Are expectations and anticipations for autonomous cars among specialists and the general public overly optimistic? A new article in Slate says they are, even going so far as to suggest the Google autonomous vehicle may never actually be commercialised. The article acknowledges the “wow” factor of a test drive in even a prototype-stage self-driving Google car, but says we might yet be stuck with the nut behind the wheel (i.e., the human driver) for the foreseeable future because real, truly autonomous driving will require “a level of intelligence that machines won’t have for many years, if ever”.
The article goes into great depth about how come Google, in particular, have been able to get as far as they’ve got with devising and testing autonomous cars—the lynchpin is their unique ability to put together a minutely detailed network of road maps—and, while it raises the discouraging spectre of a rude awakening from a beautiful dream, is well worth a read for its apparently firm grounding in reality. Is it right that truly self-driving cars are not practicable? Time will tell!
