Slashdot Mirror
Blind Man Test Drives Google's Autonomous Car
Velcroman1 writes "'This is some of the best driving I've ever done,' Steve Mahan said the other day. Mahan was behind the wheel of a Toyota Prius tooling the small California town of Morgan Hill in late January, a routine trip to pick up the dry cleaning and drop by the Taco Bell drive-in for a snack. He also happens to be 95 percent blind. Mahan, head of the Santa Clara Valley Blind Center, 'drove' along a specially programmed route thanks to Google's autonomous driving technology. Google announced the self-driving car project in 2010. It relies upon laser range finders, radar sensors, and video cameras to navigate the road ahead, in order to make driving safer, more enjoyable and more efficient — and clearly more accessible. In a Wednesday afternoon post on Google+, the company noted that it has hundreds of thousands of miles of testing under its belt, letting the company feel confident enough in the system to put Mahan behind the wheel."
The trouble with this type of driverless car tech is that it's going to be as brittle as the AI it's based on. It may work fine for normal, complex or not, situations, but the day a child runs out in front of it in a way it's not been programmed to handle there's going to be a tragedy.
It's one thing if this is going to be used as a glorified cruise control, but another entirely if it's meant to be used without a qualified driver ready to take over whenever appropriate.
For this type of tech to be safe in an unrestricted environment (e.g. on public roads) it needs to be backed by human level AI (i.e don't hold your breath), not just an expert system using lasers and cameras to stay on the road and read the speed limit.
so i can "enlisted the aid of Sergeant Whoever with the Wherever Police Department to accompany" me on my bank robbing spree and i'll be fine? i don't think the law is supposed to work that way. this is just an example of google bending laws just because it is a multi-billion dollar company, and it shows how deep their control over govt agencies goes.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.