Self-driving could change the tune of country music
‘The rise of self-driving vehicles means it’s only a matter of time until there’s a country song where the guy’s truck leaves him,” goes a meme on social media this week.
It’s a funny line, but it also goes to the heart of our hopes and fears of artificial intelligence (AI) and what happens when vehicles reach what the Society of Automotive Engineers defines as level 5. That’s when the steering wheel becomes optional, and the concept of a driver disappears.
Already, in Los Gatos in Silicon Valley, cyclists can use an app that lets their smartphones communicate with traffic lights to keep them green for longer. After a while, the cyclists don’t even realise it’s the phone AI keeping the lights green.
Buses and trucks will enjoy similar privileges. From face-recognition technology monitoring drivers, to regenerative brakes charging electric cars, to vehicle-to-everything communications, known as V2X, machines will gradually take over. Eventually, the drivers will fade away.
This is how such a song may sound, with apologies to Kenny Rogers and the writers of Lucille, Hal Bynum and Roger Bowling:
You picked a fine time to self-drive, my wheels
On a grid in Los Gatos, across from San Jose,
At a charge pad, she went level 5. I thought I’d augment her, navigated to her,
I plugged into her API.
When the data set hit her, she said: “I’m no Tesla,
But I finally quit driving assist.
I’m hungry for 5G, machine learning,
I’m after whatever the V2X brings.”
On Facetime, I saw him, I used Rekognition,
I thought how he looked level 1.
He came to the camera and applied a filter,
He had a strange avatar face.
He was no AI, not even a hybrid,
For a minute my battery went dead.
But our 4G was shaky, his signal was breaking,
He turned to the Lidar and said:
“You picked a fine time to self-drive, my wheels.
With 400 parcels and a bill of lading,
I’ve had lane warnings, lived through some radar,
But this time your braking won’t regen.
You picked a fine time to self-drive, my wheels.”
After he faded, and I paid for an upgrade, I thought how she’d made him backhaul. From the lights of the charger, to an AWS server,
We self-parked with Azure backup.
She was a robo, but when she processed me,
She must have thought I was ride-share. I couldn’t patch her, ’cos the meme that he posted,
Kept sharing account to account.
“You picked a fine time to self-drive, my wheels.
With 400 parcels and a bill of lading,
I’ve had lane warnings, lived through some radar,
But this time your braking won’t regen. You picked a fine time to self-drive, my wheels.”
Arthur Goldstuck You picked a fine time to self-drive, my wheels