THE TONE AT SXSW’S MANY FORWARD-LOOKING TALKS HAS BEEN MORE SUBDUED
“If you read the papers, you’re going to see that it’s maybe three years, maybe 30 years [before self-driving cars arrive],” Chris Urmson, the director of Google’s self-driving car project, said in a high-profile talk on Friday at the Austin Convention Center. “I think it’s a bit of both. This technology is almost certainly going to come out incrementally.” It’s a step below the rhetoric he’s used in the past; in September of last year, for instance, Urmson said he hoped his 11-year-old son doesn’t have to get a driver’s license.