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Wednesday, June 25, 2025

The Self-Driving Delusion and the Case for Smart Buses



The Self-Driving Delusion and the Case for Smart Buses

For over a decade, Elon Musk has promised us full self-driving Teslas “in two years.” It's become a running joke in the tech world, and yet the myth continues. Tesla’s camera-only approach—eschewing LIDAR and radar—may have cost advantages, but it’s hitting the same wall over and over again: reality. Vision alone struggles to consistently discern depth. A 3D object can look 2D on camera. What happens then? You plow right in.

Meanwhile, companies like Waymo use LIDAR to actually understand the depth of their environment. It’s not perfect, but it’s grounded in the real world, not sci-fi timelines and Twitter hype cycles. The truth is, getting to 80% of self-driving capability might take you a few years. But the final 20%? That’s where it gets brutally hard. The margin of error disappears. A system that’s “almost there” in this case is not 80% done—it might only be 40% done, or even less.

It’s Not a Tech Problem, It’s an Attitude Problem

What if we’re asking the wrong question? The obsession with self-driving cars reflects an outdated vision of mobility—one rooted in the car-centric American dream rather than 21st-century efficiency, safety, and sustainability.

Here’s a radical thought: maybe the answer has been in front of us the whole time. Buses. Self-driving buses on pre-determined routes are orders of magnitude easier than solving for every random car trip from anywhere to anywhere. On a fixed route, with mapped streets, weather sensors, AI cameras, traffic coordination systems, and a central monitoring network, you can design reliable autonomous transit far sooner.

Buses aren’t just easier to automate—they’re more efficient. They use less road space per passenger, reduce emissions, and decrease traffic. They cost less to operate per capita. They can be connected to a real-time sensor grid—think LIDAR, pole-mounted cameras, roadside sensors—to survey and optimize entire road networks collaboratively.

And in the meantime, while we perfect this system, bus drivers are still driving. And guess what? If the driver is driving the bus, you’re not. You can read, work, rest. That’s already a form of freedom Tesla can’t give you, even today.

Reimagining the Route

Let’s reframe mobility in three tiers:

  • Under 10 miles? Small electric shared vehicles or micromobility (e-bikes, scooters).

  • 10 to 100 miles? Smart buses with sensor networks, priority lanes, and eventual autonomy.

  • 100+ miles? Trains. High-speed. Electrified. Quiet. Comfortable.

That final five-mile gap? Solvable. Use shuttles, shared rides, or even walking paths. It’s all about integration—not just inventing the next shiny toy.

The Car is Not King

America’s fixation on the car as the default transportation unit is what’s holding us back. It’s not the tech that’s failing—it’s our inability to imagine a different world.

We keep asking, “When will my car drive me?” But the better question is: “What is the smartest, safest, and most sustainable way to get everyone from A to B?”

Buses—with or without drivers—may be boring. But they’re better. And they’re ready now.



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Perplexity Price: 200B For Apple. Bonus: CEO

Liquid Computing: The Future of Human-Tech Symbiosis

Apple And Perplexity
Apple executives held internal talks about buying Perplexity, Bloomberg News reports

When I first threw the number 100B, if Apple was already looking at Perplexity, it sure was not in the news. Now it is. But my number even then was a floor. 200B is more like it. Why? And it will still be cheap for Apple. Because Apple will lose 200B in market value in a year if it does not do the deal. So they will be getting Perplexity for free, essentially, even at 200B.

Size does not matter. Apple is on its way to irrelevance in five years if it does not merge with Perplexity. This is not a buying. This is a merger. "Giving Siri a brain," like Faraz puts it. I'd put it more bluntly. This is giving Apple a brain. I myself have mused if Tim Cook is the Steve Ballmer of Apple. He is, objectively speaking. Steve Ballmer missed the whole mobile thing. Except AI is more fundamental than the Internet itself. A better analogy would be Apple is the New York Times and it is refusing to get a website. Print papers all the way.

Tim Cook is an amazing COO, a legendary logistics guy. We all have our strengths. But imagination and creativity don't seem to be his things. Whereas Aravind's very demeanor is liquid.

Apple executives held internal talks about buying Perplexity, Bloomberg News reports

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Why Aravind Srinivas Should Stay at Perplexity: The Path to a Trillion-Dollar Valuation
CEO Material For Apple: A Sundar, A Satya: Aravind Srinivas
Is Tim Cook the Steve Ballmer of Apple? A Cautionary Tale of Missed Tech Waves

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The iPad Is Not Enough: Designing the Ultimate AI Device for the Liquid Computing Era

In the age of Liquid Computing—when digital tools dissolve into our lives, flowing through tasks and conversations rather than fixed apps and screens—the way we work, read, and think is transforming. The old metaphors of desktop, file, and window are already relics. What’s coming next is far more fluid, far more human.

Imagine this: you're looking at your iPad. You get an email. You don’t open it. You just say, “Summarize that for me and read it out.” And it does. Better yet, it doesn’t just summarize—it knows what you care about, flags what matters, and stores the rest. You ask, “Do I need to reply?” It knows. You dictate a quick response, approve it with a voice gesture, and move on.

This isn’t science fiction. The hardware is already here—iPad, AirPods, Watch, maybe even the Vision Pro. Apple has all the pieces. But they’re missing the AI sauce.

We don’t need another screen. We need a conversation layer. Work can now be a conversation. That’s the revolution.

So what is the real device of the Liquid Computing era?

It’s not the iPad. It’s not a laptop. It’s not even a phone.

It’s something new.

A voice-first, AI-native assistant.
Think:

  • An earbud that listens and responds contextually.

  • A pin on your chest that senses your environment and quietly interacts.

  • A tablet you can still touch, but don’t have to.

The real magic isn’t in the screen—it’s in the interaction model. Natural language, proactive anticipation, real-time summarization, cross-app cognition. You don’t click between apps anymore. You just talk to your AI. You ask. You get answers. You command. It executes. You flow.

And yet, Apple—the company with the hardware muscle, the OS ecosystem, and the silicon advantage—lags behind. They’ve got the ingredients but not the recipe. The intelligence layer is missing. Without it, their ecosystem feels like a glorified calculator with a better camera.

The future will belong to whoever nails this formula:

  • Context-aware AI that lives across devices.

  • Voice-first interface that reduces cognitive load.

  • Personalized memory, helping you work without working.

This device won’t ask you to think like a machine. It will meet you as you are, in conversation, on the go, everywhere. That’s Liquid Computing.

The iPad is not enough. The real superpower is ambient AI that thinks, listens, and speaks—as your co-pilot, not your tool.

And someone—Apple, OpenAI, or a startup we haven’t yet heard of—is going to build it. When they do, work will never be the same again. 






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