Your editorial (Humans must not become back-seat drivers for computers, 2 July) reaches the right conclusions that cars will be safer when humans no longer drive, but there is much more to it than recognising large white articulated trucks, paper bags or aggressive drivers. Doesn’t the software need a driving test?
The pressure for autonomous driving comes from the Googles, Baidus and Apples of this world, who want the drivers’ time to surf the web or download their music. They want totally autonomous vehicles, without steering wheels, that will revolutionise transport for the old, the young and the disabled. The car companies are being pushed, reluctantly, into this revolution, clinging on to their marketing pitch of selling the “driving experience” and keeping the steering wheel available for the driver to use. No revolution here for the old, young and disabled.
The tragedy for Joshua Brown, who died under the bright white sides of an articulated trailer, was that the car companies regard the software as an “add-on”, and they are failing to adopt the processes and protocols of autonomous systems.
As the director of an autonomous system for the past 10 years, running a robotic telescope in the Canary Islands with 160,000 users, I – along with my colleagues – faced the challenge of operating optimally and keeping the instruments safe whatever the weather; not quite life-threatening, but computationally demanding. Modern autonomous systems can not only separate out white trucks from bright Florida skies and paper bags from dogs and children, but can analyse facial expressions to learn the intent of aggressive and other drivers.
Vehicle-driving software should be subjected to testing and validation to probe its reactions under all imaginable conditions. Testing, as for human drivers, is an essential step in getting us to accept robot drivers.
John Baruch
Director of robotic telescopes, University of Bradford
There is no global deficiency of dietary vitamin A (Nobel-winners tell Greenpeace: don’t block GM, 1 July). The deficiencies lie in places where there is a shortage of virtually every other commodity. The problem is poverty, not a lack of genetically modified rice. Poverty is caused by the pursuit of commercial gain in preference to humanitarian interests.
Kevin Bannon
London