March 8, 2013 • 17 mins
Do self-driving cars represent a threat to the automotive culture so many people enjoy? Will autonomous cars always have a manual override function? How will these vehicles change the way we think about transportation in general? Tune in to learn more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Welcome everyone to Forward Thinking the Audio Podcast.
My name is Jonathan Strickling. I'm one of the three
amazing hosts of the show. Hi, I'm Lauren foc Obam,
(00:22):
I'm Joe McCormick. They are equally amazing but modest. Today,
we wanted to talk a little bit more about autonomous cars,
and for people who haven't heard the previous episodes or
maybe aren't familiar with the subject, Joe, why don't you
kind of explain what an autonomous car is. An autonomous
car is basically exactly what it sounds like. It's a
car that is autonomous, which means that it drives itself.
(00:44):
So you get up in the morning and you get
ready for work, and you go out, and you hop
in your car, and you close the door, and you
pop out a book and start to read um and
the car takes you to work without any controller input
from you. You don't need to have your hands on
the steering wheel, you don't need to have your foot
on the brakes, you don't need to be watching the traffic,
(01:05):
and and you know, managing your chance to get out
here on the road at the car drives itself. And
this sounds like I'm amazing, wonderful, beautiful future to people
like me. Yeah, because I hate navigating traffic. And if
I could just get in a car and and sit
down and read a book on the way to work
(01:26):
that I can't I can't tell you how much I
would love that. Yeah, as someone who does not drive,
that might be a surprise to some people, but I
don't drive. I would welcome a robot car overlord into
my life happily so that I could get around without
having to either take a very long walk to the
closest train station, which which I do. I mean, it's
(01:48):
not it's not terrible. There are worse things to have
to do. Or I would have to depend upon the
kindness of my friends who would give me a ride,
and I really don't like doing that because I don't
want them to have to go out of their way
just for me. Right, So I'm also very much looking
forward to this where I could have potentially a car
I could just jump into and say, hey, take me
to such and such, and the only one who's, you know,
(02:09):
inconvenience is a robot and who cares about them, right right.
I'm a little bit dubious about it, honestly. I mean,
I'm I'm excited about the prospect because you know, it's like,
we live in Atlanta. We don't really have terrific public transportation,
which is normally the kind of place where you can
hop in a vehicle and read a book and not
have to worry about the actual controlling the vehicle part um.
But at the same time, I would I would need
(02:30):
a lot of research and possibly into anxiety medication to
give up that kind of control to a to a robot.
Then you know, I don't know that robot. I don't
I don't know where it matriculated. Okay, that's fair. Yeah,
Now that's something we really wanted to talk about in
this podcast, is there are people who might have anxiety
issues about giving up control. That's perfectly legitimate. I'm not
(02:50):
going to, you know, disparage people who have that. I
I have my own hang ups, obviously. I mean I
don't drive, and the reason I don't drive is because
I get severe anxiety behind the wheel of a car.
So I have no problem with someone who gets severe
anxiety with the idea of no one being behind the
wheel of the car. But beyond that we also have,
especially in America, but I imagine in other parts of
(03:11):
the world as well, this sort of relationship between the
idea of driving a car and the whole concept of
free will and taking charge of your life and being
able to have the freedom to go wherever you want,
whenever you want. And there are some views of the
autonomous car that seemed to suggest that you can't have
one and the other that you by having the autonomous
(03:34):
car model, you give up this part of what it
is to to be part of the car culture. UM
and an American particular car culture is a big deal.
We we met before the podcast to kind of talk
this over, and Lauren, you made a really good point.
If you don't have a car in America, you don't
have a whole lot of options of getting around, especially
on the longer distances. Yeah, there's you know, lots of
(03:56):
places in Europe have really great trains that can take
you very fast anywhere that you want to go, um
or or you know, if you happen to live in
New York City or San Francisco or a place that
has a really good metro, then that's terrific. But here
in America, we've we've kind of built our country from
from the end of World War two on on this
concept of of of cars, of the individual motor vehicle
(04:18):
and and just getting in and going. And it's it's
this very sexy, very stylized, filmic epic idea. Yeah, it's
all about the individual. I mean that's again another very
American kind of ideas that you know, put put that
focus on the individual. And people have a relationship with
their cars to sure. I mean a lot of that
seems to come from the act of driving. That you're
spending so much time really manipulating this vehicle, you know,
(04:42):
you're using all the controls on it and stuff like that.
