Autonomous driving the stuff of nightmares
Represents shift in society and rise of machines David Booth Motor Mouth
Now here’s one even your ultra- paranoid Motor Mouth didn’t think of. The first casualties of the automobile’s upcoming autonomous revolution might not be cab drivers. They might not even be the 3.5 million or so long- and short-haul truckers who jobs are also threatened. Instead, the first ‘career’ that might go MIA as cars begin driving themselves is … pizza delivery drivers.
Yep, the preferred parttime employment for college students and the recently arrived could be the first casualty of the artificial lyint elli gen ced automobile. Ford and Domino’s Pizza recently announced a trial in Ann Arbor, Mich., in which customers can choose between having their pie delivered by a ( semi) sentient human being or an autonomous vehicle. If they choose AV delivery, the pizzas will be loaded into special containers in self- driving Ford Fusion Hybrids, which the hungry consumer will access via a delivery code.
Though currently in the experimental phase — there’ll be a “safety driver” in every Ford/ Domino’s pizza wagon — the idea, of course, is to dispense with the need for a human ( and perhaps even the steering wheel they might manage) in the near future.
The upside for consumers is that there will be no deliv- ery boy to tip; the downside — and this might be significant because a Michigan winter can be as inclement as our own — you’ll have to collect your pizza at the curb. The upside for Domino’s is the same as it is for every other modern cost- cutting enterprise: the minor uptick in capital expenditure is more than offset in not having to pay a delivery person even minimum wage.
But we were expecting such repercussions. What continues to astound is the rapidity of the revolution. Along with the Ford/ Domino’s announcement comes news this week that our very own Magna International has developed what might be the most advanced autonomous driving platform yet. Like other such technologies, Magna’s MAX4 is a compendium of computers, cameras, radar, LIDAR and ultrasonic gadgetry. What makes Magna’s latest development important, however, is that MAX4 can be integrated into any existing or future platform. The former is truly impressive because most add-on systems are a hodgepodge of unsightly warts on an otherwise streamlined skin and often compromise cargo capacity as well. Indeed, Magna claims the entire system can be hidden from view, the only physical indication that you’re driving an autonomous automobile being an actuating button and a small digital interface similar to what current cars use for adaptive cruise- control systems.
Nor is that the only development that shows how rapidly we’re jumping into the self- driving game. Last week, Qualcomm took the wraps off its latest C-V2X technology that promises to connect your car — to quote the American telecommunications giant — “to everything.” Thus, not only will the new chipset allow vehicle-to-vehicle ( V2V) and vehicle- to- i nfrastructure ( V2I) communication so you car can talk to other vehicles and things like traffic signals, your future Ford, Audi or Peugeot — that’s who’s signed up to test the new technology so far — will communicate with pedestrians ( V2P) and some allcontrolling network ( V2N).
According to Qualcomm, not only does C-V2X allow “non- line- of- sight sensing” and “enhanced situational awareness”, it will also be able to “convey intent” by using data (such as the first indication that a steering wheel is being turned) to alert your car of an upcoming sudden lane change ahead.
As powerful as all this technology is, many experts agree that this only gets us to level 4 autonomy — to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, self- driving all of the roads some of the time — the limitations being the ability of the systems’ programmer to imagine all of the calamities we humans can conjure. To get to the next level — Level 5, which, crediting America’s greatest orator again, is all of the roads all of the time — will require modern society’s current bogeyman, artificial intelligence.
Inevitably there will be obstacles that have not been programmed i nto a selfdriving vehicle’s “brain” and, to be truly autonomous, said automobile will have to “learn” how to deal with or circumvent these situations without human input. In other words, whether it’s machine learning ( feeding a computer huge reams of data, often pictures, so it can recognize, say, different formats of stop signs) or deep learning (an even more powerful process that uses a “neural network” to simulate a human brain’s method of learning), computerized cars will have to acquire skills beyond what we build into them if we really do want them to drive completely autonomously.
Now, what’s bothersome/ troubling/downright disconcerting is how little we really understand about artificial intelligence. As detailed in a previous Motor Mouth column, even the people who program some of this “learning” software aren’t quite sure how it works.
Even autonomous drivi ng’s l eading proponent — Tesla’s Elon Musk — is scared you- know- what- less of artificial i ntelligence, most recently getting into a feud with Mark Zuckerberg, and chastising Facebook’s CEO for not grasping the perils of AI. Yet, to show just how complicated are the ethical, moral and practical dilemmas surrounding artificial intelligence, Musk r ecently unveiled his Neuralink initiative, of which the main goal is to develop a chip that could be inserted inside our brains to allow us to communicate with AI-enabled computers.
Why is that important to a car column? Well, just recently, Three Square Market, a vending machine software firm, offered its employees the opportunity to inject microchips into their hands. Incredibly, more than 50 of Three Square’s 80 employees signed up, according to the New York Times. That’s a bone-chilling conquest ratio for a microchip that does nothing more than allow the now “connected” employees to open locked doors or pay for food in the cafeteria without reaching into their wallet for their identification badge or credit card.
Imagine, then, the reception if a more sophisticated implant could solve all of the aggravation of modern- day driving and the havoc that could be wrought by hacking our relatively fragile craniums. If that’s not the definition of scary, then maybe I really am paranoid.