November 16th, Class Essay

11/16 Essay (last one): Read the ~8 minute article “The Data Science Behind Self-Driving Cars” (hat tip to Connor). In 1-2 paragraphs, write what you think (or know) are the broad implications for society from the development and adoption of self-driving vehicle technology. What are the positive aspects, the not so positive, and the important considerations (e.g., ethical)? You have until 10:05.

Firstly, this was a very interesting article and made it easy to understand how self-driving cars work, as someone who has no knowledge in that area. To begin with, a positive of self-driving vehicles is that they can prevent car crashes and therefore save lives by eliminating human error as well as the damage done by people driving under the influence, drowsy, or with road rage. Self-driving cars can also make driving accessible to those who are physically disabled in a way that prevents them from driving or elderly people who don’t have the ability to drive anymore. In addition, there would likely be less traffic on the roads because the cars would know which routes to take in order to cut down on traffic, rather than how humans oftentimes take their usual routes places regardless of traffic conditions, which can make the traffic worse.

Despite all of the positive impacts of self-driving cars, there are many negative effects. For example, autonomous vehicles would put millions of people out of jobs, as was mentioned in the article. The loss of jobs’ impact on the economy would have to be weighed against the potential benefits of autonomous vehicles in order to determine if widespread implementation in sectors such as trucking would be worthwhile. Additionally, self-driving cars come at a very, very high price. Their non-affordability to the public makes potential environmental benefits, from the use of clean energy, less impactful. Another concern regarding self-driving cars is that they truly can not replicate human thought and human processes, and thus can’t always anticipate obstacles that don’t conform to the rules of the road, such as human-driven cars making errors and causing accidents. Another important consideration about self-driving cars is that they can be hacked. The article mentioned that the car has the potential to generate 1G of data per second, which is a huge amount of data. The locational data of the car and travel history can be used nefariously if it is hacked, especially if the cars belong to someone important, such as a government official. In addition, if the car gets hacked there is the potential for the hacker to control the movements of the car, which also is very dangerous and something that seems out of a dystopian movie. Overall, though self-driving cars are a hugely impressive feat, we do have to be careful about their potential downfalls and in what ways they are used in the various transportation industries.