UPDATE 30 Dec. 2017
It is not about a car driving itself. It is exactly about recording and retaining everything that the driver does or does not do in relation to an AI standard that establishes the requirement for "driving" a car to fix responsibility and assign accountability where required to the human operator. More than that it establishes an exact place a time realtime and historical record of a Driver/Vehicle when the requirement for human vehicle operation is a biometric key. The purpose is control of the human driver for whatever purpose control is desired by the controlling agency.
Original Post
Somebody must have said something like never underestimate the gullibility of the American public. No, not Trump.
All this driverless car framing where the driver takes a snooze while the car drives is absolutely ridiculous.
The actual intend behind pulling the wool over the eyes of the public is more in line with auto-pilots and the black box in aircraft. The pilot never fully relinquishes the responsibility for piloting the aircraft. They only release direct control always subject to their judgment and skill. The black box records everything the pilot does. It is there to fix blame when things go wrong.
Pilot Error. That is what driverless cars are about. Assigning personal blame, responsibility, negligence. Applying a cost penalty to the finding. All based on the fundamental thought that a person is responsible for their actions and their consequences. Or not, if there is truly something out of their control to which cause and blame can be assigned.
Not everyone that drives a car does it with the skill and judgment of a licensed aircraft pilot. The bar is much lower. The threshold level of the bar is also framed differently. At the high level it is the maximum performance expected of a pilot. No pilot error is acceptable. At the low level the threshold it is the minimum required of a driver. Below that minimum we already have systems that assign responsibility, culpability and sanctions for violations.
Driving violations are relatively difficult to prove. Proving them and applying sanctions is what the driverless car is all about. They are not driverless. There is always a driver. The human driver now generally has more skill and judgment than driverless test cars. Artificial Intelligence is changing that and becoming better at driving, if it could take control and actually drive. Eventually the progress of AI will reach that level but it will not drive a car. The AI driver will only be a real time, full time police officer in the car. It records and retains everything. It determines pilot error.
"Driverless" my spell checker tells me that is not a word in its dictionary. We know what it means. What does it mean? Duh.... Driver Less! The term "driverless" is an excellent framing technique to divert attention from what it really is. There is no valid concept of a car being driverless. Never will be. There will always be controlling entity. A car may be out of control meaning there is no driver, human or otherwise. It is a binary thing a car is either under some form of control in motion or it is not.
Driverless is what a car is not when performing its function. It might be said, if this is not a confusing thought beyond the reach of minimum intelligence that a car is driverless when it is stationary. Parked for those that might be confused. The only state in which it is driverless.
It is an old trick of mind control framing now seen commonly in politics: Call a thing by the name of what it is not. Make that single identifying name closer to association with the action involved rather than the object. Basic Liguistics here. Focus the mark's attention on the action. Manipulate the object and intent of object management out of view. Hide it. People might see the object rather than what it does and make their own informed decisions about what is going on.
What is going on?
It is all about information management. Black boxes are already in cars. They have been for years. They are called OBD. I have written about this in the blog before. Written about the specific data that Google has patents on giving the patent numbers. Its all about the Internet of Things.
All driving data is to be collected. More like the Total Information System of the NSA. Why collect it? The reason is for whatever subsequent event it might be needed for. What might that be? No need to name it because when it names itself it is too late to attempt to record history about it. The need to record and know everything in history so it can later be accessed when there is a reason to do that is its own self justifying reason.
Here is what it comes to as depicted in our popular mythology:
Saint Peter at the Gate. Do a google search to see the images. Everyone knows them.
What does St. Peter have? A book of out lives. Every single detail upon which to make a judgment.
As far as driving goes, a car is the St. Peter. There is little wiggle room to stand in front of St. Peter and say "It wasn't my fault". It is coming to that in the court room. Offenders will have a more difficult time making this claim as the Information Age progresses. Even as much as it is attempted to be hidden. Even the enforcers of the current public behavior system are finding that to be true. There will always be watchers and more of them as they become things not people.
Driverless cars (I regret using the framing term but will, it is like calling the World Wide Web the Internet) are about safety and money. Safety is not exactly a Trojan horse within which to hide the money intent because there is public benefit to that. Public benefit is a mater of government. How many private sector non-profit businesses have that as their primary objective? Money is what they are in business for to get in whatever way they can promote their product. Public benefit is one way to sell something: It makes your life better. "Better living through....(name of thing here)......with a price tag on it.
The public will buy public safety.
There is a lot of money to be had in safety concept they are being sold on.
Insurance is a big money maker. Progressive Insurance is already ahead in capturing car information for Insurance purposes and monetizing that information by selling it to whomever they can market it to in sectors unrelated to insurance. The consumer is a bird to be plucked or a pig to be slaughtered in a totally efficient information gathering system that uses all information available and goes one better the old adage of using every part of the pig except the sequel.
We are used to no fault insurance. Amazing how we have become conditioned to that. Nobody at fault. That is not the way society is looking at situations now. There is fault. Fault in acts that harm us. We need protection. We need defense. We need to take action against the wrong doers, the cheaters, anyone or anything that anyone chooses to lay the blame for anything on.
No fault treats every accident basically the same. In a few there is fault finding and it comes down to setting between insurance companies after the policy holder has been made good. Maybe it goes beyond that to a court of law in extreme cases. Criminal law may be involved. Run of the mill accidents? Not!
Run of the mill accidents are not an unemotional thing. If all information immediately prior to the accident was recorded there would be documentary evidence that somebody did something wrong. A car did not come to a complete stop at a stop sign. A car OBD can record that today. The driver was texting. The kid that hit the car that then hit me in the next lane on the freeway was probably texting. The insurance company paid us all. Two insurance companies collected from his company because he could not be located.
More Americans are putting up defenses. Preparing defenses. Rallying around personal protection from dangers. Protection from the "other". Socially it looks like collecting total information about the "other" driver is going to appeal to those that fear them, want protection from them. Documentary proof of their wrong doing. Documentary proof that they did nothing wrong and were a victim. We are in fact being victimized in many ways. Other drivers are not the most important perpetrators but the one source of danger that we can get protected from as being one of those that we just do not like. California driver!
Security and protection from the bad guys is a big market for information systems.
That is what diverless cars are about:
Money in one way or the other. Cars never pay in this situation. People do. People who are feeling victimized want justice. We are in fact being victimized in many ways by entities beyond individuals but the most direct means of resolving that victimization is taking justice against individuals that victimize us because institutions escape that satisfaction.
Our social attitude is changing to one of protection and security from things that are institutional in nature. Kicking the dog, another individual that would otherwise victimize us in an accident of their fault, or the potential ability to kick the dog, to figuratively shoot some wrong doer, is a very strong sales pitch.
I'd give the right to my car to record everything I do driving it for use when required to document that I am a safe responsible driver. I would hold myself responsible and suffer the consequences if found to be at fault in an accident by recorded driving evidence. I would submit myself to that if all other drivers did as well.
Is this the basis for a new birth of personal responsibility by willingly submitting to its obligations or an invasion of privacy if universal implementation of that concept means that it must be forced on even one person whose constitutional right may not be infringed upon?
Driving is a privilege not a right. There is money to be made and perhaps a social good outcome of recording everything a driver does in an on board information system. Not as much to be made by enabling a person to do anything other than drive the car as its sole occupant. That idea is a Trojan Horse.
Never happen.
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