been an increase in consumer fear over the past few years,” said Greg Brannon, the director of automotive engineering research for AAA. “Given the numerous and well–publicized incidents involving current vehicle technologies – it’s not surprising that people are apprehensive about their safety.”
Despite people’s fears of self-driving cars, interest in advanced driver assistance systems remains high. AAA’s survey found that almost two-thirds of U.S. drivers would want Reverse Automatic Emergency Braking (65%), Automatic Emergency Braking (63%), or Lane Keeping Assistance (62%) on their next vehicle. For interest to remain high, it’s crucial to ensure consistency in the performance and naming of these systems.
Interestingly, most U.S. drivers also believe AEB will stop the vehicle when another car, children, adult pedestrians, or bicyclists are in front of or behind the vehicle. However, recent AAA research found that Reverse AEB systems prevented a collision in only 1 of 40 test runs in the context of the backing-up scenarios involving a subject vehicle crossing behind the test vehicle and only 10 out of 20 test runs with the stationary child target behind the test vehicle.
AAA believes to alleviate consumer concerns, AD performance should reflect reasonable and safe scenarios, with clear understanding of the limitations. Advanced vehicle safety technology should enhance driver awareness rather than give the impression of replacing a vigilant driver. When asked if there are cars available that drive themselves while you sleep – fully self-driving vehicles are not yet available for purchase by consumers – four in ten drivers are unsure or think they can buy a car that drives itself while they sleep, an important safety concern of these technologies.”
“AAA looks to collaborate with automakers to establish uniformity in system naming and performance across the industry. By working together, we can assist consumers in understanding the technology present in their vehicles and educate them on how, when and where to use such systems properly. This initiative will help instill confidence in the drivers of the cars of tomorrow with greater levels of automated technologies.” stated Brannon.
The Implications - Above And Beyond AD
What bothers me is this: all the hundreds of billions that were wasted on AD cause us to fall further behind and prevent us from advancing essential transportation modalities. Take High-Speed Trains as an example – and think about all the money that could have been spent on building electric and/or GH2-driven trains instead...
In my LinkedIn post from 8 years ago: “Please don't send me to Mars and don't shove me into Hyperloop - give me high-speed electric trains instead!”, I wrote the following:
“This post asks a single question: If tomorrow, all the cars in North America miraculously turned into self-driving electric vehicles – would it take you less time to travel from your suburban home to a downtown office? IMHO, it wouldn’t.
Nor would it shorten the duration of your trip from LA to SF, NY to Boston, or from Toronto to Montreal. Chances are, we would simply have more cars stuck in a traffic jam - on even more congested highways than before. In turn, it would make the mighty network of freeways - look like a stuffed Thanksgiving turkey.
Too many decades of dithering on large-scale public transit decisions passed. North America is falling further behind many countries, and not only China and India. The solution is simpler than you think. And since I already quoted Bill Clinton many times, let me say it in a truly Clintonesque style: “It’s the High-Speed-Trains, stupid”…
Building High-Speed Train systems today will create millions of jobs. It will stimulate and revitalize the economy through massive infrastructure investment. Planning, designing, building, operating, and maintaining High-Speed Trains - will reactivate the manufacturing sector and create new industries…
Powered by electricity, this system will reduce congestion AND lower carbon footprint. It’s time for the VC industry to stop chasing Unicorns and moonshot technologies. There is plenty to do on Earth and Mars can wait”…
Back in 1988, I wrote my thesis on High-Speed Trains while doing my Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering at the University Of Waterloo, in Ontario, Canada. And ever since, the amount of money spent on expensive consultants and their useless studies of High-Speed Trains - could have already delivered coast-to-coast modern railway transportation for all…
So, when in addition to all the expensive train studies, you also add all the money spent on AD, we could have had a great North American alternative to the only other viable transportation modality: the airline industry.
Next time you end up being delayed and find yourself sleeping on a floor at your local airport – don’t be mad at the poor airline workers trying to cope with holiday traffic. All such delays and bottlenecks are UNAVOIDABLE. They result from years of bad planning and utter incompetence of our policymakers
In Conclusion
Not even the most triumphant celebrations can’t change the “six feet under reality.” And AD startups are not an exception. Within 10 years:
• 90% Of Startups Fail - and meet a “Startup Mortician”…
• 10% Of Startups Succeed - and avoid Startup Undertakers by following my simple rule…
Good advice may go a long way. And it’s the best strategy against future AD lawsuits for misrepresenting AI benefits, false promises, and lack of the AI KEE (Knowledge, Experience, and Expertise) to deliver results. Not all Advisory Boards are created equal. After all, even 100 mediocre musicians do not amount to one Beethoven - the same way 100 mediocre physicists are not a substitute for Einstein’s brilliance…
For More Information
Please see my other posts on Linkedin, Twitter, Substack, and CGE’s website.
AI Boogeyman
You can also find additional info in my hardcover and paperback books published on Amazon: “AI Boogeyman – Dispelling Fake News About Job Losses” and on our YouTube Studio channel…
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