Artificial Intelligence and Driverless Cars: An Interview with Vivek Wadhwa – Huffington Post

Uber has been in the news for all the wrong reasons of late. Among its many sins, he company's canterkours CEO Travis Kalanick recently argued with a driver over fares.

If you think that Kalanick doesn't really value the company's "driver-partners", you are correct. Uber may be exceptional in its CEOs acerbic temperament, but at least it has plenty of company in another regard: Uber is among many firms working on removing drivers from the equation altogether. Make no mistake: driverless cars are coming.

To this end, I recently sat down withVivek Wadhwa, author ofThe Driver in the Driverless Car: How Our Technology Choices Will Create the Future. (Wadhwa worked withformer BusinessWeek technology editor Alex Salkever.) The following are excerpts from our conversation.

PS: What was your motivation for writing the book?

VW: Advancing technologies such as artificial intelligence, robots, sensors, and synthetic biology have made amazing things possible. It has literally become possible to solve the grand challenges of humanityproblems such as disease, hunger, energy, and education. We could, within two or three decades, be in an era of abundance, in which we live long and healthy lives, have unlimited clean energy and education, and have our most basic wants and needs met. At the same time, these technologies are making is possible to create new nightmares: killer viruses, safety and security hazards, and a jobless future. And they are widening the gap between the haves and have nots. The people who are being left out are getting angry and resentful. We are seeing this anger manifest itself in many waysincluding the elections.

I wrote the book to start educating parents, teachers, students, policy makers, and thinkers about the choices we must make to ensure that we head into a utopian future rather than continue on the path of dystopia that we have taken. I honestly see the possibility of creating a Star Trek future300 years ahead of schedule. I also see the possibilities of Mad Max. And I am convinced that we can get this rightif we all learn the possibilities and make sensible choices.

PS: Why have companies made so much progress with driverless and semi-autonomous cars so recently?

VW: Artificial Intelligence, which we had written off as dead is alive and kicking. It is now advancing on an exponential curve. Advances in a new form of AI called machine learning, are allowing the software to program itself. The computer is taught what to learn and how to learn and makes its own decisions. These are modeling the human mind itself using techniques similar to our learning processes. Before, it could take millions of lines of computer code to perform tasks such image recognitionwhich is needed for self driving cars. Now it can be done in hundreds of lines. All that is required is a large number of examples so that the computer can teach itself.

PS: Ive read reports about how traffic in cities may drop considerably. New apartments may replace parking structures. Are there any other potential benefits beyond being able to work in your car while it drives you to work?

VW: We will be far more productive, distance will no longer be a barrierso we can live 150 miles away and still get to work in time, and accidents will largely be a thing of the past. Also the disabled will no longer struggle to find transportation, mothers will be able to send their children to school without worrying about them reaching safely, and everyone will be able to afford to be mobilebecause of the reliability, safety, and lower costs of these technologies. Also, women and children will never worry about getting a cab ride late at night. Driving While Black will no longer be a vicious form of discrimination.

PS: Weve seen taxicab companies violently resist Uber and Lyft. Truckers cant be happy either. Is disruption here inevitable? Why wouldnt they take to Washington?

VW: This is just the beginning. As industries get disrupted, we will have large scale social disorder. People will feel disenfranchised and lose the sense of identity that comes from work. We just arent ready for the changes that are about to happen. I have discussed the core technologies in Driver in the Driverless Car, but am now working on my next book about how we can deal with the jobless future that is inevitable. How will we manage the transition, what sort of policies do we need to develop, and what will the new social order look likethese are some of the things I am now researching.

PS: Is Ubers CEO intent on self-immolation?

VW: Travis Kalanick represents everything that is bad about the technology industry: the greed, sexism, arrogance, and lack of ethics and values. This is why I teach: to show my engineering students the good they can do with technology and to inspire them to use it to uplift humanity rather than destroy it by becoming like Kalanick and others who lack a sense of social purpose.

This is how I conclude my book. It summarizes in a different way, the questions you are asking:

I showed you a broad range of technologies and asked you to view them through a lens or filter to assess their value to society and mankind. I asked you to consider whether they had the potential to benefit everyone equally, what the risks and the rewards were, and whether the technology more strongly promote autonomy or dependence. It is fairness and equality that are at the heart of these questions. Industry disruption is going to happen; tens of millions of jobs are going to disappear; our lives will change for the better and for the worse. If we manage it equitably and ease the transition and pain for the people who are most affected and least prepared, we can get to Star Trek: we can be living in an era in which every one of us has food, shelter, education, and light, and is connected to all. We will have better lives if we can adapt quickly enoughpsychologically, socially, ethically, and legallyand adjust to a world that changes literally before our eyes, every day, every minute.

At the end of the day, I believe that you will figure this out and we, as a collective race, will figure this out. Despite my fears, I know that humanity will rise to the occasion and uplift itself because it always has. We wouldnt have gotten this far if we did not have it in us to rise to great occasions.

Of the Star Trek future, Captain Picard once said: The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of Humanity. That is the future that we must build together.

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Artificial Intelligence and Driverless Cars: An Interview with Vivek Wadhwa - Huffington Post