I mean, people name in their car. Yeah, I've I've
named my car. I mean, you know, and I do,
and I do enjoy driving, you know, not in traffic.
I enjoy driving perhaps at night when there's no one
else on the road. But yeah, yeah, I can't even
imagine that to me, the idea of enjoying driving. I mean,
I understand where people are coming from with it, but
(05:03):
it's something I don't identify with it all on a
personal level. And yeah, you're you're exactly right, Joe. I mean,
when you spend that much time manipulating something, you can't
help but form an emotional attachment to it. My wife
and I are a perfect example of that. She spent
years manipulating me, and clearly the emotional ties are tight
or or like the weighted companion cube, I mean, I mean,
I love that cube. Okay, that's another good point. Yeah,
(05:27):
and I'm making light of it, but no, it really
is true that there are relationships with these vehicles. And
I think part of the problem some people have with
the idea of the autonomous car is they seem to
think that we're going to enter into a world where
we no longer have any control. And I don't think
that's ever going to happen. I think that there's always
going to be at least a fail safe option to
(05:48):
switch to manual control. And because of that, I think
that in order to be behind the wheel of an
autonomous car, even if it's an autonomous mode, you would
have to be a licensed driver. I can't imagine we
ever get to a point where it will be all
right for a group of human beings to get into
a vehicle, none of whom have a license and just go, um,
(06:11):
I just don't think that's going to happen. Well, you know,
I kind of hope that someday the technology gets to
that point, because how how wonderful would it be for
someone who is physically or visually impaired, or you know,
who suffered from strokes or for any other reason was
was not capable of getting a driver's license. It would
be completely fabulous to have cars for for that segment
of the opulation. Yeah, they have way more autonomy over
(06:33):
their own lives. Oh yeah, yeah, I mean it would
be it would be great. But you know, it's it's
right now. The technology is certainly not anywhere near there yet,
and and everything is is very much so like you
could read a book, but maybe you want to be
paying attention to what the car is doing, just in
case something goes terribly terribly wrong. Right yeah, right now,
I would say they were pretty far along in the
prototype stage. Obviously, we're not very far into the seeing
(06:56):
it roll out into cars that consumers would have access to.
But the prototype stage, we've already seen cars manipulate their
ways through various city scales, particularly things like San Francisco.
I mean, Google has their fleet of autonomous cars. They've
been working on for a couple of years, and they've
been going through Mountain View, California, which is right there
around the San Francisco area that can be a pretty
(07:17):
congested part of the United States. So they've already started
to prove themselves. And I think there has only been
a couple of accidents that have involved the Google cars,
and when you look at them in comparison to the
number of accidents that happen with human drivers, it's tiny
right now, and we would imagine that that number would
go lower even more as the technology advances and gets
(07:41):
even more precise. Um, I think we're going to have
some people definitely put up a bit of a resistance
to the idea of adapting to autonomous cars. And maybe
we do eventually reach a future where it's the only
way you can buy a car as if it's an
autonomous car, unless it's maybe on the used car market. Well,
I mean, it may someday just be a safety issue, right.
(08:05):
You can imagine a future where we have a member
of Congress standing up in front of the house, you know,
pointing at a chart this many percentage of accidents are
caused by human error we know that, right now. What
do they say about it? All depends on the survey
you read. But yeah, yeah, the National Highway Traffic Safety
Administrations as about that's the overwhelming majority of accidents have
(08:30):
human error as at least a contributing factor. These human
drivers are a menace. They are I mean, you know,
they threaten all of us. Let's let's take them out
of the equation and put robots in charge. Yeah, I
mean that that sort of thing could happen. I imagine
that it would be very difficult for any politician to
to float that by because they have to answer to
(08:53):
their constituents. Like it's hard for me to imagine in
America where people are willingly giving up that ability to
share drive. Uh and Joe, you you brought up another
good point about how this could affect people who tinker
with cars, who like to manipulate cars. I mean, what
happens when we get to a point where the cars
are so advanced that they are beyond the ken of
(09:16):
your average hobbyist mechanic. Oh yeah, a good friend of mine,
he has an old Mercedes from the seventies, and he
takes it apart and puts it back together all the time,
you know, he's always working on it. I somehow doubt
that that's something that you could have the same level
of confidence doing with the car that that requires all
this intense computing. And well, I think that eventually it's
(09:39):
going to turn into the kind of issue where it's
it's that's going to be the realm of hobbyists. I
mean much the same way that that these days, I
have a civic y'all. I mean like like I take
it to a mechanic who I trust, and I have
no idea how that car works, quite honestly. And you know,
for people like your friend, they could probably still you know,
find the parts and put together their car and maybe
take it out to can rent time and a track.
