Ich bin kein Fan der KPCh oder der autoritären Regierungsform Chinas, aber fairerweise muss man sagen, dass sie einige Dinge gut machen. Insbesondere scheinen sie ein besseres Verständnis von Robotik und KI und deren Bedeutung für die Zukunft zu haben und entsprechend zu planen. Selbstfahrende Autos sind ein prominentes Beispiel, mir fällt kein anderes Land ein, das in diesem Bereich so weit vorne liegt wie sie.
Aber warum haben westliche Länder solche blinden Flecken?
Hier ist ein Beispiel. Die irische Regierung veröffentlichte heute ein 37 Milliarden Euro schwerer Plan für das Schienennetz der Insel für die nächsten 25 Jahre. Auf den 162 Seiten dieses Berichts wird nicht ein einziges Mal von selbstfahrenden Fahrzeugen gesprochen. 10 Cent pro km Robotertaxi Die derzeit in China eingeführten Züge wären eine offensichtliche Alternative zur Eisenbahn in Irland, sobald sie verfügbar sind, was voraussichtlich in den 2030er Jahren der Fall sein wird.
Dies bedeutet, dass sämtliche 25-Jahres-Prognosen und Zahlen in diesem Eisenbahnbericht praktisch „erfunden“ sind, da das offensichtliche Problem der selbstfahrenden Autos ignoriert wird.
Dieses Muster scheint in der Planungs- und Regierungsführung außerhalb Chinas üblich zu sein. Warum ist das so?
Why is China the only country that seems to be planning for a future with self-driving cars?
byu/lughnasadh inFuturology
44 Kommentare
Because as authoritarian government they can plan ahead. Without things to get in the way such as lawsuits, environmental review, personal property, etc.
You lease land for a 100 years in china I believe but eminent domain is a lot easier to use over there.
https://www.nhtsa.gov/vehicle-safety/automated-vehicles-safety
it’s not ready yet, and no one knows when it really will be ready.
Wouldn’t a rail network be much more efficient and sustainable compared to an equivalent fleet of electric vehicles?
Because China is entirely willing to risk life or injury for their citizens in order to appear better and smarter than everyone else.
Other nations, not as much.
I think it’s because America’s form of government is inferior to China’s.
Lots of pro-authoritarian chatter in this thread. The simple answer to your absurd assertion in that it’s not. There are plenty of places with self-driving cars and, as with all tech, it is proliferating. You may want to think that China has all the self-driving cars but you would be very wrong.
China has like 200x more cars than Ireland. For Ireland expanding rail versus autonomous driving is a better option.
China just built more high speed rail in like 1/4 of the time it would take anywhere else. They don’t have to answer to regulations – if a builder fails them – they can execute them. It’s not the same scale as other places.
I do wish it would be better planned for – here in the US – I think they just keep putting it on the corporations to solve but they do get to keep more of the money?
one big reason China is ahead in planning for self-driving cars is that their government can take a longterm, top- down approach to technology because of their centralized control. They can quickly implement and scale new technologies like AI and robotics without as much pushback or red tape
western countries often have more fragmented decision-making processes, which can slow down the adoption of emerging tech. Plus, there’s often a focus on preserving existing systems, like rail networks, rather than looking ahead to how future technologies might disrupt or replace them
The US runs on petroleum. The oil folks have little interest in improving your Earth or Your Life.
$$$
Self-driving vehicles are electric.
$$$
Honestly, pretty soon if not already, China will have boundless freedoms compared to our Project 2025 vision of how the Mafia will run the country.
People in US just want to hurt their neighbors so they vote against them at all cost even if it means shooting yourself in the face. That’s called a WIN. Fuck logic.
$$$
You can’t plan on when self-driving taxis will be widely available. Robotaxis in the US are currently only found in urban centers (where they are least needed, but it’s a good testing ground).
Huge advances will be required before door-to-door on-demand Robotaxis are ubiquitous and reliable. This could take decades.
China has more ability to force the issue, but they are still taking a risk by factoring in full autonomy on a specific timeline.
