#29: Autonomous Vehicles

Ian Bowie
Hello and welcome to AI unfiltered with me Ian Bowie and our resident expert, Michael Stormbom, where we will be talking about everything to do with AI in our modern digital society and what the future holds for all of us.

Ian Bowie
There’s something else I just like to quickly say about these autonomous vehicles. There’s there’s a fellow in America called Ralph Nader, and I think you know, who he is, don’t you?

Michael Stormbom
Well, yeah,I mean, of course, he became famous as a consumer consumer rights advocate. I think he was instrumental in for example, bringing seatbelts into American cars.

Ian Bowie
Basically, you’re quite right. I mean, in the mid mid 1960s, he wrote a book called Unsafe at Any Speed. And then he set up his own nonprofit road safety organization in America. And as you said, he’s very well known as a consumer rights advocate. Anyway, I read an article today, and he’s now petitioning the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, quite a mouthful, that’s in America, to ban Tesla full driving, or full self driving technology. And a quote from him is actually “it’s one of the most dangerous and irresponsible actions by a car company in decades”. And then I read another research report, which is saying actually, that there is something like 78% of people that they polled for this research, just don’t trust autonomous vehicles, full stop.

Michael Stormbom
I am personally not convinced that they will ever work reliably enough,and I think the big one is also that if you have a mixture of human drivers and autonomous cars, I think that that’s just a recipe for disaster.

Ian Bowie
Yeah. Yeah. I think another one of his comments was, was that there should be no autonomous vehicle allowed on a street where children play.

Michael Stormbom
I mean, indeed, because I read an article about some of these autonomous cars that Well, there have been instances where it’s unable to recognize that there’s a child on the street, for example. I mean, yeah. Well, you can see where that one is going.

Ian Bowie
Yeah, absolutely. Well, did you see the article? There was a Mercedes Benz executive was interviewed about EVs, and he’d said well, and it was all about, you know, who does the vehicle save and he said, Well, if you if you only going to save one person, let it be the passenger. And then not long after that, The Times has picked picked up on this in London. Mercedes had a little bit of PR work to do after that. Yeah. But I mean, you can’t trust them. I mean, you know, imagine if if an autonomous vehicle, but it did kill. I think it was its own driver, wasn’t it? In America a while back

Michael Stormbom
and there have been numerous instances when there for example, is a sharp turn and the car doesn’t… because of course some of these cars already have – that are available in the market – they have this or like auto control that you’re not actually supposed to use but people do anyway and then…

Ian Bowie
Like in my car. And you’re quite right. It doesn’t work because I’ve tested it.

Michael Stormbom
Well Well, thank you for proving my point. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. No no but then it just weers off, and then.

Ian Bowie
In my case, almost a ditch but I mean, I was awake, and I was really testing it. So I was ready to grab the wheel and…

Michael Stormbom
We’ve spoken about Explainable AI before and so when the car all of a sudden starts doing inexplicable things, I think that’s a good example of why autonomous vehicles are not necessarily a good idea.

Ian Bowie
No, no, you know, you can’t trust it. I actually I mean, I I tried using it when I first got the car. And then after a couple of near misses, I don’t touch it anymore. I won’t push that button. No, no, it’s not worth it. No.

Michael Stormbom
In related news, apparently they are piloting self driving taxis in in China. So Baidu, a the large Chinese company is piloting in two cities, and also in the United States, they’re piloting in San Francisco, I think, a different company that is, let’s see how that works out.

Ian Bowie
Well, actually, I in a way, I hope it doesn’t work out because you know, then a lot of human taxi drivers are going to be out of business, aren’t they? Yeah, yeah.

Michael Stormbom
But also, given what we just discussed about these autonomous vehicles. Well, I’m skeptical. Let’s say, put it like that.

Ian Bowie
Yeah, I mean, you know, I love technology.

Michael Stormbom
I could be wrong. We could be the guys who wouldn’t sign Beatles in the 1960s, but.