(10:01):
Right now, if you want to go out and and
race your car, that would be pretty silly for me.
But as I can get it all up to all
of like nur, but uh not that I would know
that from from driving on My Sally starts to shake.
But if you can ease it paste, it's smooth salon.
But no, it's just going to I would suspect enter
(10:22):
the realm of of hobby Yeah, well, well, will we
see a convergence of the auto shop tinkerer and the
computer hacker. That's a possibility. I mean, you know, again,
when you're talking about something that is so important when
it comes to the safety of the person who's sitting there,
I mean, there there's there are two arguments to have,
right There's an argument of you shouldn't mess with it
(10:43):
because it could mean that you're risking your life. The
other argument is, who's to say that the hacker isn't
better at designing a system that is safe than the
company is, because we've seen hackers design things that ended
up making huge improvements to products and uh, and so
it's it's an argument that's going that's well, it's being
made in all sorts of industries, but I'm sure in
(11:04):
the car industry it will be way up there because
you're talking about something that's not just a symbol of freedom,
but is a very powerful machine that could be potentially dangerous. So,
I mean that's a good point. It's an interesting question,
especially I can imagine modifications coming in if you're going
to have competing proprietary navigation software, like different car manufacturers
(11:27):
have their own software that they own and control and
is not open source. I mean I can see that
being scary. Yeah, I wonder if that's even going to
be possible the way that I mean, because it's all
going to have to interact with it with an infrastructure,
with an internet of objects around cities that help cars
decide where to go and when to go. Yeah, I
mean that the ultimate build out of the autonomous car
(11:49):
goes beyond the autonomous car. It goes into that internet
of things that we've talked about in the past, this
idea that you have sensors and and and devices that
can react to real time dynamic situations and changed based
upon that, and that the autonomous car would play a
part in this larger system. And in that case, yeah,
you might have to require that everyone used at least
(12:12):
something that can interface with the larger infrastructure. But then
even then, you know, how are you going to build
that infrastructure. Are you going to have it so that
every single major metropolitan area has to roll it out
the same time, because if you don't, one city's infrastructure
could be very different from another city's infrastructure. I drive
from Miami to Atlanta. Yeah, but these are these are
(12:35):
some problems that we don't have the answers to yet
because we aren't there yet. But again, it's one of
those things that we have to think about because it
could very well be that as you're getting to the
outskirts of a city, your car starts to slow down,
and the reason your car is slowing down is because
it's actually downloading the latest update. It needs to be
able to navigate through the next city because it's a
totally different operating system that's there's on this road. It's right,
(13:01):
could be could be had like warning lag ahead. Yeah,
we joke about it, but really, unless you have a
truly open source approach, or maybe not even open source,
just standardized, a standardized approach across all manufacturers in all cities.
Traffic protocol. Yeah, you're just yeah, exactly, it would be
its own kind of it would be literally traffic protocol.
It would be that that kind of a system that
(13:23):
would tell cars how to get through certain areas. I mean,
it's something that has to be thought about. So I've
got a question that I thought would be interesting, Hit Majo.
If we have autonomous cars, how efficient can we get
in terms of all the driving we do. Imagine it's
Saturday morning and I've got six errands I need to
(13:44):
run today, Can my autonomous car solve the traveling salesman
problem and figure out what is the most efficient way
to get to all six of those different places I
need to go? Joe has just posed what is called
a non trivial pro problem, the traveling salesman problem. For
those of you who aren't aware, it's exactly what Joe
is saying. It's the ideas, it's a traveling salesman who
(14:06):
has to visit, you know, a certain number of cities,
and how do you plan out the most efficient route
between all those cities and back home so that the
traveling salesman spends the least amount of time traveling And
it's it sounds simple, but as you add destinations, it
gets increasingly complex because you have to take into account
all the different variations that could occur within that group
(14:28):
of of stops. And then we add traffic into the mix. Yeah,
and then you start adding in dynamic elements, and now
you've really caused some some real uh computer headaches, computer headaches. Yeah.
