DailyPost 542
DRIVERLESS CARS’s FIRST SETBACK
Artificial Intelligence is at the core of mankind’s future is a reality. It certainly is not a magical wand, when it has to be brought to commercial level at a humongous global scale. Learning is not going to be easy for the machine. We have the God gifted cognition, they have to learn from scratch. Kudos to scientists & engineers who are making it happen.
AlphaGo, AlphaZero & Sophia have been landmark accomplishments, but right there on the road, with endless conditions to tackle, it can be an uphill task for the Driverless Cars. It’s a creation of a kind. The first pedestrian fatality with autonomous cars, has raised innumerable questions. A Über driverless car struck & killed an woman on Sunday night at Tempe, Arizona. A back up driver was behind the wheel but not operating the car. ”His first alert to the collision was the sound of collision” itself. Machine reaction has gained precedence over human reaction. An accident with nobody to charge.
Über has halted autonomous car tests after the fatal crash in Arizona. Neither the victim or the back up driver have shown any visible signs of impairment. The results of the investigation is critical to the future of the burgeoning autonomous vehicles industry. Brain Walker Smith, an expert says, ”It’s possible that Uber’s automated driving system did not detect the pedestrian, did not classify her as a pedestrian or did not predict her departure from the median.”
This death for humanity search for driverless should not get wasted. Undeniably, shortly further tests would & should resume. Testing protocol would need a through a major overhaul. Guarantee for safe testing would become a mandatory condition, while testing has to happen in live conditions. Theoretically, sensors on self-driving cars; laser based technology, radar & video are designed to sense obstructions / pedestrians even in the dark. A setback is certainly not the end of the road.
LABORIOUS MACHINE LEARNING & TESTING IS THE WAY AHEAD FOR AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES.
Sanjay Sahay