Ian Bowie
And then of course, we can be accused of being Luddites, but we’re not. No. But we’re realists. Yeah. Yeah. And how many kids will it take? You know, before they realize it’s not a good idea. I mean, in the UK, they’ve got these things that they call smart motorways, which are as dumb as dumb can be, I guess it’s the people who had the idea. But we used to have, or westill do have in a lot of places, what they call a hard shoulder on the motorway which is actually kind of like a fourth lane and it’s the lane. If your car breaks down or you get into difficulties. You park on the hard shoulder. And that’s all it is for. But now the so called smart motorways. And the idea is it opens up the hard shoulder to traffic in times when there’s huge amounts of congestion to try and get things moving again. People have been killed, haven’t they, you know they’ve broken down. They’ve left the car on the hard shoulder. They’ve they’ve been there and suddenly, bang, get a great big truck up their backside. And that’s it, all the way to heaven. They’re still not closing them down. In fact, if anything, they’re going to open up more of them. So how many lives does it take before they suddenly realize that actually this was a bad idea?

Michael Stormbom
And people are having a desperate need to be, to go from point A to point B as fast as possible. All the while not realizing that the more cars there are, of course the more congested it gets.

Ian Bowie
But yeah, I mean of course like I said, you know this was supposed to be an attempt at a solution to that problem at peak times. They could open up the hard shoulder to alleviate.

Michael Stormbom
I saw this meme on Facebook. Yes ,I am so old that I’m still on on Facebook, but, no but there was a meme that was just a picture of this highway and you could see that how they had successively constructed new lanes right next to the previous lane it was just is horrific, like I don’t know, 100 meters wide, sort of just lanes and full of cars. And like, I mean, the meme, the point of it is that’s really how, you know society is supposed to work and I think they make a fair point.

Ian Bowie
Well, they do. Yeah. Because I mean, I suppose I mean, again, you know, it’s the same old, same old problem. overpopulation. You know, the world was not built for the number of people that we have in it at the moment and roads were certainly not constructed to cope with the volumes of traffic that we see today.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, well, I mean, quite a lot of cities are designed around there being car traffic as well. So I think yeah, just considering the debate we have here in Turku, whether people are pissed that they can’t drive, can I say pissed, I’m not sure, but that they can’t drive in the center because it’s so important that I can park my car right outside of the grocery store or else. And Turku is a really small city like it is so I mean…

Ian Bowie
I mean, I’m a car person. You know, I like I like my car, hybrid car. You know, I don’t want to park miles and miles away from where I’m actually intending to go. And I don’t really want to take a bus. Now. Sorry, but you know, I’m just not a public transport person. I’m not.

Michael Stormbom
I’m strongly pro- public transport.

Ian Bowie
Yeah, that’s good. Well, Yin and Yang, you know, it takes both.

Michael Stormbom
Let’s have a debate.

Ian Bowie
I love people like you because the more people like you who are on buses, the fewer cars are on the road getting in my way.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, people need to use cars plus, which would be a case for more public transport.

Ian Bowie
I also agree to that. Yes. And then I can continue to use my car. I can be the last person using a car.

Michael Stormbom
You can, yes. Actually when I was when I was a kid, or teenager in in Mariiehamn, the world metropolis on the Åland islands, population 10,000. No but they did an experiment, or it wasn’t even an experiment, they did for a couple years it had free public transport. So you could take the bus for free.

Michael Stormbom
Wow. And how did that work?

Michael Stormbom
I think the problem with Åland overall it is very difficult to… yeah okay. Sure if you stay in Mariehamn, but otherwise, it’s very, very difficult to be without a car. Yeah, there are other sort of, shall we say deficiencies in the public transport. So I think it was quite a lot of that instead of me taking a bicycle to school I took the bus, for example. So that was probably… it didn’t really have the intended consequences.

Ian Bowie
At all. Yeah, so yeah,

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, eventually it was due to budgetary reasons that they decided to stop that, of course, so I don’t know, did they do any research as to whether it decreased car traffic? I don’t know. And to what extent it was people like me who instead of exercising took the bus.

Ian Bowie
You see, I mean, I’ve got car ingrained on my soul. I mean, even if it was free. I still don’t think I would take the bus over taking my car. I like my personal space. You know, I don’t like being in confined spaces with lots of other hot, sweaty, potentially sick people.

Michael Stormbom
But that’s how you know you’re in a city. That’s the quintessential city experience

Ian Bowie
When I’m in the city when I’m in a traffic jam, that’s fine.

Michael Stormbom
You can kick back and listen to our podcast.

