I bet there will be LOTS of angry taxi drivers when these babies are introduced! We might even see some man vs machine violence :x

 

I prefer driving my car, but if I dont have one, I'd like to try it out. However, stay in a car with a machine alone is kind of scary movie

 

Google gets Nevada driving licence for self-drive car

Driverless cars will soon be a reality on the roads of Nevada after the state approved America's first self-driven vehicle licence. The first to hit the highway will be a Toyota Prius modified by search firm Google, which is leading the way in driverless car technology. Its first drive included a spin down Las Vegas's famous strip. Other car companies are also seeking self-driven car licences in Nevada.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17989553

 

There are 6 votes for no way! I wonder if I do this poll today will the results change at all? I think so. I myself wouldn’t want a self driving car 8 years ago but right now it’s a norm I guess. Also imagine all the time I would save when I don’t have to sit and drive the car myself. I would just sit back, relax and enjoy my ride with google. Or work on my ever lasting projects. Even if I work 40 mins to my home and 40 mins to work that’s an hour and 20 minutes of work done. I think that would be great.

We could even have short great client meetings or important conference calls when we are on on our way to somewhere.

PS I hate driving and dont have a drivers license.

 

I'd definitely get one! I'd love to just sit back and be driven somewhere. I wonder how long until they're widespread in public use.

We've already seen some violence from traditional taxi drivers against Uber drivers here in Asia. I bet they'd hate these (if they could deal with Asian roads and traffic).

PS - Love the Johnny Cab pic!

 

I actually like driving, but I'd definitely get in one. Done right, computers are way better than people at stuff like this, and I trust Google not to release it until it's ready

 

Yeah, if they release it before it's ready and something like an accident happens then it will torpedo the whole program, so I'm sure they'll make sure it's as good as possible.

Still, accidents are pretty much inevitable. It raises some interesting ethical questions though. For example - what if a kid runs out in front of the car - does the car decide to hit the kid, or decide to swerve the car and kill the occupants?

 

I consider these kinds of ethical questions red herrings. The same question exists for a human driver in these edge cases. Just the human doesn't have time to think it through. Why does that make it more of a problem for a computer that can?

And I trust them because Google is good at these kinds of things, and they've been taking their sweet time to make sure it is 100% ready when they roll it out. Decades. If it were Tesla, I'd have a lot less faith. They seem to have a much higher tolerance for risk.

 

True, but I think that the issues is that it has to be pre-programmed with a set of rules, rather than actually just 'done' like a human driver would do.

It's actually related to a pretty old thought experiment - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem

" You see a runaway trolley moving toward five tied-up (or otherwise incapacitated) people lying on the tracks. You are standing next to a lever that controls a switch. If you pull the lever, the trolley will be redirected onto a side track, and the five people on the main track will be saved. However, there is a single person lying on the side track. You have two options:

Do nothing and allow the trolley to kill the five people on the main track.
Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person.

Which is the more ethical option?"