In History 341 we talked about David Landes's four central characteristics of the Industrial Revolution. One was that machines replace human skill. One of the reasons I think this is important is because it is a trend that may have started with the Industrial Revolution, but is continuing on with particular force today in the Information Age. One particular example of this is Google's efforts to make self driving cars--to take human skill out of the equation. Here is an article about the project, and video of a presentation made by Google engineers.
This has huge implications. We lose something like 50,000 lives a year in automobile accidents. Human skill is very imperfect. The carrying capacity of our highways are based on our reliance on human skill. We need to maintain spacings between cars that are compatible with human response times. All this would change with cars controlled by machines. But it would also require social changes to make it possible. Who would be responsible in the case of an accident? Would we be willing to accept that software problems might cause a certain number of deaths a year?
Driverless cars have been a dream for many years, but the reality has been elusive. Just eight years ago, in a large competition of driverless vehicles, the winning entry was only able to go eight miles. We will talk about this later in the course, but with the progression of Moore's Law, will there be anything left that humans can do better than machines?
This has huge implications. We lose something like 50,000 lives a year in automobile accidents. Human skill is very imperfect. The carrying capacity of our highways are based on our reliance on human skill. We need to maintain spacings between cars that are compatible with human response times. All this would change with cars controlled by machines. But it would also require social changes to make it possible. Who would be responsible in the case of an accident? Would we be willing to accept that software problems might cause a certain number of deaths a year?
Driverless cars have been a dream for many years, but the reality has been elusive. Just eight years ago, in a large competition of driverless vehicles, the winning entry was only able to go eight miles. We will talk about this later in the course, but with the progression of Moore's Law, will there be anything left that humans can do better than machines?
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