Automotive

Google's autonomous vehicle company Waymo (Motional is a sub-division I guess) has been testing various iterations of cars and equipment on the streets of north Santa Monica for quite some time now, so when I saw this Hyundai Ioniq pull-up next to me there was no surprise to any extent. However, what I was surprised with are the Uber Eats stickers that I saw on the rear of the A-frame and door advertising that your food orders can now be delivered by one of these (semi) autonomous vehicles........ Definitely a 'step-up' from the more 'pedestrian' Coco delivery bots roaming around sidewalks all the time........

I couldn't quite believe my eyes either ....

And the townsfolk are okay with all this?!  Pedestrians, bicyclists, kids, etc?  What happens the first time someone get hit (or critically injured) by one of these?

The response will be: on average humans make more mistakes.🥺

but still, the implications of these rapidly developing technologies make my Spidey sense tingle. Alas, I’m just getting older and am missing the good ol’ days. *sigh*

Well, I don’t think there is any question about it. It can only be attributable to human error. This sort of thing has cropped up before, and it has always been due to human error. 🫠

While human error is to always be expected, technology can be leveraged in designing solutions to overcome (or minimize) such errors. Case in point is modern car design, which has room to improve. In contrast, going to the other extreme of an autonomous AI based systems is arguably a set up for a whole new level of ‘error’ that can have dire consequences. Food for thought.

have two supervisors riding inside the vehicle at all times in order to ensure safety ........

But that is the direction this is all going…like Westworld.

even at this point in time. I know that their cars already work fully autonomously on the Vegas strip....

And type in "dashcam videos".
The sooner we get people to stop driving cars, the better. Hopefully eventually only enthusiasts who are either competent or don't want to crash their precious will want to drive.

I do agree with that statement! The primary reason why turning everyday personal and family vehicles into tech 'appliances' is going to be more beneficial than not is that it will tangibly reduce the number of crashes and therefore injuries/deaths........

but it looks like there is a driver, I see what looks like the reflection of someone's head
in the rear view mirror.

They have two people riding in front at all times to make sure the vehicle doesn't get 'out of hand'.... Hence my (semi)-autonomous remark ....

Of course, if they run over someone on Montana Avenue, there's a good chance that the victim knows a lot of lawyers.
I am also going to call them out for stacking their experiment: that area has many wide streets, excellent visibility around corners, and relatively low traffic levels. It's not very challenging. The ability to drive around there does not say much about Southern Santa Monica (which is hilly and has a lot of obstructed views), let alone Hollywood (where drivers seem to operate entirely stochastically).

with describing the driving environments they predominantly operate in at this point in time. I just mentioned in one of my replies above that they have fully autonomous vehicles on the Vegas strip, but that's a highly comparable environment to Montana Avenue.... I'm sure that they aim to collect so much data sets in these 'lower risk' environments, that once they release the 'herd' into truly challenging traffic and infrastructure, they stand a 'fighting chance'....

My twisted mind can think of creative ways to satisfy basic human needs other than food, blame it on easter bunnies

such creations might even be a form of art rather than just an appliance. Also, it needs a "may make sudden stops" warning? 

Too true........