> What could go wrong in a 2 ton computer on wheels
I don't see it this way. Right now, there are so many people in cars that should not drive. Alcohol, drugs, lacking skills - to me, computers add to safety.
There will always be a risk. I trust computers more in this case.
Easily hacked computers don't add safety anywhere. They only add random failure and the possibility of large scale disasters.
If you want to push the safety related tasks into the computer, you have the obligation to make them hard to hack. And on the case of cars, that includes not plugging them into the internet.
They only add random failure and the possibility of large scale disasters.
And the latter is the really big danger with autonomous vehicles. The same consistency that means they aren't vulnerable to as much random variation as a human driver could also become a weakness. Yes, a drunk or some idiot on their phone or an unwitting patsy whose drink was spiked at the bar can cause a fatal crash. But they can't simultaneously cause 500,000 fatal crashes by doing the exact same stupid thing 500,000 times at once or by being the victim of the exact same crime 500,000 times at once.
The point is that automation causes us to cede control to the machines which can be hacked, or worse abused. It is a transfer of power to whoever controls the machines. This centralising power can be abused in ways people can only imagine. Of course, people will give up what’s left of their control and power in the name of “safety and security”, they’ve been doing that since 9/11. So much so that we have the term post-9/11 to remind them to toe the line (and to kneel and take off their shoes).
Imagine for instance there is a bush fire and your centrally controlled car decides that the fire is fake news and prevents you from leaving since it’ll cause congestion on the roads. No different from Twitter banning the NY post story. Maybe they decide NY Post headquarters is not a real place and refuse to navigate the car there.
Yeah we should implement some kind of social credit system so that people who do drugs can’t drive or take public transport. They’ve got that in the modern utopia of China right now.
I don't see it this way. Right now, there are so many people in cars that should not drive. Alcohol, drugs, lacking skills - to me, computers add to safety. There will always be a risk. I trust computers more in this case.