Are Fully Autonomous Vehicles Fast Approaching?

In July 2020, speaking via video at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, Elon Musk stated that "I'm extremely confident that level five - or essentially complete autonomy - will happen and I think will happen very quickly." While this is exciting, we still don't have a clear idea of how or when AI vehicles will become a normal part of our everyday lives. In this episode, we look to explore how far away a future of fully autonomous vehicles really is, where we will see this transition first, and what it will take for us to arrive there. We also debate whether we could live in a future where humans will no longer be allowed to drive and AI-operated vehicles become legally mandatory. To do this we invited a number of experts on the show to share their thoughts on this topic. In this episode, we are joined by Jason Torchinsky, the Senior Editor for the automotive technology site Jalopnik, and the author of Robot, Take the Wheel: The Road to Autonomous Cars and the Lost Art of Driving. Torchinsky breaks down the five different levels of autonomous vehicles, Elon Musk's comments at last year’s World Artificial Intelligence Conference, and he explains how far he really thinks Tesla, and other companies, are from full autonomy. We are also joined by Carl Anthony, the Detroit-based managing editor of Automoblog and AutoVision News. Anthony joins us to highlight what countries are leading the way for autonomous vehicle technology, and how consumer psychology stands to influence the production of autonomous vehicles. And lastly, we are joined by Melanie Musson, an autonomous vehicle and insurance specialist that produces written content for the auto insurance comparison site AutoInsurance.org. She explains how autonomous vehicles might make certain personal details irrelevant for car insurance companies, why manual driving could become unaffordable for the majority of drivers, and how car insurance companies stand to influence the psychology of consumers.