September 2, 2015
In Google’s Driverless Cars Run Into Problem: Cars With Drivers, Matt Richtel and Conor Dougherty highlight one of the biggest problems facing many smart technologies: human beings. With regard to autonomous vehicles, researchers claim it is a challenge integrating them into a human environment in which humans don’t follow the rules of the road to the letter. At the moment, it’s kind of like mixing oil and vinegar. As human beings, we apply a wide range of distinctively human characteristics and behaviors when driving that are not rule-based. We are not machines, so we don’t behave like machines on the road. These unique human traits and peculiarities are what artificial intelligence has yet to master, on the road and elsewhere — unless or until we remove human beings from the picture completely.