海角大神

Elevator operators used to do more than man the .聽They were once an actual requirement for a lift to move. But as technology advanced through the 20th聽century, people began to trust the machine to travel on its own. This is how Elon Musk sees the future of autonomous cars.

At Nvidia鈥檚 annual for developers in San Jose, Calif., the chief executive officer of Tesla and SpaceX sat down for an interview with Jen-Hsun Huang, the chipmaker鈥檚 co-founder and CEO.

"They used to have elevator operators, and then we developed some simple circuitry to have elevators just automatically come to the floor that you're at," Mr. Musk said in front of 4,000 attendees. "The car is going to be just like that."

As driverless technology improves, Musk believes human error will become too hazardous in an autonomous world. 鈥淚n the distant future, people may outlaw driven cars because it鈥檚 too dangerous," he said. "You can鈥檛 have a person driving a two-ton death machine.鈥�

But as Musk went on to say in the interview, there are still issues with the overall technology.

One of the main problems that arises with self-driving vehicles is when they reach the 15 to 50 m.p.h. range. Autonomous cars are not currently sophisticated enough to handle the unpredictable landscapes of cities and towns. "That's where you get a lot of unexpected things," Musk explained, citing everything from open manhole covers to bicyclists. 鈥淚t鈥檚 the intermediate that鈥檚 hard.鈥�

Another huge problem is the security of the technology. Tesla has 鈥溾�� into thwarting hackers, which is a as the world embraces the 鈥�Internet of Things.鈥澛�

Musk went on to say in an interview with that this will not be an easy transition. "I think it is important to appreciate the size of the automotive industrial base," Musk said. "There's 2 billion of them." With capacity of auto production limited to about 100 million new vehicles annually, Musk does not see a completely driverless reality for another 20 years.

Tesla has already introduced to its D series of the Model S sedan. The car can park itself and has a computer that can read speed-limit signs and helps drivers avoid wrecks, but, , the earliest we can expect to see a fully autonomous car from Tesla is 2023.

Nvidia, which specializes in making graphics processing chips, is a company looking to expand into the driverless car market with Tesla. The electric car maker's Model S already uses two the company鈥檚 chips in its computers.聽

At the conference, Nvidia announced that its self-driving vehicle computer, , will be available in May and will cost $10,000. The technology was first introduced in January at the , and is 鈥� to slip the power of deep neural networks into real-world cars.鈥� Using a style of artificial intelligence called deep learning, the company is looking to close the technology gap to make driverless cars of the future a reality.

Though Musk recently was quoted as saying that artificial intelligence is like 鈥�,鈥� he does not believe self-driving cars will summon the same type of beast. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 think we have to worry about autonomous cars, because that鈥檚 sort of like a narrow form of AI,鈥� Musk said at the event.聽

鈥淲e鈥檒l take autonomous cars for granted in quite a short time,鈥� said Musk, who says he hopes to see Tesla become the leader in driverless vehicles. 鈥淚 almost view it as a solved problem. We know what to do, and we鈥檒l be there in a few years."