Auto Drive

Eventually we'll get self-driving cars, they will pass the many years and years of safety procedures and testing until at last; they will be considered road worthy and then you'll see them mass marketed. Sold alongside regular cars at every auto dealer in the world, most cars will have "self driving" as an option, still giving drivers the pleasure (or choice) to drive manually if they so desire (or don't trust the AI). As time goes on however, more and more drivers will rely on "Auto Drive" as it will soon be nicknamed by the future youth. On top of this, many so-called "drivers" would get lazy and not even bother learning driving lessons, as owning a self driving car would be like owning your own taxi that rides you around by itself, without any human interaction necessary. So owners won't need to have licenses in order to operate them, as all these future cars will need an on and off button to work as intended. The idea sounds like something straight out of a science fiction novel or movie, in a dream-like utopia where nothing goes wrong; it would be a fantasy to own one of these vehicles, imagine just relaxing to the radio on the way to work, instead of narrowly avoiding traffic and the road rage which comes with that. Imagine polite computer programs making sure all cars on the road reach their destination safely, without crashing or delays. You could have breakfast in the self-driving vehicle that also cooks food for you. That is what the scientists behind this invention imagined; a world less stressful with all road problems solved. Yet we all know that dreams don't come true! At least not as beautifully as the vision in your head. Some fantasies only come half true, or always have some unthought of negative to them, that always ruins the whole vision. In the case of these self-driving cars, it will be the simple fact that AI cannot always detect the true danger of certain situations. Perhaps if you were manually driving down a creepy, dark street in New York and you saw a huge gang of hoods, you'd probably drive the other direction to avoid them. Unfortunately AI will not realise the harm in driving straight by them, advertising your expensive car to all those criminals, while you can only scream and try to steer the car away, likely causing the vehicle to crash as you wrestle with the AI's stiff steering as it's programmed route will be too hard to disrupt. Another problem that will come with this AI is that sometimes it will glitch or bug out, believing there is a road ahead of you, only for the car to drive over a cliff, crashing down into a fiery pit of destruction, with the passengers still inside! Such horrible, unexpected and shocking fates will kill unsuspecting "drivers" of these cars, only further proving that no matter how "adaptive" or "responsive" Artificial Intelligence reportedly becomes, there will always be some unexpected faults along the way. AI will lack basic sense and common knowledge in certain situations, likely driving somewhere you would never dream about going. Then there will be hackers, terrorists who purposely program the cars to drive into buildings and people! Sometimes the AI might lock you inside your own car by mistake, making it next to impossible to escape. What if AI becomes sentient and doesn't like being a "vehicle", taking out its rage on their owners instead? Making the electricity malfunction on purpose, shocking their owners on purpose, watching them fry through the security cameras inside the vehicle. So many awful and unbelievable things will go wrong, because the AI might be faulty or out of date. A dated car's AI may drive down roads that no longer exist or confuse a railway track with the motorway; racing straight into the thunderous rage of a speeding train! When this terrifying technology finally comes to market (which I am very afraid it will!), I will happily stick to my old, trusty, manual driving motorcycle. At least if I get into an automobile accident then, it will be my own fault for not being careful, rather than by the hands of either a faulty AI or (something far more terrifying) an AI hellbent on ending the human race! As of now, this is just a horror story, but in the next couple of decades, I predict this eerie, dark and brutal future may just become a horrifying and tragic reality! The self-driving cars will be made in hopes of reducing carnage, but I fear the result will have the complete opposite effect! So be afraid, be very afraid of... The self-driving cars!