But What About Autonomous Vehicles?

Over here at the blog,  Jewish Young Professional, JYP brings up one of my favorite rant like topics: What do I think of autonomous vehicles? 

[rubbing hands together gleefully]

Where to start. The story goes a building developer once asked Gene Rodenberry what kind of tech did he use to make the bulkhead doors on the Enterprise slide open the way they did. The answer: two guys behind the scenes pulling them open on cue. 

 I'm trying to say there is a mythology of technology that gives technology more credit than it deserves. This is where we're at with autonomous vehicles. Obviously there is money to be made, so the forces that be are leaning hard in that direction, but it's all BS. 

 Please don't say, well, it's going to get better and better over time. The same can be said of a ten-year-old driving a raised 4-wheel drive pickup. The reality is, we're just not ready, the tech is just not ready, etc. I can imagine a scenario where autonomous vehicles would be a real help. One is on freeways/Interstates. With the right software, traffic flow could be optimized and it would all be faster (probably) and much, much safer--provided only if every car on the road was autonomous and under the control of an overseeing AI entity, (yikes,) let's say. 

As an aside, let me say here that under any scenario, if only some cars are autonomous, and not all, regular human drivers are going to mess with them. Big time. They'll resent them, fear them, and ultimately get the best of them. We are clever monkeys, make no mistake. Anyway, implementing this angle seems to be far in the future. Mixing in AVs with humans just doesn't seem like a good idea. 

 Some perspective is needed. This is all about scaling down employee numbers for a number of services involving transportation. Safer? Maybe, if the tech actually catches up. This economic driver is behind AI in general, despite all the gee-whizz stuff that catches our attention. 

 One last thing. I'm not buying the notion that AVs are OK and safe enough, since it is required a human drivers sit behind the wheel, at the ready, in case he or she needs to step in and take over. This is such BS. I don't need to see reaction time test results to already know this is not a good strategy. Not to mention, if one was to actually monitor the computer's driving and actually be ready to take over, every moment, that would undoubtedly be much more fatiguing than just driving the damn thing yourself.