It's for a classic computer using a regular processor. The
way this works is that the classic computer will work
out one set of those variables and come up with
an answer and then it will go to the next
(14:50):
set of those variables, like the next arrangement of those stops,
and it will do that for every single variation it
can until it's all done, and then it will compare
are all of those times against each other to determine
the right amount, the right the right version. In which
case what you should do is, uh, the Saturday before
(15:11):
your Saturday when you are going to go on these
these errands, you tell your car what you're gonna do
in a week and give your car a week to
figure it out. And even then, with a classic computer,
you're talking about thousands and thousands of hours of computing
to come up with these answers, even with the fastest
processors we have today. Now, if you were to switch
that to a parallel processor like a graphics processing unit,
(15:33):
then you can do lots of calculations in parallel with
each other, come up with a bunch of answers at
the same time. You know, put those aside and do
the next set of parallel calculations, and you really cut
down on the amount of time it takes to finish this.
But it is a non trivial problem. So if your
car can do it, it means we've reached a level
of computing that's so amazing that I'm not really concerned
about leaving the house anymore. What we're saying is that
(15:56):
hopefully we'll all have quantum computers on our dash. Just
don't if you don't look at your car, it will
get to you to where you're going. Just don't observe
your car, because by observing your car, you have changed
the route Heisenberg's uncertainty card. That's right. Yeah, people will
ask you where are you? Like I can tell you
how fast I am or where I am, but not both,
and make sure you don't accidentally inspire the car to
(16:17):
gain self awareness. No, you definitely don't want to do that, Michael.
All right, so let's uh, let's let's wrap this up, guys.
I mean, this is a great fun discussion to have
because again we're thinking about the future and what it's
going to take for us to get there, and the
fact that it's not all technology. Some of this is
culturally based, some of its policy, you know. So it's
it's fun to really kind of wrap your mind around, Well,
(16:39):
we see what the future could be, but how are
we going to physically get there? These are fun discussions
to have. So guys, if you have any suggestions for
future topics that we should tackle on Forward Thinking, I
recommend you go to our website. It's fw thinking dot com.
Check it out. We've got blogs there, we've got video series,
we've got the podcast, and let us know what you think,
what it's you excited about the future, let us know
(17:01):
what we should be talking about next, and we will
chat with you really soon. For more on this topic
and the future of technology, visit forward thinking dot Com,
(17:22):
brought to you by Toyota Let's Go Places
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Welcome everyone to Forward Thinking the Audio Podcast.
My name is Jonathan Strickling. I'm one of the three
amazing hosts of the show. Hi, I'm Lauren foc Obam,
(00:22):
I'm Joe McCormick. They are equally amazing but modest. Today,
we wanted to talk a little bit more about autonomous cars,
and for people who haven't heard the previous episodes or
maybe aren't familiar with the subject, Joe, why don't you
kind of explain what an autonomous car is. An autonomous
car is basically exactly what it sounds like. It's a
car that is autonomous, which means that it drives itself.
(00:44):
So you get up in the morning and you get
ready for work, and you go out, and you hop
in your car, and you close the door, and you
pop out a book and start to read um and
the car takes you to work without any controller input
from you. You don't need to have your hands on
the steering wheel, you don't need to have your foot
on the brakes, you don't need to be watching the traffic,
(01:05):
and and you know, managing your chance to get out
here on the road at the car drives itself. And
this sounds like I'm amazing, wonderful, beautiful future to people
like me. Yeah, because I hate navigating traffic. And if
I could just get in a car and and sit
down and read a book on the way to work
(01:26):
that I can't I can't tell you how much I
would love that. Yeah, as someone who does not drive,
that might be a surprise to some people, but I
don't drive. I would welcome a robot car overlord into
my life happily so that I could get around without
having to either take a very long walk to the
closest train station, which which I do. I mean, it's
(01:48):
not it's not terrible. There are worse things to have
to do. Or I would have to depend upon the
kindness of my friends who would give me a ride,
and I really don't like doing that because I don't
want them to have to go out of their way
just for me. Right, So I'm also very much looking
forward to this where I could have potentially a car
I could just jump into and say, hey, take me
to such and such, and the only one who's, you know,
(02:09):
inconvenience is a robot and who cares about them, right right.
I'm a little bit dubious about it, honestly. I mean,
I'm I'm excited about the prospect because you know, it's like,
we live in Atlanta. We don't really have terrific public transportation,
which is normally the kind of place where you can
hop in a vehicle and read a book and not
have to worry about the actual controlling the vehicle part um.
