We can’t trust driverless cars ‘in the wild’, warns AI pioneer

SElF- DRIVINg cars are too unpredictable to be tested on public roads, a british pioneer in artificial intelligence has warned.

Demis Hassabis said public tests were irresponsible because engineers could not predict how driverless cars will behave ‘in the wild’.

Speaking at the Royal Society in london, Dr Hassabis, 41, said: ‘How do you ensure, mathematically, that systems are safe and will only do what we think they are going to when they are going to be out there in the wild and are adaptable learning systems?

‘Maybe we should test them before putting them on the road rather than ... testing them live on the road like what we have now. Is that responsible, really?’

Advocates of self- driving cars say they will make the roads safer because the vast majority of accidents are caused by human error. The government says driverless cars will be on britain’s roads by 2021.

Dr Hassabis co-founded AI specialist DeepMind which was bought by google for £400 million. His comments fuel safety concerns about the race to launch driverless cars. A pedestrian died in Arizona after being hit by a self-driving Uber in March.