Ian Bowie
My own isolated air conditioning bubble. Yeah. Because I used to you know, back in, back in the day, when I didn’t have a car. Of course, I took public transport ever. I had no choice. I didn’t enjoy it. But I couldn’t afford a car on that particular time. And, you know, I think that period of time lasted for probably about two to three years. And then finally, I got my hands on a car, or actually it’s not true. We did have a car. We had one car but we couldn’t afford a second car. And my wife is the one who actually needed the car. So that’s why I didn’t actually get my hands on it. And then, you know, eventually we got to a stage where we could afford two cars and we did straightaway. But no, I don’t know just some something in my DNA that says car first and…

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, I’m not a car person at all. I’m privileged in that I don’t need I don’t need a car to…

Ian Bowie
Well you’re in the centre of the city aren’t you.

Michael Stormbom
So I’m happy to be without, I did have a car for or several cars for quite a long time, but I mean, it costs a lot of money. You need a parking space and it’s a hassle during winter. And I mean, you don’t really need it but you still need to drive it every now and then to make sure it still works. And yeah, yeah. So I figured I mean, it’s better like when I actually need a car, then I rent one. Yeah. And then the rest of the year I can.

Ian Bowie
And I have a very good friend who lives right bank smack in the middle of Stockholm and he’s exactly the same. Yeah, yeah. Never had a car in his life actually. Yeah. It’s yeah, it’s different strokes for different folks. Indeed. Yeah, absolutely.

Michael Stormbom
We have spoken about electric vehicles before and I don’t know to what extent their introduction will help in mitigating climate change considering the environmental impact of manufacturing them and of course charging the batteries.

Ian Bowie
Well, what I read a while back was quite interesting. And of course, you know, we have to get a critical mass of electric vehicles manufactured and out there in use. Yeah, but then the article then went on to say that then those electric vehicles can then become part of the circular economy. And so when they reached the end of their usable life time 99% of everything in that vehicle can then be recycled and reused in new vehicles. The problem is that we have to get to that critical mass which means that, you know, for probably the next even two decades, we have to continue raping the earth of all its rare earth elements. And you know, manufacturing, of course, all the energy that that requires, but once we then reach that tipping point, if you like, we should be okay. But I suspect that’s not going to happen because the problem is that the tipping point will get further and further away because of course, populations will continue to increase and therefore, more cars will be required. Not fewer.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, I mean, there’s only so long can kick this can down the road. Or actually, we’ve kicked again far too long down the road already.

Ian Bowie
Until it falls over a cliff. Yeah, yeah.

Michael Stormbom
I mean, I’d only just saw an article this morning about the polar ice caps and. We will have to start recording this podcast in scuba gear if this keeps up.

Ian Bowie
Maybe not from Finland for quite some time. But yeah, no, no, no. Trouble is that everything you read about autonomous vehicles. It seems to be the same same old, same old, it’s the same question. Will we ever get to a stage where we can have genuinely autonomous vehicles? And the answer is no. You’ve got these journalists and they’re just regurgitating the same story again and again and again. There doesn’t seem to be any new news.

Michael Stormbom
No, I don’t think so. But there’s a lot of hype with autonomous vehicles but is it… will it really live up to the hype and I think our our conclusion on that one is probably not

Ian Bowie
Well, I mean, at the risk of repeating myself, I don’t know if I’ve done this before, but I mean, imagine, all right, roads that we have here in Finland, you know, we have still unmade roads. There are no road markings on them. The only borders that you have are little sticks next to the ditch, then there are plenty of smaller side roads. The road markings have been worn away.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, no proper lighting. No, any of these.

Ian Bowie
No. And then if you think about the UK, we’ve got lots and lots of these country lanes. But they’re single track. You know, and you can literally get one car one tractor, if you’re lucky, a bus down them and that’s it. And then there’s always something coming in front of you. And then somebody always has to reverse and find some tiny little piece of, you know, whatever it is, land to the side of the road and hope you don’t go down a ditch. I just can’t see autonomous vehicles being able to maneuver in these kinds of circumstances.

Michael Stormbom
I don’t see it either, or the United States where the infrastructure is in really poor shape in many of places of the country. So yeah, yeah, definitely.

Ian Bowie
I mean, they’ve got really sort of big, wide straight roads in America, as actually we do here in Finland as well. I mean, you know, the kind of main artery roads, arterial roads, a lot of them are very straight. And I could imagine that they might work on those kinds of roads. But yeah, there’s still this massive network of side roads and unmade roads and everything in between.

