Hello, I’m apparently one of the insane people who doubts big tech’s claim that soon we’ll all have self driving cars.

When I say this, I get cries of “Oh, you just don’t believe in technology!”, “you’re just scared of the future” and other such compelling arguments.

But let me tell you WHY I don’t believe that this technology is as full proof and inevitable as Elon Musk would have us believe.

I’m not a Technology-phobic hermit who will not touch a smart phone. To the contrary, I am a programmer of around 10 years and I have some experience programming machine learning systems with python and data scrapping for machine learning systems. So when I tell you that I understand these systems better than most, maybe you should believe me.

So lets start with some pictures.

This is a hotdog food trailer. You as a human instantly would recognize this going down the road as “vehicle avoid”. But a machine doesn’t really have that luxury. It would have to have dozens or hundreds of images of this trailer or one very similar to it, in order to recognize it and understand it should avoid it.

Okay, you say, but it’s pretty rare that you would come across that. And that is exactly my point.

Machine learning cars to be completely full proof must have every single situation possible, every vehicle possible every variation of human possible programmed into it’s system in order to recognize them.

Let’s look at another one:

You as a human, recognize that these are people in costume. The machine driving the car will likely not. It will not recognize these as people and realize that it should steer clear.

In fact, you don’t have to dress up in a costume, you could just have the wrong skin tone. We have known for a while that human facial recognition software has problems with recognizing people with darker skin.

Or you could have some physical disability that changes your Silhouette

Or… or… or…

These are just a few things off the top of my head. Every day I see something that I likely have never seen before on the road. From people doing a u turn where they shouldn’t to some festival or party, to a strange car. As a human, I can recognize and correct accordingly. But a machine, no matter how much data we feed it, will not comprehend something it has never seen before.

If someone hasn’t blown me off, they usually come back with, “but we have them now and they work”

To that I reply, “peer behind the curtain”. You see tech companies want us to believe that this technology “just works” so they only show us the best possible outcomes. Typically the video is edited, the scenarios scripted, the path planned before hand. These work together to make us believe that so called “AI” has come further than it actually has.

As an example I present “the most advanced humanoid robot”

Sophia, “the most advanced humanoid robot”

Would you believe me if I told you that this robot, “The most advanced” was actually not much smarter than:

That’s right, the animatronic Lincoln who was created in the 70’s.

For those of you who don’t believe me, realize that the person who created Sophia “The most advanced robot in existence” is named David Hanson, and he actually got his degree in Film, and worked as an imaginer (the people who make animatronics for Disney)

People who give interviews to Sophia are given a script and they follow along as Sophia ‘talks’. She has a bit of deviation, but not much.

The problem with this, and PR stunts like it, is that it gives a false sense of where the technology actually is.

This is where the technology actually is. The difference being, if your Siri or Alexa messes up, what is the worst that can happen? You order extra toilet paper? If your Tesla messes up, you kill someone. now imagine thousands to millions of them on the road.

But I think the biggest problem I have with people who tell me “oh they’re just coming” is that, without a doubt, most of these people haven’t done enough research on the subject to form a solid opinion. ‘someone told me’ is not a valid point. (And I’d be lying if I said that, that isn’t what makes me the maddest)

Please, if you do not know enough to form an opinion, either research it, or be willing to listen to other people, especially those of us who actually know what’s going on and are more skeptical of Elon Musk (who apparently to some is the second coming of Jesus)