Humans Are Slamming Into Driverless Cars and Exposing a Key Flaw

 My comment on this link:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-18/humans-are-slamming-into-driverless-cars-and-exposing-a-key-flaw
To begin:  There is and never will be a driverless car!  I repeat......etc....and again!

There will always be a driver.  The question of who/what it may be is a matter of responsibility and accountability.

I am convinced that the true purpose of an Artificial Intelligence controlled car is to drive better and safer than a human by  greater degrees of ability.  Sometimes in some circumstance the AI will not be as good as a human.  An instance of less than perfect AI control is the price to pay for an overall substantial increase in safety.  One person may be injured or die for every 100 that otherwise would not in the gross statistical analysis.  Lesser of two evils.


The problem is that AI controlled cars drive exactly in accordance with the law.  Humans do not.  Driving prudently and exactly in accordance with the law causes more accidents with human drivers that are not prudent and violate the law.  Hmmm........This may be the exact purpose of the AI car: To absolutely prove fault.  Fault that will be assigned most often to a human driver.  There is an insurance angle in this!

The answer?  To have AI cars drive more like "normal drivers" that are not prudent, no always, without exception driving in strict accord with all traffic and driving laws?  Who is going to program that kind of AI.  When an accident goes to adjudication of some sort and the car AI is proven to be in violation of the law by virtue of its programming????  What kind of situation is that?  Sue the programmer?  Their employer?

Self driving cars are all about recording and storing every single driving action of a human in real time.  Even when it is not the driver in command when it is recording and storing its own behavior.  This is the generation of information for a variety of mass surveillance of driving history for data mining purposes many of which are yet to be dreamed up and they will benefit those that profit from the schemes designed to "make our lives safer, easier, more fun....etc...whatever the marketing types dream up to sell this thing.