Self-driving Tech Not Ready for Primetime
by Miki SaxonTech loves to brag that it is “data driven.”
But contrary to tech lore, data isn’t black and white. It can be massaged and manipulated to support or contradict opposite sides of the same argument.
Take self-driving cars. Google claims the data proves them safer than human drivers.
But is that what the data really shows or is it being stage-managed?
I’m aware that my opinion doesn’t carry much (any) weight, so let’s consider instead the view of Etsy CTO John Allspaw.
“You can’t just extrapolate Google cars driving ~1.5 million miles under specific conditions (weather, topology, construction, traffic, accidents around it, etc.) to usurping the ~3 trillion miles/year under all conditions in the US. 1.09 fatalities per 100 million miles is the current non-self-driving numbers.
2014 had ~30k fatal crashes out of the 3 trillion miles traveled. We have to understand not how those crashes happened, but what makes the vast majority of them not happen. Luck is not a contributor, expertise is. Understanding human expertise is the key, not human frailty.”
Tech claims that security isn’t that big a problem and certainly not one that requires statutory approaches or regulation.
Two years ago Eddie Schwartz, vice president of global security solutions for Verizon’s enterprise subsidiary, said that self-driving cars will prove an irresistible target for hackers if they ever hit the roads.
Change if to when. Of course they’re irresistible; hacking and controlling a real car on a real road, with the potential of doing real damage, would be catnip to a large number of naïve kids (to prove they can), not to mention angry adults (getting even) and terrorists (creating chaos).
Missy Cummings, director of Duke University’s robotics program, doesn’t believe self-driving cars are where near ready for prime-time.
The cars aren’t yet able to handle bad weather, including standing water, drizzling rain, sudden downpours and snow, let alone police instructions (…) “I am decidedly less optimistic about what I perceive to be a rush to field systems that are absolutely not ready for widespread deployment, and certainly not ready for humans to be completely taken out of the driver’s seat.”
And now being added to the thrills and threats of hackable cars comes Otto — an affordable $30K (cheap when you consider the cost of a new rig) retrofit to make big rigs self driving.
Remember the 1971 movie Duel?
Update by substituting a hacker for the original driver.
But then, tech is famous for rushing in and then loudly disclaiming any responsibility for human misuse, let alone abuse.
UPDATE: August 18: Uber just bought Otto.
Credit: Otto on YouTube
