Self-driving cars being tested in snow
By Mark Bergen, Re/Code
Silicon Valley has California sun, but Detroit has snow. And Ford wants to use that climate as an asset in the critical race to develop self-driving cars.
On Sunday evening, Ford said that it will be “conducting the industry’s first” self-driving car tests in winter weather, including snow, taking on a major obstacle for autonomous vehicle technology.
That said, Ford’s robot cars won’t be on public roads. And Google, a maybe friend and maybe foe, has started to put its robot cars in snow as well.
I for one do not want to drive on roads with self driving cars.
But I also don’t expect to live long enough to have to worry.
This is an admirable goal, but so complex in execution that only now will they be able to begin to ferret out the more subtle but significant judgements made behind the wheel by humans every time they are behind the wheel. The fact that they are now dealing with the atmospherics and weather which vary widely over the earth is interesting.
My real fear? Given that computers are the very heart of this effort, and the obvious fact that so far, we have completely failed in controlling hackers and related intrusions. What will stop these same very smart, very bent people from taking over cars and using them for mischievous or even terrorist actions?
We already have current examples where two guys were able to remotely take over a Chrysler produced jeep and disable it or change how it acted at will. And it was NOT a self driving vehicle.
You simply cannot say “that will never happen.”
Stand by for a lot of grief even in testing of non human driven cars.
Crank
One of the most famous brains recently said that artificial intelligence was our greatest enemy and what we should fear most.
This will shut down our DUI mill at Tahoe. Just sit in the back seat.
You have to consider the relative risks. About 30,000 people are killed each year in vehicle accidents in the US. I’d certainly rather be driving next to a self-driving car than some drivers I have seen in SLT.
Cranky. We have already dealt with more complex issues such as: splitting the Atom, sending Homo Sapiens to the Moon and back, placing telescopes in space, sending remote controlled vehicles to Mars, sending satellites out of our local Solar system (partial list) and more.
This is what Homo Sapiens do. And yes, some Homo Sapiens do horrific things as well, but that has been the case for almost 1 million years now. Here we are.
Robin. This is what Elon Musk actually said about AI in 2014…
“I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I were to guess like what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that. So we need to be very careful with the artificial intelligence. Increasingly scientists think there should be some regulatory oversight maybe at the national and international level, just to make sure that we don’t do something very foolish. With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon. In all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, it’s like yeah he’s sure he can control the demon. Didn’t work out.”
Keywords: careful, existential, regulatory, foolish, holy water, demons.
rock4
All those accomplishments you list are fairly rare, did not really affect the man on the street and took decades and trillions of bucks to do.
Splitting the atom for instance has not been the success we sought,far more of a threat so far than a help.
The self driving car, being probably far more numerous than mars visits could be just like splitting the atom…far more dangerous than anyone ever believed.
Perhaps homo sapiens can learn from previous mistakes but the evidence that this can happen is very thin.
Cranky, should we talk about Jumbo Jet Airplanes and “autopilot?”
Yes, when Orville and Wilbur first thought about flying in 1903, they probably had no idea about “autopilot” as well. But, by 1912, the Sperry Company had developed a simple “autopilot.”
Were, these “mistakes” or progress? I think the later.