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How about no, Eric?
Techcrunch reported last week that Eric Schmidt, Google’s Creepy Executive Officer said “It’s a bug that cars were invented before computers”.
Schmidt noted that it’s ridiculous that humans and not computers drive cars. “Your car should drive itself. It just makes sense.”
Schmidt has previously said1 that computers should do what computers are good at and people should do what people are good at. The question is: are computers going to be better at driving than people?
For most people driving is a chore but that’s different from it being something a computer should do.
Computers already do a whole lot in cars, managing fuel-air ratios and spark timing in the engine. Most cars made in the last couple of years give a computer control over the ultimate accelerator position.
A computer-driven car can only be as good as the algorithms that control it. On one occaision I over-stressed the anti-lock braking system in my Peugeot and at all of 40km/h experienced total brake lockup. Fortunately I was on a skidpan and there was nothing to hit. To regain control I had to stop acting like the car had ABS — which meant letting go of the brakes so the wheels would turn and I could steer again2.
The point here is that you’ll be fine in your computer-driven car until you aren’t. The consequences of system failure, or an unanticipated event, in a self-driving car have the potential to be pretty catastrophic.
Algorithms have edges and when you hit the edge, weird things happen.
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That’s a link to Schimdt’s recent interview on the Colbert Report. He says something in there around 2.33 about what computers are good at and what people are good at. Lots of people have made the point that computers and people are good at different things. Schmidt didn’t make the point first. ↩
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If you lock the wheels the car will slide like it’s on ice and turning the steering wheel will have no effect. You want to able to steer while you brake. If you want to get out of a lockup situation you have to stop braking which is hard to do when you’re sliding towards a tree. ↩
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