Jakarta Globe - AFP, Apr 22, 2015
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| Google’s Chris Urmson, right, shows a Google self-driving car to US Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, left, and Google chairman Eric Schmidt, cener, at the Google headquarters on Feb. 2, 2015 in Mountain View, California, US. (AFP Photo/Getty Images/Justin Sullivan) |
Detroit.
Self-driving vehicles hold the key to reducing traffic fatalities and will
transform the automobile industry, a top Google executive predicted on Tuesday.
Ray
Kurzweil, a leading expert in artificial intelligence who joined Google in
2012, told the annual conference of the Society of Automotive Engineers that
the rapidly declining cost of computing power and the advances in artificial
intelligence will make autonomous driving a reality.
Kurzweil
told the audience that autonomous driving, utilizing artificial intelligence,
is definitely coming.
“The
technology works. It’s not far away,” said Kurzweil, though he was not prepared
to say just when self-driving cars will become a common sight.
“Google
advised me to share with you they don’t know the answer… The technology is not
going to be introduced until it’s ready.”
The need
and value of autonomous vehicles is clear, he told hundreds of the industry’s
top engineers.
“Google
cars have gone close to a million miles without incident,” he said.
“Some day
an autonomous car will cause an accident and it will be big news. But while
we’ve been talking several people have died from human drivers.”
Autonomous
cars “are ultimately going to save millions of lives,” he said, noting that
traffic accidents kill 1.2 million people worldwide a year now.
“They also
provide more efficient use of roads and parking lots. There are a lot of
benefits.”
But he said
Google was not going to let its self-drive cars into the market “until they’re
safe.”
“They have
to be much more reliable than the technology they replace.”
The
appearance of the original Google Car prototype touched off a race among the
world’s automakers.
Ford,
Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen and Nissan have set up engineering centers near
Google’s headquarters in Silicon Valley to focus on self-driving technologies.
Part of
sharing culture
“People
will still buy cars,” Kurzweil said.
“But the
Uber model with self-driving cars will become very popular. We should share our
cars. I think that model will grow when we have autonomous cars.
“Every
company has to reinvent itself. Not everything is predictable.”
Kurzweil
said that until now the transportation industry, including the automobile
business, has not been considered part of the digital world.
“But we see
information of every kind coming into every form of transportation,” he added.
At the same
time, the price of digital information is dropping dramatically.
Kurzweil
said disruptive technologies become feasible at different times. Search engines,
such as the one developed by Google, became practical in the late 1990s because
of the exponential growth in computing power.
If you
tried to build a search engine after that you “missed your opportunity,” he
said. “But if you are running a business you can anticipate when changes will
occur.”
“There is
one is one aspect of the future you can predict reliably,” Kurzweil added.
“The price
performance and the capacity of information technology follows a very
predictable path and that path is exponential, not linear.”
As for
slower-moving technologies like batteries — the key to more electric cars — he
predicted longer lasting batteries in 10 to 15 years, at a “more mature phase
of nanotechnology where you can manipulate matter on the atomic level.”
Other
technology, such as solar power, is developing more quickly than many experts
expected.
“Solar
power is growing exponentially. It’s doubling every two years. In many parts of
the world, it’s reached parity with fossil fuel,” Kurzweil said.
Agence France-Presse
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