Developing driverless cars has been artificial intelligence’s (AI) greatest test. Today, we can say it has failed miserably, despite the expenditure of tens of billions of dollars in attempts to produce a viable commercial vehicle. Moreover, the recent withdrawal from the market of a leading provider of robotaxis in the US, coupled with the introduction of strict legislation in the UK, suggests that the developers’ hopes of monetizing the concept are even more remote than before. The very future of the idea hangs in the balance.
The attempt to produce a driverless car started in the mid-2000s with a challenge by a US defense research agency, offering a US$ 1million prize for whoever could create one capable of making a very limited journey in the desert. This quickly turned into a race between various tech and auto companies to produce what they thought would be the ultimate cash cow: a car that could operate in all conditions without a driver.
Right from the start, the hype far outpaced the technological advances. In 2010, at the Shanghai Expo, General Motors produced a video showing a driverless car taking a pregnant woman to hospital at breakneck speed and, as the commentary assured the viewers, safely. It was precisely the promise of greater safety, cutting the terrible worldwide annual road death toll of 1.25m, that the sponsors of driverless vehicles dangled in front of the public. That is now proving their undoing.
Illustration: Mountain People
The first to go was Uber after an accident in which one of its self-driving cars killed Elaine Herzberg in Phoenix, Arizona. The car was in autonomous mode, and its “operator” was accused of watching a TV show, meaning they did not notice when the car hit Herzberg, who had confused its computers by stepping onto the highway pushing a bike carrying bags on its handlebars. Fatally, the computer could not interpret this confusing array of objects.
Until then, Uber’s business model had been predicated on the idea that within a few years, it would dispense with drivers and provide a fleet of robotaxis. That plan died with Herzberg, and Uber soon pulled out of all its driverless taxi trials.
Now Cruise, the company bought by General Motors to spearhead its development of autonomous vehicles, is retreating almost as rapidly. The trigger was also an accident, which by chance proved not to be fatal. but caused serious injuries. In October, a woman crossing a road in San Francisco was hit by a human-driven car and knocked into the path of a Cruise robotaxi. Instead of stopping, the robotaxi drove over the pedestrian because it had been programmed to pull over to the right when confronted with an unknown situation. She survived, but would clearly be in line for massive compensation.
Since then, Cruise has been in full damage-limitation mode. After initially holding back details of what happened, it soon withdrew its robotaxis in all US cities and its CEO quit. It was revealed that the vehicles were not even driverless, as they had been remotely controlled with interventions by operators about every 6 to 8km. There are now mass redundancies and the future of the development is uncertain.
Tesla is also in defense mode. It has long marketed its driver-aid software as “full self-driving,” but it is nothing of the sort. Drivers must stay alert and ready to take over, even though the car can operate itself much of the time, particularly on highways. In the US, where there have been numerous accidents with Teslas in “full self-driving” mode, the manufacturer is facing several lawsuits.
In the UK, Tesla will fall foul of the legislation introduced into parliament last month, which prevents companies from misleading the public about the capability of their vehicles. Tesla’s troubles have been compounded by the revelations from ex-employee Lukasz Krupski who claims the self-drive capabilities of Teslas pose a risk to the public. Manufacturers will be forced to specify precisely which functions of the car — steering, brakes, acceleration — have been automated. Tesla will have to change its marketing approach to comply. So, while the bill has been promoted as enabling the more rapid introduction of driverless cars, meeting its restrictive terms may prove to be an insuperable obstacle for their developers.
These events highlight the technological difficulties faced by the move to driverlessness, as well as the fragility of the case supporting the development of autonomous cars. Every prediction of the technology coming to fruition in three or four years’ time has been found to be overoptimistic. Ministers have been sucked in, including British Secretary of State for Transport Chris Grayling, who in 2017 said that self-driving cars would be on the roads by 2021.
The tech companies have constantly underestimated the sheer difficulty of matching, let alone bettering, human driving skills. This is where the technology has failed to deliver. AI is a fancy name for the much less sexy-sounding “machine learning,” and involves “teaching” the computer to interpret what is happening in a very complex road environment.
The trouble is there are an enormous number of potential use cases, ranging from the much-used example of a camel wandering down Main Street to a simple rock in the road, which may or may not just be a paper bag. Humans are exceptionally good at instantly assessing these risks, but if a computer has not been told about camels, it would not know how to respond. It was the plastic bags hanging on Herzberg’s bike that confused the car’s computer for a fatal six seconds, according to the subsequent analysis.
That is why it is clearly a misplaced priority on the part of the government, headed by tech bro British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, to put forward a bill on autonomous vehicles while sidelining plans to reform the railways or legislate for electric scooters, which are in a legal no man’s land. The future may well not be driverless cars, and meanwhile, there is a transport system in desperate need of attention. If this is the best that AI can do, maybe fears about its capabilities and its ability to put humans out of work are misplaced. Certainly, Sunak’s chauffeur can feel secure for now.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues to bully Taiwan by conducting military drills extremely close to Taiwan in late May 2024 and announcing a legal opinion in June on how they would treat “Taiwan Independence diehards” according to the PRC’s Criminal Code. This article will describe how China’s Anaconda Strategy of psychological and legal asphyxiation is employed. The CCP’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and Chinese Coast Guard (CCG) conducted a “punishment military exercise” against Taiwan called “Joint Sword 2024A” from 23-24 May 2024, just three days after President William Lai (賴清德) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was sworn in and
Former US president Donald Trump’s comments that Taiwan hollowed out the US semiconductor industry are incorrect. That misunderstanding could impact the future of one of the world’s most important relationships and end up aiding China at a time it is working hard to push its own tech sector to catch up. “Taiwan took our chip business from us,” the returnee US presidential contender told Bloomberg Businessweek in an interview published this week. The remarks came after the Republican nominee was asked whether he would defend Taiwan against China. It is not the first time he has said this about the nation’s
In a recent interview with the Malaysian Chinese-language newspaper Sin Chew Daily, former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) called President William Lai (賴清德) “naive.” As always with Ma, one must first deconstruct what he is saying to fully understand the parallel universe he insists on defending. Who is being “naive,” Lai or Ma? The quickest way is to confront Ma with a series of pointed questions that force him to take clear stands on the complex issues involved and prevent him from his usual ramblings. Regarding China and Taiwan, the media should first begin with questions like these: “Did the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)
The Yomiuri Shimbun, the newspaper with the largest daily circulation in Japan, on Thursday last week published an article saying that an unidentified high-ranking Japanese official openly spoke of an analysis that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) needs less than a week, not a month, to invade Taiwan with its amphibious forces. Reportedly, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has already been advised of the analysis, which was based on the PLA’s military exercises last summer. A Yomiuri analysis of unclassified satellite photographs confirmed that the PLA has already begun necessary base repairs and maintenance, and is conducting amphibious operation exercises