Will Self-Driving Cars Ever Become Ubiquitous?

While our contemporary understanding of AI is eschewing the stereotypes of Sci-Fi and mid-century dystopian dreams, the fact remains that the current environment of rapid technological innovation and collaboration is one that has been in the pipeline for many decades already. The groundwork was laid in the form of ideas which, at the time, sounded far too advanced to prove attainable in such a short span of time. One example of an idea that spans two millennia is autonomous transportation. For many years, we've heard about automobile companies trying to figure out how to replace the human driver with a reactive, anticipatory machine intelligence – one that proves safer, even, than we do. From cars that can communicate with each other, to urbanized cities without traffic lights – all will be made possible with self-driving cars – but will they ever be ubiquitous?