Self-Driving Cars – the ‘IT’ thing

With the clear chances of Self-driving Cars ruling the Streets by 2021, it is needless to say that the Future is here. Yesterday, Waymo, the dream Baby of Google’s parent company Alphabet, has been granted the green signal to initiate testing this self-driving fully autonomous vehicles on public streets of California.

Waymo will put SUVs for initial testing in limited Areas covering the Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills neighborhoods, reports THE VERGE. After facing failure with it’s very first to run, the Company has equipped the Car better to handle light Fog and Rain too.

Technically it’s a giant leap no doubt but Social Scientists has raised several questions over the safety measures and decision-making capabilities of these Autonomous ones. The Makers are trying to induct Softwares enabled to take decisions based on Traffic rules and emerging patterns.

The Computers controlling such Cars are also programmed to ingest a large volume of fast-changing information dealing with Routes, Road Blocks, Current Traffic updates and people around the Car. Still, no amount of testing can replace Human intervention. Verification of behavior of Machine learning Systems is a mystery yet to be solved.

Crucial questions involving the safety measures as what the Car will choose when all available options look equally bad? Will it choose to hit the wayward Cyclist or simply crash into an innocent bystander instead? Will the calculations differ with the age, the Socio-Economic status of both? Based on Political inclinations may be? The half a Century old THE PULLEY PROBLEM has raised serious Debates across the Globe. The concerns are more Societal than Technological. Evidently, the Answers will require more than just improvements in Engineering.