| Autonomous driving systems are set at various levels of autonomy. Level 0 is no automation, level 1 is just a dumb cruise control, level 2 is radar adaptive cruise control plus lane keeping (which is where most production systems like Tesla Autopilot and GM Supercruise are currently at). Level 2 still requires full human supervision, if you engaged it on the road above it would either fail to engage or you'd crash and it would be your fault. Level 3 is the same plus an ability to handle some common driving tasks, like changing lanes to pass a slower vehicle. Level 4 is where it gets really interesting, because it's supposed to handle everything involved in navigating from Point A to Point B. It's supposed to stop itself in the event of encountering something it can't handle, so you could theoretically take a nap while it drove. However, an important limitation is that Level 4 autonomy is geofenced, it's only allowed in certain areas on certain roads. Also, it can disable itself in certain conditions like construction or weather that inhibit visibility. Waymo vehicles like these are ostensibly level 4, if you tell them to drive through a back road in the snow they'll simply refuse to do so. It's only useful in reasonably good conditions in a few big cities. Level 5 is considered to be Point A to Point B, for any two navigable points, in any conditions that the vehicle can traverse. You could build a Level 5 vehicle without a driver's seat, much less an alert driver. I kind of think this will require something much closer to artificial general intelligence; level 4 is just really difficult conventional programming. |