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by highfreq
3906 days ago
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40 years of history showing failure, of course for most of that time they have had between a millionth and half the computing power we have today, and most of those years had now where near the capability of image sensors and other sensors. So how much weight should we really give history on something like this? |
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Take their example of submarines. Fully autonomous submarines are completely possible, but what they point out is that some level of human control is more useful. They don't say why, but my guess is that this is because if the sub comes across something unusual that merits further investigation, humans are better at making that judgement call than a robot would. The same principle applies to the Mars rovers. But it also applies to plenty of routine uses of vehicles. Most of the time I'm driving from my house to a car park or street parking space and such journeys are probably completely automatable. But sometimes I arrive at e.g. a country fair and the parking is in a field and I know I want to park over there in a place which will soon be shaded by that tree, and not in a different place where it looks a bit muddy. At times like that I would want much more direct control over the vehicle and an automated system would not be able to make such decisions for me.
So while the article does a poor job saying so, I think the point is that 100% full driverless automation isn't the best answer in every situation. It might be a fine solution for many purposes, but not all. They're arguing against a (perhaps imagined and possibly straw man) maximalist automation position such as 'in 20 years time no cars will have manual controls'.