But at the same time, I would I would need
(02:30):
a lot of research and possibly into anxiety medication to
give up that kind of control to a to a robot.
Then you know, I don't know that robot. I don't
I don't know where it matriculated. Okay, that's fair. Yeah,
Now that's something we really wanted to talk about in
this podcast, is there are people who might have anxiety
issues about giving up control. That's perfectly legitimate. I'm not
(02:50):
going to, you know, disparage people who have that. I
I have my own hang ups, obviously. I mean I
don't drive, and the reason I don't drive is because
I get severe anxiety behind the wheel of a car.
So I have no problem with someone who gets severe
anxiety with the idea of no one being behind the
wheel of the car. But beyond that we also have,
especially in America, but I imagine in other parts of
(03:11):
the world as well, this sort of relationship between the
idea of driving a car and the whole concept of
free will and taking charge of your life and being
able to have the freedom to go wherever you want,
whenever you want. And there are some views of the
autonomous car that seemed to suggest that you can't have
one and the other that you by having the autonomous
(03:34):
car model, you give up this part of what it
is to to be part of the car culture. UM
and an American particular car culture is a big deal.
We we met before the podcast to kind of talk
this over, and Lauren, you made a really good point.
If you don't have a car in America, you don't
have a whole lot of options of getting around, especially
on the longer distances. Yeah, there's you know, lots of
(03:56):
places in Europe have really great trains that can take
you very fast anywhere that you want to go, um
or or you know, if you happen to live in
New York City or San Francisco or a place that
has a really good metro, then that's terrific. But here
in America, we've we've kind of built our country from
from the end of World War two on on this
concept of of of cars, of the individual motor vehicle
(04:18):
and and just getting in and going. And it's it's
this very sexy, very stylized, filmic epic idea. Yeah, it's
all about the individual. I mean that's again another very
American kind of ideas that you know, put put that
focus on the individual. And people have a relationship with
their cars to sure. I mean a lot of that
seems to come from the act of driving. That you're
spending so much time really manipulating this vehicle, you know,
(04:42):
you're using all the controls on it and stuff like that.
I mean, people name in their car. Yeah, I've I've
named my car. I mean, you know, and I do,
and I do enjoy driving, you know, not in traffic.
I enjoy driving perhaps at night when there's no one
else on the road. But yeah, yeah, I can't even
imagine that to me, the idea of enjoying driving. I mean,
I understand where people are coming from with it, but
(05:03):
it's something I don't identify with it all on a
personal level. And yeah, you're you're exactly right, Joe. I mean,
when you spend that much time manipulating something, you can't
help but form an emotional attachment to it. My wife
and I are a perfect example of that. She spent
years manipulating me, and clearly the emotional ties are tight
or or like the weighted companion cube, I mean, I mean,
I love that cube. Okay, that's another good point. Yeah,
(05:27):
and I'm making light of it, but no, it really
is true that there are relationships with these vehicles. And
I think part of the problem some people have with
the idea of the autonomous car is they seem to
think that we're going to enter into a world where
we no longer have any control. And I don't think
that's ever going to happen. I think that there's always
going to be at least a fail safe option to
(05:48):
switch to manual control. And because of that, I think
that in order to be behind the wheel of an
autonomous car, even if it's an autonomous mode, you would
have to be a licensed driver. I can't imagine we
ever get to a point where it will be all
right for a group of human beings to get into
a vehicle, none of whom have a license and just go, um,
(06:11):
I just don't think that's going to happen. Well, you know,
I kind of hope that someday the technology gets to
that point, because how how wonderful would it be for
someone who is physically or visually impaired, or you know,
who suffered from strokes or for any other reason was
was not capable of getting a driver's license. It would
be completely fabulous to have cars for for that segment
of the opulation. Yeah, they have way more autonomy over
(06:33):
their own lives. Oh yeah, yeah, I mean it would
be it would be great. But you know, it's it's
right now. The technology is certainly not anywhere near there yet,
and and everything is is very much so like you
could read a book, but maybe you want to be
paying attention to what the car is doing, just in
case something goes terribly terribly wrong. Right yeah, right now,
I would say they were pretty far along in the
prototype stage. Obviously, we're not very far into the seeing
(06:56):
it roll out into cars that consumers would have access to.
But the prototype stage, we've already seen cars manipulate their
ways through various city scales, particularly things like San Francisco.
