But in digital technologies, there is this idea of a hype curve, and at the height of the hype curve, the conversation changes. For example, when in 2015, UberX first entered Taiwan working with unlicensed or nonprofessional licensed drivers, the argument for sharing economy was not about harmless coexistence, is about efficiency. It says the law, the existing law, ends up ineffectively dispatching costs. And because road is a public utility, and pollution must be controlled, this takes the imperative over whatever the individual harmless coexistence preference. We should let the AI take control of dispatching cars and even the drivers are just training the AI. At some point the cars will drive themselves and Uber will be human-less. That was the argument back in 2015. It may look strange now a little bit after we’ve learned about the limits of self driving vehicle technologies. But that was the real arguments when UberX entered Taiwan.

Keyboard shortcuts

j previous speech k next speech