Iassume that the reader is familiar with the idea of extra-sensory perception … telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition and psycho-kinesis. These disturbing phenomena seem to deny all our usual scientific ideas … Unfortunately the statistical evidence, at least for telepathy, is overwhelming … Once one has accepted them it does not seem a very big step to believe in ghosts and bogies.’
These words weren’t published in the pages of an obscure occult journal or declared at a secret parapsychology conference. They weren’t written by a Victorian spiritualist or a séance attendee. In fact, their author is Alan Turing, the father of computer science, and they appear in his seminal paper ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’ (1950), which describes the ‘imitation game’ (more commonly known as the ‘Turing test’) designed to establish whether a machine’s intelligence could be distinguished from that of a human.
The paper starts by setting up the now-famous thought experiment: a human, a machine, and an observer who asks questions. If the observer cannot work out which one is which based on their responses, the machine has passed the test: its intelligence is indistinguishable from that of a human mind. The vast majority of the paper addresses various objections against the experiment from mathematics, philosophy of mind, or from those sceptical about the power of computers.
But, about two-thirds of the way through the paper, Turing addresses an unexpected worry that might disrupt the imitation game: telepathy. If the human and the observer could communicate telepathically (which the machine supposedly could not do), then the test would fail. ‘This argument is to my mind quite a strong one,’ says Turing. In the end, he suggests that, for the test to work properly, the experiment must take place in a ‘telepathy-proof room’.
If you go to San Francisco, this is what you’ll see:
The city is now filled with Waymo robotaxis. And Waymo is not the only player in town. The looming giant is Tesla and its self-driving cars. These companies are building cars that drive better than most humans.
What will happen in the coming years? The world will be upended. This is the vision of what’s likely to happen.
In the beginning, you’ll take self-driving cars because they’re new and fun: “Look, it’s moving the wheel alone!” It will help that you’ll look at the stats and know that they have fewer accidents than human drivers.
Then, you’ll notice that self-driving cars are more convenient. You don’t need to talk with a human, manage their expectations, fear their driving skills, suffer their eating or smoking… You will start changing your habits, and instead of ordering an Uber or hailing a cab, you’ll default to Waymo or Tesla’s robotaxi.
Then, you’ll notice that they tend to be cheaper! At first, they will be just a bit cheaper. Then, prices will drop more every year. You’ll forget about human cabs.
Then, you’ll take the robotaxi for more and more things—for example to pick up the kids at school during work hours, to go have dinner (in case of drinking), to go downtown (parking is hard), and things like that: It’s so convenient, you won’t even notice.
Trips to the city where in the past you were on the fence between using your car or a cab will become no-brainers: You won’t have to find or pay for a parking spot with a robotaxi!
Then, you’ll start using robotaxis for new purposes, like dropping off and picking up your 12 year old child from extracurriculars—something you’d never imagine doing with a human driver…
One day, you’ll hear from a friend who jettisoned her car. “How do you commute to work?” “With robotaxis! I ran the math and it’s actually cheaper!”
Commutes will be the key milestone: They represent a huge number of miles because they happen twice a day, every week day, 40-50 weeks per year. Replacing them will accelerate the takeover of robotaxis. How will that happen?
In the US today, thecostpermile of owning a car is ~$0.65 to $0.70. But that’s just an average. People who live and work in a big city might not use their cars frequently or for long distances, making them much more expensive per mile. They will be the first to replace their daily commute with robotaxis: They will prefer working or watching YouTube during their commute than paying attention to the road. The more people drop their cars, the more robotaxis will be on the streets, and the cheaper they’ll become. Meanwhile, the fewer miles each person travels with their car, the more expensive the car will be per mile.1 As prices per mile of traditional cars increase and those of robotaxis decrease, more and more people will switch their commutes to robotaxis, adding billions of miles per year to robotaxis.
And robotaxis will be more convenient than owned cars too: No upfront payment, no need for parking at home, no need to look for parking at your destination, no need to risk death when you drink, no need to drive your loved ones everywhere…
The car will be relegated to ad hoc situations: Things like long trips, emergencies, big families… The more that’s the case, the more it will be treated like a luxury. Eventually, people will sell their cars or not bother to buy a new one when they break down.
The uptake of self-driving cars might eventually be accelerated through regulation, because these cars are already safer than humans, and will be even more so in the future.
At some point, the cost per mile will be close to that of mass transit options, but comfort will be much higher:
You don’t need to share the space with others, which is more hygienic and safer
You can go from any point to any point, rather than going to stations
You don’t have to wait for buses or trains to come pick you up on a timetable
This means robotaxis will also replace a big chunk of mass transit.
And as costs go down and convenience goes up, people will use more cars than before, in new situations that previously didn’t require a car.
This process will be faster in expensive and high-commute cities like the US’s West Coast or world capitals, and slower in places where driver costs are low and roads harder to navigate, like Vietnam or Africa.2
And this is a massive market. If every person uses a car on average a couple of times a day, that’s 16 billion potential car rides per day, or nearly 6 trillion rides per year. At $1 per ride, that’s nearly $6 trillion! And that’s just passengers. Add the transport of goods, and the potential market goes to the moon—here I’m paying attention to self-driving cars, but trucks will go through the same process.
You can limit this to fewer rides per person, fewer potential customers, and lower prices, it will still be a staggering market.
