Overnight Success.

There is a common misnomer among the general press, they believe a musical act can be an “overnight success”. What is often overlooked, discounted, is the amount of work, the setbacks, and the time that went into getting into the position to be an “overnight success”. The years of practice, the many rejections, and doubts. Success in entertainment is rarely ever easy. The perseverance, the hard work required for success, is part of the story.

This story will also be true for Autonomous Vehicles (AV). While entertainment and engineering are different fields of work, their practitioners often experience similar challenges. For instance, there’s been a lot of talk about Autonomous vehicles not being ready, in particular, “The Information” ran a popular series of articles highlighting the difficulties of Waymo. The Economist took shots, wrote a report stating that Autonomous Vehicles are stuck in a jam. The problem with these articles is they promote serious doubt about the viabilities of these technologies. To be clear Autonomous Vehicles will happen, and when it happens, seemingly overnight, will people be ready? Every innovation is part of many years of iterative tests and scientific discovery. Technological advancement takes time, but when it works well, the disruption is often incredible.

Every year the technology behind Autonomous Ai & hardware gets better. Every year we get closer to the day Autonomous Vehicles(AV) will be an overnight success. But unlike the entertainment business, overnight successes for AV will eliminate millions of jobs. That’s the cost of AV overnight success. When AV are road ready, when they consistently operate safely without a safety driver, it will be a day of reckoning. This interim period is the time transition to the work of the near future, not doubting the viability of inevitable technology.

Filed under: The Grind.