📌 TOPINDIATOURS Breaking ai: It’s Starting to Feel a Lot Like Tesla’s Robotaxi Pro

Elon Musk once promised that pivoting Tesla into the self-driving taxi business would generate the automaker trillions of dollars in revenue. Certainly the enthusiasm these kinds of grand proclamations have inspired in investors has kept the company’s stock buoyant, with an astonishing market cap nearing $1.5 trillion. But does the reality on the ground back it up? Not really, suggests new reporting from The New York Times.

For one, Tesla faces steep competition from companies like Waymo that have already been in business for over a decade, and have thousands of robotaxis giving rides across major US cities. It was recently revealed, meanwhile, that Musk’s company only has about 30 capital-R Robotaxis roaming Austin, Texas — the only city where it’s currently offering rides to the public.

Worse yet, the cabs’ presence is barely felt by locals.

“I’ve never seen a Robotaxi in Austin,” Kara Kockelman, a professor of engineering at the University of Texas at Austin who studies transportation, told the NYT. “Waymos are around all the time.”

Perhaps that puny market penetration would be less alarming if Tesla offered advanced tech and a passenger experience that Waymo doesn’t, but its self-driving cabs aren’t even fully driverless, requiring the supervision of a human “safety monitor” who must be present in the vehicle at all times. Numerous instances of the cabs violating traffic laws and an alarming crash rate demonstrate why that policy is still necessary.

It’s reasonable that a newcomer to the field would take time to find its feet, but Musk has promised monumental progress at a whirlwind pace. He said that over a thousand Robotaxis would be operating in Austin “within a few months” of launching, that over a million fully autonomous Teslas would be on the road by 2026, and that the automaker’s Robotaxi operations would cover “half the population of the US” by the end of next year.

Investors take these promises seriously. Musk’s eye-watering trillion-dollar pay package, which they recently approved, requires Musk to oversee the commercial deployment of one million Robotaxis, the NYT noted.

Experts, to say the least, aren’t convinced. One criticism is Musk’s refusal to use radar and lidar sensors to help the cars understand their surroundings. After experimenting with the sensors, Musk swore them off as an expensive “crutch,” and doubled-down on only using cameras to see. Numerous accidents, including one in which a Tesla running the company’s Full Self-Driving ran over and killed an elderly pedestrian while its front camera was blinded by sunlight, have underscored the risks of Musk’s approach.

“I’m still deeply skeptical that Tesla is all that close in terms of building a real automated driving system,” Matthew Wansley, a professor at Cardozo School of Law in New York who has worked for an autonomous driving start-up, told the NYT.

Technology can sometimes advance at a rapid pace, and fortunes can quickly shift in a nascent industry. But right now, Tesla is “way behind Waymo,” Raj Rajkumar, a Carnegie Mellon University professor and pioneer of autonomous technology, told the newspaper.

More on robotaxis: Waymos Cause Traffic Jams Across City During Power Outage

The post It’s Starting to Feel a Lot Like Tesla’s Robotaxi Program Is Mostly Smoke and Mirrors appeared first on Futurism.

🔗 Sumber: futurism.com

📌 TOPINDIATOURS Update ai: Public Rejoices as Porsche Releases Beautiful Ad Not Ma

This holiday season, German automaker Porsche is winning hearts and minds by putting out a Christmas-themed ad that seemingly isn’t made with AI. What a concept, right?

Called “Porsche Holiday,” the 30-second animated commercial shows a driver elegantly tooling around in his new ride, driving through autumnal scenery on a mountainside road and then a cool sea of glass and concrete as the Sun sets on a city. It’s done up in striking 2D-looking animation with precise lines, pleasing geometry, and eye-popping colors — an ad seemingly done right for a change.

Sharing behind the scenes footage, Porsche revealed in a social media post that the ad was a mix of hand-drawn sketches and CGI. It was made by Parallel Studio, an animation team based in Paris.

Though Porsche made no specific mention of AI, people reading between the lines quickly took that to mean that the automaker was quietly bragging about not using the tech, and hailed it as a victory. This perception of it being AI-free drove it to being remarkably viral, and made it an unexpected hit.

“Can’t wait for more of this anti-AI rebound,” one user wrote.

“Amtrak has been hiring artists to create original animations as well,” observed Nathan Allebach, a creative director. “As slop races us to the bottom, real art signals craft, prestige, and trust.”

The response goes to show how divisive AI is, especially in the arts. And ads, the most commercial art form of all, have both been a useful gauge of how companies have been willing to experiment with the tech and of the public reaction to it, which has been largely pretty negative.

Coca-Cola, for example, unleashed a ghoulishly uncanny iteration of its “Holidays Are Coming” last month that sparked outrage over how overtly ugly it was. McDonalds, too, released an AI-generated ad that proved such a disaster that it sheepishly pulled it entirely. 

Everyone knows that our modern idea of the holiday season has been heavily shaped by ad agencies, but no one likes to be reminded of how soulless it can be by seeing AI amalgamations forced onto their eyeballs. At least pretend to care about humans, for Pete’s sake.

More on AI: Grimes Says She Has AI Psychosis, Recommends You Should Get it Too

The post Public Rejoices as Porsche Releases Beautiful Ad Not Made Using AI appeared first on Futurism.

🔗 Sumber: futurism.com