That's a nice Silicon Valley you've got there, shame if something happened to it

Make them an offer they can't refuse

The Google Self-Driving Car is a project by Google that involves developing technology for autonomous cars, mainly electric cars. The software powering Google's cars is called Google Chauffeur. (...)The project is currently being led by Google engineer Sebastian Thrun, former director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and co-inventor of Google Street View. Thrun's team at Stanford created the robotic vehicle Stanley which won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge and its US$2 million prize from the United States Department of Defense.(...) On December 22, 2014, Google unveiled a fully functioning prototype of their driverless car and planned to test it on San Francisco Bay Area roads beginning in 2015. Wikipedia 

If I were looking for the best example of the social/political tone-deafness, the lack E.I., of IT folk, it would be the "Google Self-Driving Car". 

To me it is perfectly obvious that the name "Self-Driving Car" is a red herring, because I don't think that there is much of a market for a driverless car, simply because Americans love to drive their cars, it is one of the last places where they can enjoy the sensation of freedom and control. 

What I think that industry, specifically the transport industry might be very interested in is "Self-Driving Trucks" (buses, taxis, etc.). Eliminating truck drivers means that big companies, like Wal-Mart wouldn't have to deal with pesky unions like the Teamster's union...  Without truck drivers, there would be no Teamster's union. Wouldn't that be great? I mean they have all sorts of nasty Mafia connections, don't they? If we eliminated the truck drivers, we wouldn't have to worry about the Mafia anymore, would we?

Whaddaya, whaddaya... ya outta ya fuckin' mind?

No, really, does Google understand exactly who they are trying to put out of business? To put it more bluntly, do Larry Page and Sergey Brin have an algorithm that can locate Jimmy Hoffa's body on Google Maps? DS