Replacing trains and buses with self-driving taxis is a terrible idea. Replacing privately-owned cars with subscription autonomous cars could be a great idea, but it has some serious downsides if not implemented correctly (see video below).
[Why Self-Driving Taxis are a Terrible Idea](https://youtu.be/GcKUYbChE3A?si=_Gg-j7Fh2XjQOFEV)
What do you mean, only China planning for this stuff?. Here is the UK’s [Automated Vehicles Act](https://www.gov.uk/government/news/self-driving-vehicles-set-to-be-on-roads-by-2026-as-automated-vehicles-act-becomes-law). Not every country has to shout their progress on this stuff form the rooftops. Just because they don’t, don’t assume its not happening behind the scenes.
Because they don’t have multi hundred year old oil companies who would prefer we continue to give them money instead? It’s not rocket science
They can do it because any action they make has no friction since it’s an authoritarian government. Where other countries has to legislate, navigate health and safety, pay to get a workforce and many many other things.
It is also a way to control their citizens, if government owned self driving cars are the only things allowed on the road, they control who is on the road and collect data and restrict movement. It is very beneficial for their regime.
Because high speed rail is proven technology and self driving cars are not.
The post’s whole premise doesn’t make sense. Waymo isn’t testing this, they’re already doing it. You can pay for a driverless ride right now, particularly on the west coast, for a substantial discount compared to human driven rides.
Maybe there are more total companies that are ‚testing‘ it in China, but that makes some sense since they have 3x the population.
Central authoritarian planning has its benefits, instead of having to wait decades while all your rich mates get their handjobs from the government and the electorate build up the will to scream for their lives in a disaster that takes lifetimes to unfold – you can just… fix it.
Honestly, if the Americans plunge the Western world into a century of humiliation over Twitter drama – at least there will be one nation on the planet carrying the torch of scientific enlightenment.
If self driving cars actually become a thing, say good bye to owning a car. It will all be subscription based. If the government is going to invest in anything be it in public transport than making some billionaires more money and making it more expensive for regular people.
Did you not look into Tesla, Uber, and literally almost all car manufactures trying to get into autopilot technology? Waymo from Google?
Shit like this is why
[https://komonews.com/news/local/fatal-tesla-crash-killed-motorcyclist-self-driving-system-2022-model-s-deion-glover-robotaxis-elon-musk-human-supervision-autopilot-system-sr-522-wsp#](https://komonews.com/news/local/fatal-tesla-crash-killed-motorcyclist-self-driving-system-2022-model-s-deion-glover-robotaxis-elon-musk-human-supervision-autopilot-system-sr-522-wsp#)
FWIW where I live, San Francisco, self driving cars have been around for over a year and are at the point where anyone can call one for a ride. The experience is shockingly good, and very popular.
Because we don’t have control over our people the way they do, Lemon
Human life is cheap in China, who cares that one killed x number of people when we (ccp) contrles who sees what. Nothing but good thing a from China /s
😂 I love how even the most banal but positive observation about China has to be prefaced with „I’m not a commie and the CCP is terrible, but“
Less than 20 years ago , the Natsec line was that China was an economic miracle, proof of the success of capitalism and so every American said the same.
Then, when it became clear that they were going to overtake us , the Pentagons opinion changed and soon after , so did the opinions of every redditor. Almost in unison.
I’m sure it’s a coincidence, such highly educated free thinkers would never be so easily influenced by propaganda.
Two things.
1) There actually are self driving taxis in a number of places in the US, like Phoenix or San Francisco.
2) I’m not aware of any Chinese AI that’s more advanced than the state of the art AI programs from American tech companies like Open AI or Google. Also if you look at the number of data centers necessary to run AI there’s a *huge* disparity between the US and China. With the US having something like 5,388 data centers compared to 449 in China.
Because leaving any kind of independence or sense of agency might lead to a revolution and overthrowing of the current government.
Plus cutting off your car privileges for having a low social credit score is much easier this way
It is plan to eliminate the skill of driving cars and add personal cars to the list of fully controlled items.
You don’t know how to drive and your car doesn’t want to drive you becouse you have low social score, are a dissident or member of unwanted minority/religion.
It is not about preparing for the future it is about more control on its citizens.
Because it’s the only country with a government run in the interests of society at large with central planning
There’s this other pressing issue called the impending climate crisis which will not be well served producing that many cars and sustained levels of individual vehicle use. Trains will.
Ever thought that maybe sometimes lack of infrastructure is what makes somewhere more desolate and disconnected? Ireland used to have a much better rail service than now
Only authoritarian countries can think of such investments.
In democartic countries, leaders are to concerned about re-election that they cannot think of any investments with outcome further than the next election.
And it’s kind of sad.
Because they are the only country with an expectation of micro-controlling every aspect of their citizens lives?
Chinas youth unemployment rate is above 20% (their public data is faked). Per cap its income in China is usd $13,000. In the U.S. it’s estimated at $66,452. In the uk it’s $46,000. In France about $39,000. Salaries are driven down by rapid deployment of things like automation.
Furthermore – China’s advancements are subsidized using tax payer dollars, and citizens savings in the form of low interest loans from state owned banks. This puts further downward pressure on aggregate incomes, and further exacerbates Chinas debt issues, as all this money is poured into low roi investments. I recall reading that every $1 the government spends on infrastructure, generates only $0.25 return.
Good luck trying to convince Americans to give up their cars
Wouldn’t a chinese self-driving car system by linked to thier social credit score?
> they do some things well
When you see this happen, **very** often here’s what’s going on:
1. It’s a country that’s extremely authoritarian and that doesn’t ask for/listen-to/respect feedback from it’s citizens, nor do they care about their citizen’s safety (and even less freedom).
2. They are extremely administratively-minded, with competition between administrative entities, and results being almost a matter of survival.
3. As a result of all of this, what happens is massive amounts of public money is put into research (either public or private), and almost no regulations are put in place.
3bis. Note they might not actually be (in some cases) doing much research, but instead simply implementing research done elsewhere, just going faster at implementation because they don’t have regulatory hurdles/don’t care about safety, the environment, and all those pesky morality things.
4. This **tends** to result in massive progress (or at least the apperance of massive progress), because if you throw engineers at a problem, and remove the hurdle of protecting the population, **yes**, things are going to move fast.
But move fast to where?
From the outside, this looks like they are doing great and making progress at an almost utopic pace.
However.
Very often, there’s a lot of bullshit in how the technologies are presented (results are not what they seem, they manipulate/exaggerate, because what matters is that it **looks** to their superiors like they are advancing, not that they actually advance).
And very often, almost no mind is paid to the safety (and even less the freedoms) of the public: « Break things and move fast » at an etatic scale.
Here’s what matters:
Other countries **are** making progress on self driving. **Real**, demonstrable progress (just wait until transformers enter the self-driving game…), with consequences to faking it, meaning it’s less likely to happen overall.
They are making (seemingly) slower progress.
But the progress is there, it’s steady, and we’ll get there.
I’ll bet on the reasonnable, moral, safety-conscious society any day over the tyrannical, nonsense-incentives, no-empathy-no-consciousness alternative.
I am pretty sure who’s going to win in the end, and if the bad one wins, they’ll need to «essentially» become the good ones in the process to get there…
If you want to understand an answer to your question, ask yourself the question “why do you need to include in your question preemptive statement like ‘you’re not a fan of the CCP’ or its “authoritarian government”. What you know about China has been very deliberately taught to you by people running an ideology that’s antisocial and that lets them take practically everything from everyone else. The CCP is building a country full of robust public goods and services. Yes, there are billionaires there, but they don’t run the whole country for themselves and the CCP is actually reeling them in.
I think they also use a form of headlight technology on newer cars that keeps headlights from flashing oncoming drivers
I believe because China planes ahead, also their political system is able to plan ahead. While most modern western nations only plan for the current party
Technology has continuously taught us over the last 150 years you either keep up or get left behind. They are staying in step with technology while other countries are trying to fight against it.
Our politicians are against technology for civilians but man are they in the cutting edge for military.
