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Trusting Autonomous Vehicles
Why hasn’t philosophy done more to help?
For readers of a certain age, nothing could be cooler than the car — Kitt — from the TV show Knight Rider. Even the still gives me chills!
To help those less familiar, I should explain that Kitt — the car — was a kind of automated vehicle. In fact, it was an incredibly sophisticated AI. Saturday afternoons were never more exciting than when Kitt was helping to track down criminals.
Now as the real world has done its best to catch up with science fiction, we’ve seen the steady development of autonomous vehicles (AVs). And, even if none of them have had quite the panache of the TV show, the potential upsides are incredible.
summarises some of the more optimistic research around AVs. We could see things like:
- 90% reduction in traffic deaths.
- 60% reduction in harmful emissions.
- 10% improvement in fuel economy.
- 40% reduction in travel time.
- $5bn of consumer savings.
If even half of those benefits were realised, that would be an amazing outcome.
