Aurora Innovation Inc. CEO Chris Urmson responded to more than a dozen questions that ranged in topics from the serious to the not-so-serious during an "Ask Me Anything" discussion he hosted on Reddit.
The Ask Me Anything subreddit community allows anyone with a Reddit account to submit a question for possible answer by hosts who are looking to share more information about themselves or their work, with former President Barack Obama, Bill Gates and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders having hosted some of the most popular discussions of all-time on the highly-trafficked subreddit. Users can upvote or downvote submitted questions to influence the potential likelihood of it getting seen and answered by the host.
LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, who is also the co-founder of Reinvent Technology Partners — the company Pittsburgh-based Aurora will merge with as it plans to go public via SPAC before the end of the year — joined Urmson for the discussion which covered topics like the commercialization time frame needed before autonomous vehicles are widely deployed, the future of road rage and what comes next for human drivers once they're no longer needed, among several other topics.
"We’ve seen incredible progress in the development of self-driving technology. Widespread adoption of autonomous vehicles is going to take time — I think you’ll see autonomous trucks on the road in the next couple of years," Urmson said in a response to a question asking about what the time frame looks like now before self-driving vehicles become a normal sight on roads and highways. "…self-driving vehicles are here. It’s just going to take some time for them to be so common you see them in every city or every highway."
Urmson repeated that sentiment when asked by another user who pondered about what comes next for the future of autonomy following its adoption in cars and trucks. For Urmson, there's still plenty of development left to do before vehicles take on full autonomy, and even once they do, the work Aurora is doing will continue to be needed, he said.
"I think we’ve still got many years of work in front of us advancing the technology and bringing it to market at scale," Urmson said. "Much like when Henry Ford launched the Model T, it wasn’t the end of Ford’s development, it was very much just the beginning. We’re working, with our partners, to have an impact on an industry that is measured in trillions of dollars (just in the US) and so we expect to be pretty busy with trucks and cars for the foreseeable future!"
The topic of safety also came up when a user asked if it was naive to wonder if human-centered events like road rage and tailgating would cease to exist since vehicles will be in constant communication with each other. That, in theory, the user said, would probably make the roads safer. Urmson said the AV industry isn't quite there yet, but the idea that roads will be safer for all following widespread AV adoption is one he supports.
"The more automated vehicles we have on the road, the safer our roadways will be," Urmson said. "Driving will be incrementally more predictable, and self-driving systems, like the Aurora Driver, won’t get distracted, or drive based on their ego. In the long term, communication between cars will be valuable, but as of now, there aren’t enough (vehicle-to-vehicle) systems on the road for it to drive a lot of safety benefits."
Other users raised concerns about what the future of work will look like for those who provide transportation jobs now but who will eventually be replaced by self-driving vehicles in the future. Hoffman chimed in for the first half of an answer to one user who asked a question like this.
"We have the opportunity to reinvent work again with technologies like robots, self-driving vehicles, etc — and forge a new set of jobs through entrepreneurship and ingenuity," Hoffman said. "I think that autonomous vehicles are a near certainty — and depending on the pacing and timing of that, that will cause kind of a mini 'agrarian-to-industrial revolution' that will cause people who are currently in a certain set of jobs to feel displaced. As a society, we need to help that, we need to make sure they have safety nets, and that these people have the best possible paths to other kinds of jobs. But on the other hand, I think technology like autonomy will create a whole bunch of new jobs."
Hoffman continued, stating that he believes autonomy is essential due to its potential to save lives, its ability to facilitate the efficiency of road use and to create "significant" economic productivity.
Urmson echoed that sentiment in the second-half of the reply.
"I think self-driving technology is really the only path to helping address these challenges," Urmson said. "It’s definitely not easy, and the goal is not to replace people. Initially we expect self-driving vehicles to operate alongside human drivers … there’s no doubt that some people will lose their jobs, as automated vehicles become more common, and as a society, we need to grapple with this, and help these people transition to new jobs — the broad benefit to society of this technology is too large for us to not embrace it."
The full discussion, including which fast-food restaurant Urmson and Hoffman believe makes the best hamburger, can be found here.