Michael Stormbom
No, but I did read an interesting article or I saw it on Twitter, actually, but so it’s in Los Angeles, I suppose. So they have these food delivery trucks, automated trucks. There was a picture on Twitter, when so there was a crime scene and it was cordoned off bythe police. You know, the yellow you see on the crime shows? Yeah. And then so then the food delivery robot driving up and, and to the food delivery robot’s credit, it stopped? Because obviously it had detected there’s an obstacle there. But then some helpful, quote unquote, human being lifted the cordon for the delivery truck so that it drove straight into the crime scene.

Ian Bowie
Classic. Yeah. Yeah. You see that actually, that kind of links to something that I read in one of the articles recently is that this was some expert saying that actually, machines don’t react as quickly as humans, and certainly not in the same way. So for example, that story you’ve just told, if a delivery driver, human driver, had driven up to that cordon, even if somebody had lifted the tape, he wouldn’t have gone further. Because he understands it’s a crime scene you don’t cross the line but the machine didn’t get it.

Michael Stormbom
No and I mean with the machine you would have to pretty much deliberately program the machine, “hey, don’t enter crime scenes!”, but yes, human beings they can sort of reason their way. So I think that’s a distinction as well. Yeah. If the machine encounters like a scenario, it’s never encountered before then interesting things can. And interesting means possibly tragic things can happen. Yes.

Ian Bowie
Yes. It’s what we’ve just discussed before with many different forms of AI. It’s only as good as the information that’s been input into it.

Michael Stormbom
Correct? Yes. And yes. I think this does tie in to the fact that we currently have a lack of truck drivers in Europe and in I think the United States as well. So of course, I mean, whether that means that we should focus more on autonomous trucks, or maybe we should transport less crap. I think that’s..

Ian Bowie
I’ll go for the latter. Yeah. So in a way, thank goodness we don’t have enough truck drivers to ship all this rubbish.

Michael Stormbom
The answer is less transport rather than autonomous transport.

Ian Bowie
Yeah but it is, isn’t it? We know it. You’re talking about all the time. And that’s a shortage of truck drivers. I actually wanted to be a truck driver once upon a time. Only from a romantic sense of the idea of being out on the open road like an old fashioned cowboy, driving my big truck. I mean, you know, the reality of it wouldn’t interest me in the slightest, but I didn’t go so far. I watched a nightly I read a book called Convoy, and they turned it into a filter movie with Kris Kristofferson. It was a book first, right? And that’s kind of what got my romantic sort of juices flowing. That whole idea you know, the open road and but you see even that that was you taking out a whole part of sort of urban cultural heritage, the CB radio. Yeah, you know, back in the day, and that they had their sort of code for talking, you know, there’s a bear in was it plain wrapping or something or brown paper? I can’t remember. But they had all these, you know, Smokey Bear was the police and it was all cool. You know, you wouldn’t get machines talking to each other like that. Would you?

Michael Stormbom
No, I think it would be more 10001100…

Ian Bowie
Yeah. As they silently move through the night.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah. You can’t even hear the truck. No, no, no. Runs you over as you’re walking across the road.

Ian Bowie
Are we heading for a quieter world? With the advent of all these new technologies?

Michael Stormbom
I don’t know about that. My computer’s pretty loud.

Michael Stormbom
Is it?

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, at least you know, the fan is running with

Ian Bowie
It’s because you work it too hard. Well, yeah.

Michael Stormbom
Yes, my running my nefarious algorithms.

Ian Bowie
Yeah. My mom has a computer that makes funny noises like that.

Michael Stormbom
But to wrap things up, I think it’s safe to say that we are rather skeptical about autonomous vehicles.

Ian Bowie
So I guess that’s the conclusion. Isn’t it? Really? I think it is. Yes. We have to drop this one like a hot potato. Yes. Concentrate on something more useful.

Michael Stormbom
Yes. We’ll come back to this in one year’s time if things have improved.

Ian Bowie
Well, yeah. Of course. Absolutely. We’re always willing to keep an open mind without a doubt. But as things stand at the moment in September 2022. The future for autonomous AI is not looking so bright when it comes to vehicles.

Michael Stormbom
Indeed, and on that note…

Ian Bowie
We shall leave it.

Ian Bowie
You’ve been listening to me Ian Bowie and my colleague Michael Stormbom, on AI Unfiltered and for more episodes. Please go to aiunfiltered.com Thank you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai