無人駕駛和老司機，誰更安全嗎？

U.S. cities will look a lot different in 20 years, at least when it comes to public transportation.

That』s according to Bryan Salesky, the CEO of the self-driving car company Argo AI, which became a Ford Motor subsidiary after the auto giant said in February it would invest $1 billion in the startup.

The rise of self-driving cars will usher a 「much safer mode of transportation」 by 「removing the human from the loop,」 Salesky said on Wednesday at the Rutberg FM technology conference in Half Moon Bay, Calif. Human drivers are more prone to distractions and errors in their judgment compared to autonomous cars in the future, Salesky believes.

Salesky, who was once Google』s (goog, -0.28%) director of hardware for its self-driving car project, also believes that cities will have less need for parking spaces, which he said currently account for one-third of the space in an average urban city center. Self-driving cars would be constantly shipping people around cities instead of remaining parked for hours, and the unused parking spaces could be converted into office buildings or public parks, he explained.

People who buy self-driving cars will also have the option to convert their automobiles into autonomous taxis when they don』t use them, Salesky predicted. His thoughts echo recent statements made by Tesla (tsla, +1.19%) CEO Elon Musk and Andrew Ng, the former head of AI for Chinese search giant Baidu, which is also working on self-driving cars.

Ford, which recently replaced CEO Mark Fields with Jim Hackett, is hoping new technologies like self-driving cars can help revive the struggling company. Fields said in January that Ford planned to develop a completely autonomous vehicle by 2021, and Salesky confirmed that the auto company is sticking with that date.

But Ford has a lot of work to do to improve autonomous vehicle technology, Salesky admitted, especially in terms of creating autonomous cars that can perceive nuances like the differences between children by themselves and when they are holding their mother's hands. A self-driving car needs to know that children, when not by the side of their parents, may move "erratically," and so the car must "then plan accordingly." Self driving cars will need this ability to perceive tremendous amounts of detail on the road if they are to become mainstream.

Salesky says that advances in computing technology will make it possible for researchers to improve the machine learning algorithms powering self-driving cars, thus helping those cars better 「see」 the physical world by 2021.

The CEO did not directly compare Ford』s efforts on self-driving cars with competitors like Google』s Waymo unit, Tesla, or ride-sharing company Uber. But, he warned outsiders to be wary when these companies share statistics about how many miles their self-driving cars have driven.

Tesla, for example, said in December that Tesla cars with some self-driving capabilities have driven about 1.3 billion miles. Businesses brag about the number of miles their self-driving cars log because it』s 「one of the few metrics the companies are forced to release」 by regulators, he said.

「Not all miles are the same, and that』s not the only indicator of success,」 Salesky said.

He explained that miles logged by self-driving cars on the highway are not as valuable to researchers as miles driven in urban environments, because city driving involves more unpredictable variables like people suddenly crossing streets. This unpredictability can be used to help researchers create more powerful self-driving cars that can handle all driving situations, not just highway roads, which are "a much friendlier environment."

未來20年，美國各大城市的面貌會變得很不一樣，至少是在公共交通上。

這就是無人駕駛汽車公司Argo AI的CEO布萊恩•薩勒斯基的論斷。今年二月，福特公司宣布將向這家創業公司投資10億美元。自此，該公司便成了福特的下屬企業。

本周三，薩勒斯基在加州半月灣舉辦的Rutberg FM科技大會上表示，無人駕駛汽車技術的興起「去掉了駕駛中人的因素」，必將帶來一種「安全得多的交通模式」。他認為，與未來的無人駕駛汽車相比，人類司機很容易分心和產生誤判。

薩勒斯基曾任谷歌無人駕駛汽車項目的硬體主管。他認為，隨著無人駕駛技術的普及，城市對停車位的需求也將越來越小。如今，各大城市的中心城區幾乎有三分之一的面積都被用作停車場。而無人汽車將人送到目的地后，可以自動開走，不會佔據停車位長達幾個小時。這樣一來，空下來的停車場就可以改造成寫字樓或者公園。

薩勒斯基還預測道，購買了無人駕駛汽車的人在不使用汽車的情況下，還可以把自己的汽車變成無人駕駛計程車，讓它自己出去拉客賺錢。他的這一想法也與特斯拉CEO伊隆•馬斯克和百度前人工智慧項目負責人吳恩達不謀而合，這兩家公司也在研發無人駕駛技術。

福特最近剛剛用馬克•菲爾德換掉了上任CEO吉姆•哈克特，該公司正希望依靠無人駕駛技術帶動公司實現復興。今年一月，馬克•菲爾德曾表示，福特計劃在2021年前開發一款完全自動駕駛的汽車。而薩勒斯基也再次確認，公司一定會趕在既定的日期完成任務。

不過薩勒斯基也承認，要想改進無人駕駛技術，福特還有大量的工作要做，尤其是在判斷一些細微的差別時——比如當看到一個孩子獨自在路上行走時，與他媽媽牽著他的手一起行走時，車輛的反應顯然應該是不一樣的。無人駕駛汽車應該知道，在沒有父母監護的情況下，兒童的行為可能是「不規律」的，因此無人駕駛汽車「必須根據相應情況做出規劃」。無人駕駛汽車要想成為一種主流技術，就必須具備感知大量路況細節的能力。

薩勒斯基表示，計算機技術的進步，使研究人員能夠不斷改進無人駕駛汽車的機器學習演算法，從而使無人駕駛汽車能夠在2021年前更好地「看懂」真實的世界。

薩勒斯基並沒有直接拿福特的無人駕駛項目與谷歌的Waymo部門以及特斯拉和Uber等競爭對手的無人駕駛項目進行比較。不過他也提醒道，有些公司會鼓吹他們的無人駕駛汽車已經安全行駛了多少公里，外行人士對這種統計數據一定要留一個心眼。

比如特斯拉公司就在去年12月份表示，擁有部分無人駕駛功能的特斯拉汽車已經行駛了13億英里。有些企業之所以樂於鼓吹這些里程數據，是因為它是「監管機構強制要求披露的少數指標之一」。

薩勒斯基表示：「里程和里程是不一樣的，而且它也不是唯一的成功指標。」

他解釋道，對於無人駕駛汽車來說，在高速公路上行駛的里程，並不像在城市環境中行駛的里程那樣有價值，因為城市環境中有更多不可預測的變數——比如有行人突然橫穿街道。而這種不可預測性有助於研究人員研發出更強大的無人駕駛技術，它將能夠應對所有路面情況，而絕非僅僅是在路況相對單純的高速公路上，畢竟高速公路是一個「對司機比較友好的環境」。（財富中文網）

譯者：朴成奎