I mean, Google has their fleet of autonomous cars. They've
been working on for a couple of years, and they've
been going through Mountain View, California, which is right there
around the San Francisco area that can be a pretty
(07:17):
congested part of the United States. So they've already started
to prove themselves. And I think there has only been
a couple of accidents that have involved the Google cars,
and when you look at them in comparison to the
number of accidents that happen with human drivers, it's tiny
right now, and we would imagine that that number would
go lower even more as the technology advances and gets
(07:41):
even more precise. Um, I think we're going to have
some people definitely put up a bit of a resistance
to the idea of adapting to autonomous cars. And maybe
we do eventually reach a future where it's the only
way you can buy a car as if it's an
autonomous car, unless it's maybe on the used car market. Well,
I mean, it may someday just be a safety issue, right.
(08:05):
You can imagine a future where we have a member
of Congress standing up in front of the house, you know,
pointing at a chart this many percentage of accidents are
caused by human error we know that, right now. What
do they say about it? All depends on the survey
you read. But yeah, yeah, the National Highway Traffic Safety
Administrations as about that's the overwhelming majority of accidents have
(08:30):
human error as at least a contributing factor. These human
drivers are a menace. They are I mean, you know,
they threaten all of us. Let's let's take them out
of the equation and put robots in charge. Yeah, I
mean that that sort of thing could happen. I imagine
that it would be very difficult for any politician to
to float that by because they have to answer to
(08:53):
their constituents. Like it's hard for me to imagine in
America where people are willingly giving up that ability to
share drive. Uh and Joe, you you brought up another
good point about how this could affect people who tinker
with cars, who like to manipulate cars. I mean, what
happens when we get to a point where the cars
are so advanced that they are beyond the ken of
(09:16):
your average hobbyist mechanic. Oh yeah, a good friend of mine,
he has an old Mercedes from the seventies, and he
takes it apart and puts it back together all the time,
you know, he's always working on it. I somehow doubt
that that's something that you could have the same level
of confidence doing with the car that that requires all
this intense computing. And well, I think that eventually it's
(09:39):
going to turn into the kind of issue where it's
it's that's going to be the realm of hobbyists. I
mean much the same way that that these days, I
have a civic y'all. I mean like like I take
it to a mechanic who I trust, and I have
no idea how that car works, quite honestly. And you know,
for people like your friend, they could probably still you know,
find the parts and put together their car and maybe
take it out to can rent time and a track.
(10:01):
Right now, if you want to go out and and
race your car, that would be pretty silly for me.
But as I can get it all up to all
of like nur, but uh not that I would know
that from from driving on My Sally starts to shake.
But if you can ease it paste, it's smooth salon.
But no, it's just going to I would suspect enter
(10:22):
the realm of of hobby Yeah, well, well, will we
see a convergence of the auto shop tinkerer and the
computer hacker. That's a possibility. I mean, you know, again,
when you're talking about something that is so important when
it comes to the safety of the person who's sitting there,
I mean, there there's there are two arguments to have,
right There's an argument of you shouldn't mess with it
(10:43):
because it could mean that you're risking your life. The
other argument is, who's to say that the hacker isn't
better at designing a system that is safe than the
company is, because we've seen hackers design things that ended
up making huge improvements to products and uh, and so
it's it's an argument that's going that's well, it's being
made in all sorts of industries, but I'm sure in
(11:04):
the car industry it will be way up there because
you're talking about something that's not just a symbol of freedom,
but is a very powerful machine that could be potentially dangerous. So,
I mean that's a good point. It's an interesting question,
especially I can imagine modifications coming in if you're going
to have competing proprietary navigation software, like different car manufacturers
(11:27):
have their own software that they own and control and
is not open source. I mean I can see that
being scary. Yeah, I wonder if that's even going to
be possible the way that I mean, because it's all
going to have to interact with it with an infrastructure,
with an internet of objects around cities that help cars
decide where to go and when to go. Yeah, I
mean that the ultimate build out of the autonomous car
(11:49):
goes beyond the autonomous car. It goes into that internet
of things that we've talked about in the past, this
idea that you have sensors and and and devices that
can react to real time dynamic situations and changed based
upon that, and that the autonomous car would play a
part in this larger system. And in that case, yeah,
you might have to require that everyone used at least
(12:12):
something that can interface with the larger infrastructure. But then
even then, you know, how are you going to build
that infrastructure. Are you going to have it so that
every single major metropolitan area has to roll it out
the same time, because if you don't, one city's infrastructure
could be very different from another city's infrastructure. I drive
from Miami to Atlanta. Yeah, but these are these are
(12:35):
some problems that we don't have the answers to yet
because we aren't there yet. But again, it's one of
those things that we have to think about because it
could very well be that as you're getting to the
outskirts of a city, your car starts to slow down,
and the reason your car is slowing down is because
it's actually downloading the latest update. It needs to be
able to navigate through the next city because it's a
totally different operating system that's there's on this road. It's right,
(13:01):
could be could be had like warning lag ahead. Yeah,
we joke about it, but really, unless you have a
truly open source approach, or maybe not even open source,
just standardized, a standardized approach across all manufacturers in all cities.
