Uber vs. Ralph Waldo Emerson

There's an old saying "Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door." Whether it's a direct quote or a paraphrase of Ralph Waldo Emerson is immaterial - I'm convinced that the quote is pure B.S.

Exibit A: Uber is starting to use self-driving cars. 

Exibit B: People are very skeptical of self-driving cars. 

For the sake of completeness, I'll say that there probably isn't enough data yet to definitively answer whether self-driving cars are safer than their human-driven cars. Still, I personally feel like one could make a strong anecdotal case that there is a lower rate of fatalities among self-driven cars.

I personally think Uber's approach to the problem is brilliant. Instead of spending buckets of cash on advertising and putting the statistics out there, they're spending it to give free rides using the technology. Uber customers get to opt-in to the service, the rides are free, and they come with a driver who is only there to override the car in the event of an emergency. 

This has several key benefits:

1. It helps Uber to improve their autonomous driving technology by testing it and gathering more training data. This is something that all players in this space will need a lot of, and Uber stands to gain a huge lead over their competition. 
2. It replaces fear of the technology with concrete experience - probably among tech savvy early adopters who are the most likely to talk to their friends about it. 
3. It validates the market in a way that nobody has accomplished yet. 

I applaud Uber for their initiative. Whether the technology is safer or not, if they waited for people to beat a path to their door, they'd likely be waiting for a while.

The "Unmanned" Navy Submarine Program

The United States Navy has an unmanned submarine nearing deployment. This is a great example of how AI can augment but not completely replace a human workforce.

These submarines are designed to be low-cost surveillance/anti-sub systems. They can travel thousands of miles and stay at sea for months. Unlike their human-operated counterparts, they don't have to come back for food every few months. Theoretically, if enough of them were deployed and they didn't need to move around much, one of these subs could stay out at sea for years without refueling.

Then there's the cost factor. The goal is to produce the new subs for $20M each. That's a good amount of money, but it's roughly 1% of the $1.7B each that the Navy agreed to pay for their next 10 Manned Nuclear Submarines. 

For the cost of a single Virginia class submarine, the Navy could operate an entire fleet of approximately 100 unmanned subs controlling activity across an entire ocean theater.

On the other hand, while mostly autonomous, the fleet still needs human operators to make deployment decisions and process the intelligence provided. That need isn't likely to change. Note that the new subs also are not part of the nuclear deterrent. 

While the U.S. Navy is leveraging automation in a big way, they're still going to need human staff. However, the Navy of the future may include fewer sailors and more intelligence analysts. 

Robots Can... Sing And Dance?

Surely, the arts are safe and will never be automated. A machine could never possibly have a soul or feelings and could never possibly relate to art the way that a human can. Therefore, it must obviously follow that a machine could never create art the way that humans can.

Well... That may be premature. In China, a team of 1000+ synchronized dancing robots just broke the world record. This is not the first attempt at robotic dancing. 

Similarly, AI algorithms are becoming increasingly adept at composing music. 

Masters at human dancing/music usually spend a lifetime studying, perfecting, improvising, and re-combining a relatively small number of basic movements in new and creative ways. On the other hand, AI can (with enough $$, development expertise, and computing power) in mere moments observe the last 30 years of music/dance, figure out which songs/dances were the most effective/successful/lucrative for a given purpose (usually topping the charts/selling tickets), and combine the different movements into a unique number/composition.

This is not to say that machines will completely replace human musicians/dancers. A century after the invention of the automobile there are still horses selling for millions of dollars. On the other hand, in modern society motor vehicle theft anecdotally seems to be more common than horse theft.