Thursday, October 29, 2015

Autonomous Vehicles vs. Helping Humans Drive Better

Humans are increasingly getting lazier as time goes by. A self-driving car is just a new way of adding to it and some believe that this would more harm the human race than help it. “The issue is not technological. It is social, legal, and practical.”

The first problem with these self-driving cars is dealing with real human drivers. On an open road the self-driving car is okay and has shown to be able to handle drive well, but you never know what to expect when humans are driving around you. As the article says, “People can be unpredictable…” In one minute the setting can go from easy driving to chaos and machines may not be able to deal with that. Humans can react in a split second of what they see happening and should be able to avoid it. Although Dmitri Dolgov, head of software for Google’s self-driving car, attempts to just place this on the people and say they should be “less idiotic”, but accidents happen.

The second problem is automation is a less effective funtion without some sort of interaction between human and machine. Machines are great when they can do things are their own, but with humans as there counterparts machines are even better. Look at the mars rovers they each have humans steering them and controlling them (Article). The same with airplanes as they still have people flying planes. Planes have a built in feature, autopilot, which enables the plane to drive itself to the destination. It still relies on humans though because a human paired with an autonomous machine is a better result that just machines themselves.

The last problem is the prioritization of companies. They worry more about self-driving cars than cyber security. Cars like this could easily get hacked and a kidnapping could instantly happen. Companies priorities are out of place and could be spent focusing better on things such as these.

Although this article talks of the downsides of these vehicles I think it does not express enough of the benefits of these vehicles. One of the benefits is cars that drive themselves. Autonomous cars can help potentially dangerous drivers such as ones who are sleep deprived. Another benefit is a more efficient way of using gas. Autonomous cars are like cars that would continually be on cruise control lessening your use of gas and therefore saving money in the process. I agree with the author that autonomous cars are only useful if paired with a person.





Claburn, Thomas. “Autonomous Vehicles Vs. Helping Humans Drive Better – InformationWeek.” InformationWeek. N.p., 29 Oct. 2015. Web. 29 Oct. 2015.

5 comments:

  1. Self-driving cars are becoming increasingly popular. Like you said, they definitely have good implications like allowing the average person more time to spend on work and less on commuting. So much of our day is dedicated to commuting and self-driving cars would allow the working person to continue working from the car. However the cyber security is easily the scariest aspect of this whole trend. Any hacker can just hijack a car and use it for whatever twisted plan he has. It just seems like an invitation for terrorism. Simpler may be better- just having a person drive a car instead of a machine doing it for them- but it comes at the cost of time wasted commuting. If every car becomes self driving, that would make driving safer definitely, but cyber security must be at top notch for this to be more good than harm.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I agree with Jordan that the risks of this innovation outweigh the benefits. Something that I had never thought about with these self-drive cars is the risk of them being hacked and something like a kidnapping happen. This undoubtedly is something that I would be extremely concerned about when using this service. Some additional concerns that I have with this product are how it would react in poor weather conditions. Humans have instantaneous reactions when slipping on ice or hydroplaning that could prevent many accidents. I am concerned that these robots might not be programed to make the right reactions when in these situations and it could create some serious accidents, especially in high-traffic areas. Further, will the softwares that are required for these cars to properly drive themselves be so expense that the typical consumer could not afford them? From a business perspective would this innovation truly be worth continuing if it can only appeal to a very small portion of the market? For these reasons, I do not believe that these self-drive cars are worth exploring.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Although the idea of "auto-pilot" has been around for decades, the auto-self driving car is completely different project. As you mentioned in your article, there are a lot of advantages and disadvantages to the popularization of self-driving cars, but many of the negative aspects of it deal with security and safety. In a time where entire governments, military bases, and companies can have teams of hackers steal top secret data, I'm not sure network security is ready for self-driving cars. If the software were ever to become popular, I agree with you that it is a colossal risk to let vehicles, traveling at deadly speeds, avoid unforeseen obstacles without close human supervision. I know that no matter what mapping service I use, whether it be Google maps, Mapquest, or Apple maps, the navigation is rarely 100% correct and often requires human interpretation.
    Furthermore, I don't see a need for self driving cars given the economic situation in America and furthermore, the marketing behind more expensive cars. I believe it is a blunt assumption to think that all luxury cars were purchased BECAUSE they were are labeled so. Instead, there are many people that purchase more expensive automobiles because they want the driving experience that comes along with the car. With the self-driving technology, the large market of people who buy the higher performance cars will be less catered too, cutting off a reliable source of income.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Although the idea of "auto-pilot" has been around for decades, the auto-self driving car is completely different project. As you mentioned in your article, there are a lot of advantages and disadvantages to the popularization of self-driving cars, but many of the negative aspects of it deal with security and safety. In a time where entire governments, military bases, and companies can have teams of hackers steal top secret data, I'm not sure network security is ready for self-driving cars. If the software were ever to become popular, I agree with you that it is a colossal risk to let vehicles, traveling at deadly speeds, avoid unforeseen obstacles without close human supervision. I know that no matter what mapping service I use, whether it be Google maps, Mapquest, or Apple maps, the navigation is rarely 100% correct and often requires human interpretation.
    Furthermore, I don't see a need for self driving cars given the economic situation in America and furthermore, the marketing behind more expensive cars. I believe it is a blunt assumption to think that all luxury cars were purchased BECAUSE they were are labeled so. Instead, there are many people that purchase more expensive automobiles because they want the driving experience that comes along with the car. With the self-driving technology, the large market of people who buy the higher performance cars will be less catered too, cutting off a reliable source of income.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Self-driving cars have been a hot topic for quite some time now. As you mentioned in your blog there are some positives and negatives to self-driving cars. Personally, I do not like the idea of a self-driving car. First, I do not think that there is room for both humans and technology on the road. I believe that self-driving cars would not be able to react to reckless drivers in the way that humans can. I understand that the self-driving cars have sensors and are very high tech but I do not seem them being able to react like humans do when somebody cuts them off. With that being said, if self-driving cars were introduced to the road then humans would have to be kicked off for safety purposes. Another huge problem in the self-driving car industry is if a hacker is capable of hijacking the car. This is where the ethics and safety issue come into play. If a self-driving car was driving around somebody’s child and a hacker hijacked the vehicle it would create a lot of issues. The last problem I will mention is how much society has to rely on technology. We are trying to implement a self-driving car when humans can drive just perfectly. Everybody always tries to look at the positive sides of these new innovations but never seems to see the negatives. What would happen if the self-driving car had a malfunction? There are some pros to self-driving cars but the cons outweigh them.

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.