by When we look at our world today one of the most important parts to keep our lives running and our economy afloat is transportation. As we look into our future there is this ideal life of everything becoming automated and humans coexisting
more and more with robots. Although, a common fear is the negative effects these could have on society. There is this idea shared in the Disney movie Wall-E that shows the earth if everything were run by robots. Except there is also a viewpoint that there will be such great strides in AI technology that AI robots should be able to do things that right now only humans are capable of. The common question behind AI robots is what are the ethics behind it.
A common human action would be driving, and the leading company in self-driving technology is Tesla. We know all about the self-driving technology within their cars, the Model 3, Model S, Model X, and Model Y. Electrek reported t “Last year, [Elon] Musk announced Tesla’s plan to deploy 1 million “Robotaxi” vehicles for a self-driving ride-sharing network by the end of 2020.”
Here is a statement from Elon Musk himself stating, “So I personally tested the latest alpha build of full self-driving software when I drive my car and it is really I think profoundly better than people realize. It’s like amazing. So it’s almost getting to the point where I can go from my house to work with no interventions, despite going through construction and widely varying situations. So this is why I am very confident about full self-driving functionality being complete by the end of this year, is because I’m literally driving it.” This is extremely important when it comes to a robot taking over a human job. Musk is stating that yes the car can drive itself under normal conditions, but when it is faced with a decision that it would need to adapt to its inability to figure out what to do.
When Tesla came out with their self-driving technology a common question asked is how much should really be left for the computer to figure out. When we look at autonomous cars a common idea that is brought up is machine learning. Machine learning is the study in which a computer’s algorithms adapt and improve based on the computer’s experience. This is used when making autonomous cars because a car can learn to make ethical decisions. This machine learning is called neural networks.
Neural networks are a series of algorithms that works on recognizing relationships in a set of data. This process in which they find this data mimics the brain and how it operates. So neural networks are referring to a system of neurons, which fire like a brain would. We can take this study of neural networks and include this into self-driving cars.
If the constant debate is whether a computer can make an ethical decision based on neural networking the computer should be able to make decisions for itself and learn how to make certain ethical decisions.
Ultimately the argument still exists whether we should really trust a computer. There are still many problems that will arise with self-driving cars. One of them is, what will happen in case of an accident, who’s at fault? Whether humans can finally fully trust computers only time will tell, as there are advancements in technology, we must see and trust the technology being used for it to be used daily. For our modes of transportation to go fully autonomous, we have to trust computers with our life which could make huge strides in our world if the computer and calculate better decisions, for example, not to drink or drive, and it will remember to do things that a human can sometimes fail to pick up on.
Bibliography
- Lambert, Fred, “Elon Musk on Tesla Self-Driving: ‘I Can Almost Go from My House to Work with No Intervention’.” Electrek, 23 July 2020, electrek.co/2020/07/23/tesla-self-driving-elon-musk-house-to-work/.
- Viorel, Paul, and Carol Rudinschi. “Machine Learning Algorithms in Autonomous Driving.” Create a Culture of Innovation with IIoT World!, 26 May 2020, iiot-world.com/artificial-intelligence-ml/machine-learning/machine-learning-algorithms-in-autonomous-driving/.