Self Driving Cars Reality

Add to this animals, children, cyclists, debris, road
works etc and it's all too much for technology

Regular readers of this blog will know that my take on the hype over autonomous cars has been less than enthusiastic. One article I wrote on the subject can be found here which contains a Part 2 link. Alternatively, click on the 'Safety' label to the right. True self-driving cars in real world conditions always seemed science fiction to me.

Not long back a top Toyota man tasked with this said it now doubted level 5 autonomous was achievable anytime soon, maybe never. Steve Wosniak (co-founder of Apple) was a strong believer and invested in this but now says he's basically given up on level 5. He said roads offer too many unpredictable scenarios for a self-driving car to handle. He went on to say that the public has been misled into believing autonomous driving could match what a human can do.

So why did companies spend billions on something that may never achieve what was promised? Didn't they have smart people advising them? Aren't clever minds beavering away on this to bring it to a successful conclusion? Because the impossible is just that. As for the advice they got, well they should have hired me instead (wry smile).

Why am I so sure about this, as I have no training in this field? I simply took a step back and looked at the whole scenario. First, I decided that while some humans abuse the privilege of driving, when acting responsibly people have remarkable capabilities to anticipate, evaluate and react to unexpected and varying conditions. Can artificial intelligence even get close to that? Secondly, I believe that the human mind was made by a super intelligent designer and that it has amazing qualities man can never recreate.