	The arguments and predictions put forth by the Study Panel concerning the 
future of AI in some selected sectors are mostly well reasoned, given what happened in the 
last 15 years. However, I believe the Panel is inaccurate in predicting the role that 
flying vehicles play in our future and the extent of social impacts of AI in transportation.

	The Panel is correct in predicting that most of the cars will have self-driving capability. 
Every major auto manufacturer has either already announced future products which can self-drive 
or has been actively investing in R&D. But, I disagree with the social impacts outlined in the 
essay because of this adoption. The view that people will own fewer cars and live further from 
work could turn out to be very wrong. Owning a car is a symbol of independence and individualism 
in North America and self-driving cars will have a very tough time to change that idea. No matter 
how good the public transportation and ride-sharing gets because of AI, which itself is dubious 
because of infrastructure impediments as argued by the Panel itself, people will continue to own a car. 
Similar argument can be made against the prediction that people will be living further away 
from their work places. A self-driving car would still have the same engine to run a car, 
same roads to drive upon and would encounter the same congestion problems. Any change in 
infrastructure, major or minor, is usually a very slow process. And there isnt as much rapid 
progress in collaborative systems as there is in self-driving technology. 

	Further, I disagree with the Panels prediction that future transportation in near term will 
include flying vehicles. I believe that the likelihood of flying cars as a mode of transportation in 
the next decade is slim. We have thousands of airplanes flying at a time in our sky, because there 
are hundreds of air-traffic controllers across the world monitoring each and every plane. We cannot 
scale this solution to an urban setting. Madison is a typical North American city, which the Panel 
repeatedly stated their report focusses on, with a population of 250,000. Even if we assume ten 
percent of the population adopted the technology, city should be prepared to handle 25000 flying 
objects at a time. The obvious way to circumvent this problem is to develop technology so reliable 
and secure to obviate air-traffic controllers and all the FAA regulations. That is highly improbable 
in near term. To emphasize, there are only handful of states currently allowing auto companies to 
test their self-driving technology on road. Society will be far more skeptical and anxious of flying 
cars than they will be of self-driving cars. Uber and few other startups have started investing in 
flying cars, but the technology is nascent. In my opinion, in a decade or so, a flying vehicle will 
be analogous to a boat ride or a helicopter ride, but not mainstream. Whereas drone delivery is far more 
certain to happen. One of the reasons being, an unintended drone crash would merely upset a customer 
waiting for the delivery, instead of being fatal to everyone in the city.
 
	In conclusion, infrastructure limitations and cultural factors will play a role in adoption, 
or at least in its pace, of few technologies of AI in transportation.


	