Traffic protocol. Yeah, you're just yeah, exactly, it would be
its own kind of it would be literally traffic protocol.
It would be that that kind of a system that
(13:23):
would tell cars how to get through certain areas. I mean,
it's something that has to be thought about. So I've
got a question that I thought would be interesting, Hit Majo.
If we have autonomous cars, how efficient can we get
in terms of all the driving we do. Imagine it's
Saturday morning and I've got six errands I need to
(13:44):
run today, Can my autonomous car solve the traveling salesman
problem and figure out what is the most efficient way
to get to all six of those different places I
need to go? Joe has just posed what is called
a non trivial pro problem, the traveling salesman problem. For
those of you who aren't aware, it's exactly what Joe
is saying. It's the ideas, it's a traveling salesman who
(14:06):
has to visit, you know, a certain number of cities,
and how do you plan out the most efficient route
between all those cities and back home so that the
traveling salesman spends the least amount of time traveling And
it's it sounds simple, but as you add destinations, it
gets increasingly complex because you have to take into account
all the different variations that could occur within that group
(14:28):
of of stops. And then we add traffic into the mix. Yeah,
and then you start adding in dynamic elements, and now
you've really caused some some real uh computer headaches, computer headaches. Yeah.
It's for a classic computer using a regular processor. The
way this works is that the classic computer will work
out one set of those variables and come up with
an answer and then it will go to the next
(14:50):
set of those variables, like the next arrangement of those stops,
and it will do that for every single variation it
can until it's all done, and then it will compare
are all of those times against each other to determine
the right amount, the right the right version. In which
case what you should do is, uh, the Saturday before
(15:11):
your Saturday when you are going to go on these
these errands, you tell your car what you're gonna do
in a week and give your car a week to
figure it out. And even then, with a classic computer,
you're talking about thousands and thousands of hours of computing
to come up with these answers, even with the fastest
processors we have today. Now, if you were to switch
that to a parallel processor like a graphics processing unit,
(15:33):
then you can do lots of calculations in parallel with
each other, come up with a bunch of answers at
the same time. You know, put those aside and do
the next set of parallel calculations, and you really cut
down on the amount of time it takes to finish this.
But it is a non trivial problem. So if your
car can do it, it means we've reached a level
of computing that's so amazing that I'm not really concerned
about leaving the house anymore. What we're saying is that
(15:56):
hopefully we'll all have quantum computers on our dash. Just
don't if you don't look at your car, it will
get to you to where you're going. Just don't observe
your car, because by observing your car, you have changed
the route Heisenberg's uncertainty card. That's right. Yeah, people will
ask you where are you? Like I can tell you
how fast I am or where I am, but not both,
and make sure you don't accidentally inspire the car to
(16:17):
gain self awareness. No, you definitely don't want to do that, Michael.
All right, so let's uh, let's let's wrap this up, guys.
I mean, this is a great fun discussion to have
because again we're thinking about the future and what it's
going to take for us to get there, and the
fact that it's not all technology. Some of this is
culturally based, some of its policy, you know. So it's
it's fun to really kind of wrap your mind around, Well,
(16:39):
we see what the future could be, but how are
we going to physically get there? These are fun discussions
to have. So guys, if you have any suggestions for
future topics that we should tackle on Forward Thinking, I
recommend you go to our website. It's fw thinking dot com.
Check it out. We've got blogs there, we've got video series,
we've got the podcast, and let us know what you think,
what it's you excited about the future, let us know
(17:01):
what we should be talking about next, and we will
chat with you really soon. For more on this topic
and the future of technology, visit forward thinking dot Com,
(17:22):
brought to you by Toyota Let's Go Places
Fw:Thinking News
Hosts And Creators
Jonathan Strickland
Joe McCormick
Lauren Vogelbaum
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