Apple Co-founder has Given up on Fully Autonomous Cars

While long-range electric vehicles are seemingly taking the auto industry by storm, driverless cars still have a ways to go before they hit public roads.

In fact, the technology may never be intelligent and reliable enough for fully autonomous cars to become a reality “in my lifetime,” said Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak while speaking at the inaugural J.D. Power Auto Revolution conference last week.

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He added that he gave up on believing in autonomous vehicles and many of the promises of artificial intelligence a couple of years ago.

“I was totally sure we were going to have autonomous cars that would just go anywhere there is … and be able to do everything like a human does. And after enough time of seeing supposedly the next attempt that was really going to get us there, with Tesla, a lot of Tesla owners got disenfranchised, after a while saying, ‘[Look] how many mistakes [the car] makes. The dumbest human in the world would know how to do this, handle this.

There are too many unexpected things, it might even be a tire lying in the road in front of you, [it doesn’t know to] steer around it, centre my car, or what. You’re going to need at least the dumbest human behind the wheel to take control when an unusual situation comes up.”

As a Tesla driver, Wozniak has been disappointed by overblown claims for self-driving that the company couldn’t back up. The new Smart Summon feature that was recently added to Tesla cars has already been largely criticized by owners for a few incidents and many near-misses.

Wozniak blames the industry for misleading the public into thinking that AI is going to be like a human brain and able to figure out new things. His advice to people who don’t want to drive? Call a taxi, Uber or another ride-hailing service.

When asked about Apple’s own program to build an entire car that would use autonomous driving technology, Wozniak simply said he’s no longer in the loop, adding: “I think there is still an Apple car program.”