By now it is no secret, within the next few years, traditional cars will start to be challenged by their robotic brethren; Autonomous Autos. Some of those on the production side of the equation; Elon Musk; says that the introduction of all out self driving cars will make not only traditional cars but traditional drivers obsolete. To be fair, the autopilot feature on the Tesla Models S and X, already drives better than the average octogenarian (and probably most teenagers too). Musk claims that Autonomous Autos drive far superior to people; that is why he claims that physically driving a car will likely be made illegal in the future.
The problem is, people are erratic. The smallest annoyance could turn doctor Jekyll into Mr. Hyde. I have seen
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The only thing dictating what an autonomous auto does is literally logic, there is no why[?]. (For now) Self-driving are given super specific non-negotiable boolean demands. For example, in this situation (if X) the car will do (Y and only Y), i.e. if the light turns yellow, the car will slow to a stop, in no scenario will the car speed up to catch the light. Eventually, boolean commands will be supplemented by deep learning, like the …show more content…
This technique has two flaws. One: it does not factor in the teacher (terrible teacher; poor pupil) and two: in the case of a unique emergency the car would have no idea how to respond. However, that is exactly how we teach our human drivers today, and not a soul has any problem with that.
If it is acceptable for people (who are less adept to begin with) to learn that way I see no problem with letting autonomous autos do the same. In fact, it would create an interesting dynamic (that Google is pushing for) in which the teacher has onus over the driver (self driving car). Granted, people are more nuanced than machines, so teaching them a certain way may not be exactly equivalent because people choose to ignore sound advice all the time, but it is still a fair comparison.
Irrational actions cause accidents. If everyone were to follow the rules exactly at all times, there would never be traffic (on the highway at least (stop signs and street lights (especially those that go out) will always create a chokepoint)), nor would their be any accidents. Why would anyone want to avoid future like that; autonomous autos will shrink the world in as close to a literal sense as