Tesla motors CEO, and libertarian hero, Elon Musk made a startlingly sad, probably true prediction that one day it will be illegal for humans to drive cars. Musk thinks that one day when cars are self-driving that legislators will make it a crime for humans to do so.
Speaking at a forum at the NVidia developer’s conference, Musk said:
“I don’t think we have to worry about autonomous cars, because that’s sort of like a narrow form of AI. It would be like an elevator. They used to have elevator operators, and then we developed some simple circuitry to have elevators just automatically come to the floor that you’re at … the car is going to be just like that.” So what happens when we get there? Musk believes that the next move will be to outlaw humans driving. “It’s too dangerous,” Musk said. “You can’t have a person driving a two-ton death machine.”
Musk says that he is working on adding self-driving technology to Tesla’s fleet of electric vehicles. He wants them to go full autopilot in the upcoming “Model S,” which is supposed to brake, change speed, and use sensors to keep you in the proper lane. TheVerge.com reports that the next logical step is to combine highway driving and GPS navigational features, seamlessly syncing them all so that the driver is no longer necessary.
The problem of self driving cars isn’t the highway, it’s the neighborhood. A lot of things can happen when cars are in the 15-50mph speed range. “That’s where you get a lot of unexpected things,” Musk said.
A major concern, the potential hacking of vehicles, was addressed. “We’ve put a lot of effort into that, and we’ve had third parties try to hack it,” Musk said.
