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Comment by bhups | Hacker News Reader

> Even more relevant, there's literally nothing in the historical record to suggest that the real breakthroughs when they come will come from a company like Uber.

Why not? The team at Uber that is working on this is largely comprised of researchers from Carnegie Mellon and former members of Google's driverless car team. Historical record suggests otherwise...

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The fact that Uber has never, once, successfully created a motor vehicle, physical product, or applied artificial intelligence device, ever, of any kind, has to top the list.

I mean they are competing against Apple and BMW, among many others, presumably, who have actually made a car, computer, or transportation device that worked.

That notwithstanding, the burden of proof is in the other direction.

Sure, but the company is filled with ex-Apple/Google/etc folks that have worked on successfully creating motor vehicles, physical products, and applied artificial intelligence devices.

Remember, a company is merely comprised of the people within it. If Uber has people that have joined from the kinds of companies that you mentioned, it becomes more and more indistinguishable from them.

> Remember, a company is merely comprised of the people within it.

Not really. Software companies are like that. They are the exception to the general rule that companies are composed of people plus things like factories, equipment, patents, trade secrets, inventory, real estate, global supply chains, and dealer networks for service and support.

Making cars, even regular ones, is hard and Uber has never really done anything like it.

Uber isn't making cars, the CEO has made that explicitly clear. Uber has hired people who have built systems that enable a regular car to self-drive. I just don't understand where the disconnect is for you.

> Uber has hired people who have built systems that enable a regular car to self-drive.

No they haven't.

I know this because there aren't any cars in the world that can self-drive.

Then you would be wrong. But it of course depends on what your definition of "self-drive" is. If you have an overly strict, ridiculously high standard for what a self-driving car is, then in your mind, you're right.

But if you define what Tesla already has in production as a self-driving car, then you would be wrong.

Not so long ago Uber had never once successfully provided a taxi ride, but they figured that out.

Indeed. But somebody had.

Historically they haven't done anything. OTTO was just 8 months old when it was acquired this week, and they had two blog posts - one saying they formed, one saying they're acquired.

There is a huge difference between the real world and a closed track.

Brace yourselves. AI Winter Is Coming.

>There is a huge difference between the real world and a closed track.

Indeed. The unpredictable behavior of humans occupying the same environment is key. Remove this element and things get simpler (though not simple. And v2v comms might be required.)

I suspect highways are the road infrastructure most akin to a closed track. Which is why the Otto acquisition is so interesting.

Feels more like AI spring than autumn to me.

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