"But is everyone really so eager to see the automobile, which stands as one of history’s great amplifiers of personal autonomy and liberty, evolve into a
giant tracking device controlled by a $250 billion corporation that makes its money through an increasingly intimate and obtrusive knowledge of its customers? "
As a blind person the short answer is yes. Unfortunately job opportunities don't always line up with the few cities that have good public transportation and everything I need easily accessible so it's a fact of life that I need to sometimes rely on others to help me get places. I would be willing to give up a lot of privacy if I could have a self-driving car at a reasonable price. While I don’t know how it will turn out I’m hopeful that with Google backing this cost will be driven down into affordable cars, not $100000 cars. I’ll gladly trade a lot of privacy for a $50000 discount on the price of a self-driving car.
Google's Driverless Future
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Re: Google's Driverless Future
#12It's going to take a long time to get people comfortable with driverless cars. In the meantime, can the technology be immediately converted to "assisted" driving to help avoid collisions, crossing the center line, etc.? Make it a lot harder for people to "bump" into each other. We might be able to get some of the benefits of driverless cars sooner.
Auto braking, adaptive cruise control and lane keeping are already on the road.
Re: Google's Driverless Future
#13It's going to take a long time to get people comfortable with driverless cars. In the meantime, can the technology be immediately converted to "assisted" driving to help avoid collisions, crossing the center line, etc.? Make it a lot harder for people to "bump" into each other. We might be able to get some of the benefits of driverless cars sooner.
Assisted driving technology has existed for years and is deployed in a lot of cars. There is no need to convert this technology, it already exists and is widely deployed. The only thing that prevents this technology from being used in every car is that the price for that technology isn't low enough, yet.
Self-driving cars are really just an incremental improvement to what high-end manufacturers like Mercedes or BMW already offer.
Re: Google's Driverless Future
#14Anyone using Google Now is already sending all the data that constitutes the article's undesirable dystopic vision to Google. And anyone running Android, I suppose, could get an update that began surreptitiously phoning home data. If that's a thing Google wanted to start doing.
Short of being in a faraday cage, we also already know cell phones have a habit of not really rendering you 'untrackable' even when lay users think they've turned them off.
And, frankly, the phone is a superior vector in the first place, as the car has little idea who's driving it, no real idea who the other occupants might be, and little idea where the occupants actually go when they get out. [1]
Yet this article chooses to worry about the cars?
I don't see a huge delta between "I have to leave my phone at home to be sure it can't be used to track me" and "I can't use my 'smart' car, if I want to be sure it can't be used to track me".
[1] The Gym, the massage parlor and the pizza joint might be in the same strip mall. Your car can't know one or ones you go to, whether you get into a subsequent vehicle and go somewhere else entirely, etc. Your phone can know exactly where you're going, and for how long. The car's data is far inferior. Rather than being a data detectives dream, it seems more like a "better than nothing" fall-back, if the tracked-individual happened to actually leave their phone at home or properly disable it.
And anyone smart/aware enough to prevent themselves from being tracked by their phone is smart/aware enough to take a different vehicle, or take the Google car to a transit station/park-and-ride/alibi-establishing-alternate-location/etc.
Re: Google's Driverless Future
#15Seriously? They JUST replaced Google Docs with Drive. They're already moving on to drivele- oh.
Re: Google's Driverless Future
#16A person in security told me that a big fear they have is car bombs. You would now be able to send groups of cars to a location without risking human life. That us good enough reason to not want self driving cars. I still think some of the functionality can be used for accident prevention.
Would that also have been a good enough reason not to want regular cars?
Well, that would require at least one suicide bomber.
Its a legitimate concern, you wouldnt want a car getting hacked and doing all kinds of stuff, like deliberately causing an accident.
Re: Google's Driverless Future
#17Smart phones already track everything. The privacy battle was lost long ago.
Re: Google's Driverless Future
#18A person in security told me that a big fear they have is car bombs. You would now be able to send groups of cars to a location without risking human life. That us good enough reason to not want self driving cars. I still think some of the functionality can be used for accident prevention.
Car accidents kill orders of magnitude more people than terrorists do. I think even if the number of car bombings jumped to 10 times its current level with autonomous cars society would still likely come out ahead.
Re: Google's Driverless Future
#19Anyone using Google Now is already sending all the data that constitutes the article's undesirable dystopic vision to Google. And anyone running Android, I suppose, could get an update that began surreptitiously phoning home data. If that's a thing Google wanted to start doing. Short of being in a faraday cage, we also already know cell phones have a habit of not really rendering you 'untrackable' even when lay users…
Most of your points are great, but I just want to point out that it is not true that your phone can be tracked when it is turned off. That's a misconception that is propagated by a few very poorly written articles that misinterpreted some comments in a court case. No power = no tracking.
Re: Google's Driverless Future
#20As a person who can't drive and refuses to learn, I can't wait for the coming driverless future. All hail Google!