It may be a pure coincidence that as I stumbled on this article about Tesla that, in the background, Billy Joel's song "Shameless" was playing. The story was about how Elon Musk's company wants an advocacy group take down videos of its vehicles striking child-size mannequins, alleging the footage is defamatory and misrepresents its most advanced driver-assistance software.
So let's back up half a step. Tesla, along with a few other car manufacturers, have been working on developing software and hardware that will allow their vehicles to drive themselves. I am personally fond of the ones that have creates systems that enable hands-free parallel parking. That one portion of the driver's license test terrified me. Little did I know that my examiner would skip that portion of the exam and I would fail miserably because I turned from a one way street into oncoming traffic. I would imagine that a pinch of common sense would have saved me there. No need for auto-pilot.
But are we really ready for artificial intelligence to take over our commutes? Isn't this precisely the scenario or which our robot overlords have been waiting?
And while we're on the subject, I was reminded of a phrase I read earlier this week. A reporter was asked about the leaning toward catastrophe in media, to which he responded, "We don't go to the airport to cover landings."
Brrrr.
Which is why a series of videos where expensive experimental robot cars running over child-size mannequins gets so much play. Supporters of Tesla have suggested recreating the demonstrations, sometimes involving real children, in an effort to show that Tesla's software does actually work.
What could go wrong?
Well, once you know that the head of this "advocacy group" is none other than tech founder and billionaire Dan O'Dowd, whose own work in operating systems for planes and cars could be seen as direct competition for Tesla's.
Or maybe Dan and Elon are both robots, and their plan proceeds apace.
Stay tuned.
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