China has a history of using local industrial initiatives to help develop industrial sectors, which once mature, they can then unleash on unprepared international competitors. The current EV situation is a good example: they invested billions in creating an EV car industry that was a joke 10 years ago, and now can compete with Tesla at half the price. They are now starting to flood neighboring countries, like Thailand (see the recent NY times article). It makes sense that they want to develop autonomous driving cars to complement the EV lead they have established. In essence, they are borrowing a page out of Tesla’s playbook, which was to create robotaxis. It is probably no surprise since Elon Musk is often visiting China and is cozying up to China. The US and other European countries will probably figure this out in a year or two and then play catch up. China is also creating a favorable regulatory environment for robocars–they are not allowing accident victims to sue, and are hiding crash statistics, etc.
Self-driving cars are not popular now in the US, but will be in 10-20 years. Many of the adult kids of my friends DO NOT know how to drive. Of 12 adult kids, only 3 drive regularly and are comfortable driving. The other 9 take Uber. When they have their own kids in 5-10 years and move to the suburbs to escape city public schools, they will need to buy a self-driving car.
Just a random hypothesis, China want to be the first economic power.
More automation means more employees available to produce products to export?
Plus, maybe it can solve some logistics issues?
Have you seen how bad is the average chinese driver?
from what I see with China, they plan ahead with a lot of things…already heard they were like 6yrs ahead of schedule on going green, spending more than every other country combined against climate change cuz they realize by doing so, not only helps them, they can be number 1 in the world provider for green energy products, where as most places round the world are still busy debating whether climate change is even real
Why would there be any mentions of self driving cars in a document describing expansion of rail network? That doesn’t make sense.
Robotaxis are not a replacement for rail at all. Not a replacement for public transport in general, the road capacity for robotaxis is really bad.
I think looking at your question from the other direction may help. Instead of asking “why aren’t other countries?”, ask, “why *is* China spending so many resources for human-less tech?”.
Driverless cars: China has a huge population, obviously. But with that, there is a ton of traffic that can be reduced and better regulated and controlled if all cars were automated. Additionally, access to education is kind of all over the place in China, as well as social stratification. driverless cars could allow opportunity for people who don’t know how to drive, or who have too low social credit score to get a car loan, to still be able to access a self-driving service for transportation.
AI: People don’t really talk about this, but AI can be programmed to tell you whatever the programmer wants it to tell you, much in the same way a casino can have a slot machine with favorable odds of the player losing, regardless of the posted odds on the front of the machine. It would take an impossible level or work to figure out whether it’s been manipulated/rigged, and the punishment for doing so is minuscule compared to the benefits gained by being deceptive.
Looking at TikTok as an example, China has demonstrated its desire and significant ability to control information before it’s disseminated to the general public. They can continue to further whitewash the internet and limit access to free information if they implement AI tools they control as soon as possible (which they *will* control and manipulate for their benefit).
Automation/robotics for the workplace: China, again, has population control issues. Global birthrates are reducing, and India’s manufacturing is ramping up. China needs workers, but is starting to fall behind in number of skilled workers, and more importantly, unskilled workers, both of which are emigrating to work elsewhere in the world…like India or the U.S.
Robotics and automation serves to replace the workforce and reduce labor costs for its companies, the profits of which first flow through China as a communist government. It stands to directly benefit from reduced labor costs.
The other part of China being authoritarian, if automation replaces most of the workers, the general public becomes even more reliant on China to provide for them, which reduces political opposition. No one else can step up and say they can provide better working opportunities, more income flow for general public, or anything of the sort if every industry is fully automated. Their economic plans will be expensive and undesirable for the Nation if they have to add a budget back in for costs of human labor.
The short answer is control.
Places like the U.S. do not benefit from replacing its entire workforce or controlling media through pre-programmed AI because at the end of the day, public opinion still matters to a much further extent to countries like the U.S. than it does to China, which has demonstrated many times over the course of its history (but particularly since Mao) that it’s ready and willing to literally kill off its citizens who complain too loudly or threaten its grip of control.