The folks at Google get a lot of
things right.
For a start, they don't work for
Facebook – which is possibly the single best idea any
technically-minded humanoid could ever have.
Other good things they've done
include the inexplicably legal snooping tool 'Google Earth', their
search engine is clearly reasonably popular too, and personally I
also prefer their web browser Chrome which, thanks to its
'Incognito' setting, allows me to indulge my passion for Barry
Manilow videos without a single other person in my household ever
having a clue.
But like all successful companies
from this (third) 3D Age, even the mighty Google can make the odd
catastrophic blunder, and the Self Driving Car (further details of which were announced today) is just the latest turkey to jump the
fence of Google's funny farm.
As someone who likes to keep the door
ajar for all things sci-fi, you might have thought I would welcome
such futuristic vision, especially when it comes from a company with
a proven track record in technology development. The problem here is that
Google clearly never sent out the memo reminding their staff that
certain 'futuristic visions' are supposed to remain as precisely
that. They are not meant to actually happen. I mean, we're not really
meant to go on holiday with robots, it's just a handy way of making
movies feel edgy and dark. What today's announcement shows is that
some overexcited puppies at Google see the likes of Skynet from the
Terminator franchise as some sort of corporate goal - as opposed to
the nightmarish cautionary tale that the screenwriters intended - and
these same little wag-tailed dogs are actively endeavouring to make sure all that horrible scary stuff really does happen.
Basically, today's news update from
Google's Attention Seeking Division tells us that (contrary to
earlier news updates) Google are not going to adapt previously built
vehicles, but are to build their own child maimers right from
scratch.
Let's be clear. These cars will have
no pedals, no steering wheels, and no other controls whatsoever
except for a single 'Stop/Go' button.
Read that sentence again and then
imagine tomorrow's school run.
Now, safety is obviously paramount in
the minds of these Google pups, but that shouldn't be a problem
because computers never go wrong. Especially not one's running
software created by Google.
Stop laughing and consider this.
You get into cars without controls
all the time. You've been doing it throughout your entire life.
It's called being a passenger.
Almost every week of our lives we
entrust our destiny into the hands of ultra-fallable human beings,
many of whom will have crashed a car at least once before you settle
yourself into the seat beside them.
Wouldn't it feel just a little bit
safer to be entrusting your life into the hands of a series of
massively powerful, state-of-the-art microchips, all working in
tandem to achieve what for them is an infinitely simple task – and
each of them doing this whilst simultaneously monitoring each other's
efficiency and performance every inch of the way?
Well, if you think that scenario
might appeal more, let me run a quick scenario...
You are driving along (being driven
along?) in your Self Drive Google Car, which is incapable of error.
Suddenly, up ahead, a human-driven car veers onto your side of the
road – driving the wrong way on a collision course directly toward
you. The driver of the vehicle seems unconscious and is unlikely to
take steps to avoid the collision with your car, which will happen in
seconds.
What does your Google car do?
Burdened with the extra imperative
'never to make a mistake', does it move to the left and mount the
pavement – on which pedestrians are walking? Does it veer to the
right – into the path of oncoming traffic? Or does it make neither
of these two risky choices and elect instead for the only option
which leaves it blameless at the subsequent enquiry – namely to
make an emergency stop.
By choosing the least 'wrong' option
– the result is that you die, so do your two kids and the driver of
the oncoming car – but the Google car did absolutely nothing wrong
and Google's reputation is safe.
A genuine human tragedy, and an
absolute triumph of tech.
Putting an error proof car onto roads
with cars which make mistakes all the time is simply not going to
work. To me, that's obvious.
The only thing Google can be thinking
is that one day only their cars will be on our roads. This, I
agree, would hugely reduce the number of accidents on those roads –
possibly to zero – but taking a seat in a car without controls is
going to be a giant leap for humankind, way more of a leap than it
took this turkey to fly the fence of Google's funny farm, and can any
of us really picture ourselves letting Google take our kids to school
any time soon?
I just can't see it happening. And
frankly I don't even mean 'yet'. I mean ever.
Ultimately though, amongst all the
horror that lurks beneath the surface of today's announcement from
Google, one aspect above all really got me fighting to keep my
breakfast down.
They are going to give these
non-controllable self-driving cars 'smiley faces' in order to “help
people accept the technology”.
Genius.
Amazing that nobody ever thought to
paint smiles on electric chairs.
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