Lugh

I don't know the specifics. What seems more relevant to me is that lots of automakers around the world are getting to Level 4 by various, mostly similar ways.

Once you have Level 4 you have a viable robotaxi business model. Even if you stick to geo-fenced areas, and mapped routes, that covers 80%+ of urban taxi journeys.

The same holds true for buses and public transit. I'm very interested to see how efforts like this Level 4 mini-shuttle bus in France progress.

https://www.euronews.com/next/2024/10/26/this-self-driving-shuttle-transports-people-in-rural-france-is-it-the-future-of-mobility

When robotaxis & mass transit like these are common, how many people will still want private cars?

Base fares start as low as 4 yuan (around 55 cents), compared with 18 yuan (around $2.48) for a taxi driven by a human

China is already the global leader in 21st century energy - dominating renewables, batteries, and EVs. Now it's poised to lead in robotic vehicles too.

Its robotaxis cost $30k, Waymo, who's been in the robotaxi game longer costs $150k. Combine this with the fact Baidu can offer fares that are just 20% of a human driver in China and still make money and you can see how the global demand for such vehicles could be in the hundreds of millions. Tariffs in Europe and America may slow things there, but it won't be the case for much of the rest of the world. Cheap Chinese robotaxis, with fares a fraction of today's human-driven journeys, will be ubiquitous all over the planet in the 2030s.

We rarely hear of the Chinese space program in western media, but it keeps doing interesting things. A recent launch tested an inflatable module for their space station. That was an idea that once seemed promising for the ISS, via Bigelow Aerospace, but never seemed to go anywhere.

This cargo mini-shuttle concept isn't new either. Thirty years ago an ESA version called Hermes got to the advanced planning stage before being scrapped. Some people have doubts that space planes, even launched with reusable rockets, are all that efficient, so it will be interesting to see how this fares.

I wonder what the monthly totals will be next year. When will it hit the 1 million mark, then 10 million?

The problem for all the investor funded AIs, is that data centers are huge costs. They're burning through billions of dollars every month. That makes sense if one of two of them emerge as dominant players who own most of the market share for future AI businesses.

If they all keep under-cutting each other by using open-source. It's more likely companies like OpenAI will crash and burn first.

Also, to me this means future self-driving transit will be commoditized.

If robotaxis can be as cheap as $10K, then their main cost per passenger journey will be the electricity to run them.

A lot of these open sourced AIs have been released that way to undercut competitors. Many people still think AI will consolidate into the hands only the biggest of Big Tech players, but it doesn't seem to be happening yet.

They are also capable of making decent cars they sell for as cheap as $10-15,000.

Also, current LLMs are great at modelling best practices.

Most disease diagnosis, even rare diseases, follows predictable paths. Human doctors would have to have superhuman memories to do as well.

What's more exciting to me is that this knowledge is now free. Free as in beer.

People talk of UBI, but what about universal services that cost nothing?

It's a no from me. I suspect as the US gets more deregulated for AI, it will be more no's from people around the world.

Now that scaling is hitting a wall, it will be interesting to see what methods like this continue AI's progress.

The company's website says they are using generative AI too.

They are using it to generate virtual environments to train the self-driving AI. Waymo is using generative AI to do the same.