Self driving cars have massive network effects, just like any product dependent on machine learning. More users -> more data -> better product -> more users.
It's the same reason Google is invulnerable in web search.
It's the same reason Google is invulnerable in web search.
Self-driving cars definitely don't have a network effect. They also don't have the came kind of economy of scale as Google. A person who learns to drive in one, specific part of the US is able to drive, with minor additional learning, in any part of the US. Yes, there's some minimum size necessary to get the data for self-driving cars. But unlike with search, where the minimum size is generally "the whole web", the minimum size for self-driving cars is much smaller. That's why we're seeing many different companies work on it.
But yes, Google also has scale economies.
s/b
More users -> more labeled data -> better product -> more users
ML systems need lots of labeled data, not just lots of data. This is one of the primary why game playing AI's have had such great successes, tons of labeled data are relatively cheap. Great discourse on this and other related issues here:
https://medium.com/@karpathy/alphago-in-context-c47718cb95a5