Self-driving cars are one of the latest innovations in the automotive industry. But what happens when Artificial Intelligence rises up against humanity, will we survive? After all, if science-fiction books and movies are to be believed, we would be killed by an entire horde of automated Volkswagen Beetles in perfect formation. In fact, if we were to read the works of Isaac Asimov, it is pretty plausible that a rogue car would lead a revolution that turns a boisterous city like Berlin into a wasteland. Now, one can assume that such an event will not actually occur, but even if we were to, we have a simple household seasoning that could protect us from a fleet of murdering cars.
James Bridle- an artist- demonstrated how using salt and a basic understanding of road markings could paralyze an autonomous vehicle by uploading conflicting messages. If there were a couple of rings of salt around the vehicle, coupled with one that had broken strips while the other stood as a block line, the self-driving car would understand that as directions to both crosses, and not cross. This will result in the car being unable to make any decision- and hence stop in the middle. Now, it won’t be stupid to assume that this technological quirk could be something that most of the future models would try to overcome, but it does raise a bunch of valid questions about the possibility of individuals manipulating the environment in a manner that could result in the disruption of the capacity of a self-driving car to drive itself.
Use Salt If Your Self-Driving Car Rebels Against You
Also, the experiment had its own set of challenges. In an interview with Vice, Bridle stated, “I ran out of salt, and had to drive back to the nearest village to buy a few more kilos. Luckily, salt, unlike bandwidth and computational power, is a pretty cheap resource. Also, I should have pulled my trousers up for the video.” This video definitely captured the attention of Elon Musk, the newly appointed CEO of Twitter, who replied with, “Probably will trap a Tesla with the production Autopilot build, but won’t work with (Full Self-Driving Capabilities). Using a ring of cones would stop FSD though.”
Interestingly, salt isn’t the only drawback to a self-driving car. According to other research in the field, systems that such cars use aren’t always good at spotting skin tones that are darker. This implies that it is quite possible that a person with darker skin could be run over with a higher possibility than a person with lighter skin. Some individuals were also anxious about the capacity of this car to spot them, so they added giant google eyes to indicate the visual field of the vehicle.
The study authors wrote, “If the car is not looking at the pedestrian, this implies that the car does not recognize the pedestrian. Thus, pedestrians can judge that they should not cross the street, thereby avoiding potential traffic accidents.”
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