Jonathan Bartlett: Self-driving vehicles are just around the corner, all right

Jonathan Bartlett

On the other side of a vast chasm…

The code needed to detect and handle the flow between the situations increases polynomially with the number of driving situations we must address. That is, if we have 2 driving situations, there are 2 possible transitions to account for. If we have 3 driving situations, there are 6 possible transitions. If we have 4 driving situations, there are 12 possible transitions.

Expressing it mathematically, for n driving situations, there are “n2 – n” transition possibilities. These types of numbers can mount up quickly. Therefore, every newly-identified driving scenario doesn’t just add one more scenario to code for in a linear fashion; it makes the project an order of magnitude more difficult.

Many cheerleaders have wrongly assumed that the progress from one level of automation to another should be a direct, linear process but it clearly isn’t. I’m not saying that this hurdle is insurmountable. Rather, the transition from Level 4 to Level 5 automation is multiple orders of magnitude more difficult than all the other levels combined. Its completion should not be taken as a foregone conclusion. More.

Jonathan Bartlett is the Research and Education Director of the Blyth Institute.

Follow UD News at Twitter!

See also: Guess what? You already own a self-driving car Tech hype hits the stratosphere (Jonathan Bartlett) Yes, the car you own today is probably “self-driving” and you may not know it. But that is because of the creative ways the term can be defined.

and

Who assumes moral responsibility for self-driving cars? Jonathan Bartlett: Can we discuss this before something happens and everyone is outsourcing the blame? (Jonathan Bartlett) Level 4 self-driving vehicles will bring with them a giant shift in the moral equation of driving. Unfortunately, in a culture that seems to think that the future will take care of itself, little thoughtful public discussion is taking place. My hope is to start a discussion of how coming technological changes will affect the future moral landscape.

 

Copyright © 2018 Uncommon Descent . This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement UNLESS EXPLICIT PERMISSION OTHERWISE HAS BEEN GIVEN. Please contact legal@uncommondescent.com so we can take legal action immediately.
Plugin by Taragana