Rodney Brooks, founder of Rethink Robotics and a robotics guru is skeptical of the current claims around AGI and autonomous cars hitting the road anytime soon, much like another technology luminary, Kai-Fu Lee.
If we were to have AGI, Artificial General Intelligence, with human level capabilities, then certainly it ought to be able to drive a car, just like a person, if not better. Now a self driving car does not need to have general human level intelligence, but a self-driving car is certainly a lower bound on human level intelligence. Urmson, a strong proponent of self driving cars says 30 to 50 years.
I guess the biological genes have to live to a 100 to see their arrival. But, do read Rodney’s essay, to understand his skepticism around the near term claims around autonomy. That said, I think we need to lower our expectations. Autonomous versus smarter electric cars should be our expectation. Unfortunately, that kind of simple thinking doesn’t prop up the stock.