#200 - Sebastian Thrun - The Singularity Is Here & We Are Completely Unprepared

**Sebastian Thrun** (0:00)
We have flying cars en masse in Ukraine right now, on the front line, in Russia. They're unmanned, and they deliver from, like, explosives all the way to little water bottles, to the troops hanging out in the trenches on the front line.
And it's moving really fast.

**Peter McCormack** (0:16)
How far away do you think we are from potentially even driving being considered illegal, because it's dangerous?

**Sebastian Thrun** (0:21)
I would guess right now, Waymo is roughly 100 times safer than a human driver. When you judge it by the type of accidents that can cause bodily harm, airbag deployment, all the way to death. And it is a singularity. It is an exponential expansion of what's happening with AI and other technologies, Bitcoin and blockchain included, and robotics.
And the weird thing about a singularity is you can't say where it's going. Whether it's an exponential expansion, you don't know where it's going to go. So for me to predict the future, say five years from now, is completely impossible.

**Peter McCormack** (0:55)
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Well, I don't need to learn it now because I have endless technology.

**Sebastian Thrun** (1:24)
That's true.

**Peter McCormack** (1:24)
Which you've been involved in, Matt.

**Sebastian Thrun** (1:26)
Let me just move away.

**Peter McCormack** (1:28)
I had a first two days ago, I got to LA and I met up with my buddy, the guy whose house I started my podcast in, a guy called Justin, and we were in Santa Monica. We were going down to Venice and I went to book an Uber. He said, did you have been in a Waymo? I was like, no. He put us away. I had my first Waymo experience.

**Sebastian Thrun** (1:47)
How did it feel?

**Peter McCormack** (1:50)
For a couple of minutes, it felt insane. Then it just felt normal.

**Sebastian Thrun** (1:55)
It's amazing how quickly we trust AI.

**Peter McCormack** (1:58)
This is your invention.

**Sebastian Thrun** (1:59)
It's your life in the hands of an AI.

**Peter McCormack** (2:02)
Do you know what?
It's like the calmest driver in the world. It drives like my dad. My dad has never had a speeding ticket in his life.

**Sebastian Thrun** (2:12)
Oh my God. That's impressive.

**Peter McCormack** (2:14)
He never breaks the speed limit. He doesn't accelerate fast. He doesn't brake sharp. He is the calmest driver in the world. It's almost like you modeled Waymo on my father.

**Sebastian Thrun** (2:27)
Waymo is not getting tickets actually.

**Peter McCormack** (2:30)
They're making mistakes. He was saying Waymo can't go on to the freeway yet.

**Sebastian Thrun** (2:35)
We have been. Waymo has been for a while and even offered services on freeways and then got pulled back. Because I don't know the exact details.
But I think the fundamental challenge on freeway assistance is very rare moments when you have a cow or a bicycle or a pedestrian on the freeway. Then the speed becomes an issue because now you're in a dynamically fast thing that can kill people.

**Peter McCormack** (2:57)
I was listening to one of your interviews and he said this profound thing that firstly, is it 1.2 million people die on the roads every day?

**Sebastian Thrun** (3:07)
It's crazy. You can't fix all of this, but that's what the reality is today.

**Peter McCormack** (3:11)
But you're going to save these cars, this invention is going to save so many people's lives without them ever knowing their lives were saved.

**Sebastian Thrun** (3:19)
That's true for so many amazing invention.

**Peter McCormack** (3:21)
Yeah. Incredible. When you first start, sorry, I've got so many questions. When you first started on it, did everyone think you were insane?

**Sebastian Thrun** (3:29)
I wasn't being taken seriously by most people. It's something like science fiction.
Yes. One of the few people who took us seriously was Elon Musk. He stopped by very, very early.

**Peter McCormack** (3:38)
Yeah.

**Sebastian Thrun** (3:39)
He gave us $10,000 as an initial grant to Stanford University, which I almost didn't follow up on because I didn't believe he was serious.
But most people did not. Most people thought it was science fiction. They couldn't understand. I would count myself among the disbelievers. I couldn't quite believe it either, to be honest. It sounds strange, but it was hard for me to see the future.