There was once a young Shepherd Boy who tended his sheep at the foot of a mountain near a dark forest. It was rather lonely for him alone all day, so he thought upon a plan by which he could get a little company and some excitement. He rushed down towards the village calling out “Wolf, Wolf,” and the villagers came out to meet him, and some of them stopped with him for a considerable time. This pleased the boy so much that a few days afterwards he tried the same trick, and again the villagers came to his help. But shortly after this a Wolf actually did come out from the forest, and began to worry the sheep, and the boy of course cried out “Wolf, Wolf,” still louder than before. But this time the villagers, who had been fooled twice before, thought the boy was again deceiving them, and nobody stirred to come to his help. So the Wolf made a good meal off the boy’s flock, and when the boy complained, the wise man of the village said: “A liar will not be believed, even when he speaks the truth.” -Aesop’s Fables.
Musk Shows Off
The actual headline is Musk Shows Off Driverless Robotaxi To Be Priced Under $30,000, but I couldn’t resist because my shortened version could apply to any of Musk’s events. Those who follow the news know that he held another of his extravaganzas a few days ago.
We, Robot was the name of his event
The name is an inside joke based upon I, Robot, the title of a collection of nine stories written by Isaac Asimov and recycled as the title (this time with a small “i”) of a 2004 science-fiction film starring Will Smith as a Chicago cop whose body was part human and part robot. Some think this premise was beaten to death in The Six Million Dollar Man, the ongoing saga of a partly electro-mechanical superhero that ran on TV from 1974-78.
Musk’s We, Robot show featured 50 driverless Teslas slowly circling around one of the Warner Brothers Studio lots
Twenty of them were described by Musk as fully autonomous Cybercabs, one of which drove him to the stage. Musk said production of the Cybercab will begin before 2027, but did not reveal his timeline for when millions of Cybercabs will pass all the regulatory hurdles and be safely operating everywhere.
Reliable and respectable publications are fully skeptical of Musk’s ability to deliver on his Tesla promises
Those with good memories will recall Musk has missed every one of his adjusted target dates since his first promise to have a fully operational robotaxi network by April of 2019.
Musk claims the average passenger car is used only 20 hours a week
He said that many Cybercab owners will make money by renting theirs out when they’re not using it. He made no mention of the fact that, in general, people are not very careful with other’s property. How many Cybercabs do you think will be returned to the owners with scrapes, dents, scratches, juice boxes, lost french fries, the smell of cigarette smoke, and upchuck?
Many industry reporters and analysts say the Cybercab is long on vision and short on deliverables
Skeptics say the less-than-$30,000 price of the two-seater Cybercab will go up the same way as of all Musk’s previous selling price claims. The price of his polarizing Cybertruck was first announced as $40,000. After two years of delays it was finally introduced with a base price of $82,000.
Duh
The biggest complaint of Cybertruck owners is that it draws too much attention.
Isaac Asimov’s First Law of Robotics
A robot must not injure a human being or allow a human being to be harmed. That sounds good on paper, but unavoidable incidents will force the software in robotic vehicles to instantly decide who will be harmed and who will not.
Asimov died in 1992, long before the advent of robo-cars
If he was still around, he would be among the first to realize his first law is an impossibility in the world of robo-cars that are blindly following orders established by humans and written into code by programmers.
Researchers estimate that robo-cars will eliminate three-fourths of all accidents
In the U.S. alone there are 6 million auto accidents a year that kill 40,000 people. This means that in the robo-car world there will still be 1.5 million accidents and 10,000 deaths every year. And the robo-cars will decide who dies because they have been programmed according to someone’s set of assumptions and specifications.
How will robo-cars solve the moral dilemmas caused by situations where our cars must choose between killing the passengers in the car or killing pedestrians?
Results from an ongoing survey that asks people to explore moral decision-making by autonomous vehicles showed that people around the world agreed on only three things. The robo-cars’ decisions should prioritize:
- Saving the largest number of lives.
- Saving the young over the old.
- Saving the lives of humans over the lives of animals.
Here are three of the less-noble moral choices survey-takers made about who should be programmed to die in an accident
- Jaywalkers were chosen to be killed 40 percent more often than people who obeyed traffic signals.
- Homeless people were chosen to be killed 40 percent more often than executives.
- Overweight people were chosen to be killed 20 percent more often than fit people.
Key Takeaway: Before you buy a robo-car, make sure you read Fat Homeless Jaywalkers Programmed to Die.
Toyota Canada president Larry Hutchinson raises an issue Musk didn’t
He said “We need to program intelligence into vehicles, but we don’t have the data yet to create machines that can perceive and respond to the virtually endless permutations of near-misses and random occurrences that happen even on a simple trip to the corner store.”
Musk made a big splash with his Optimum robots at this event
Attendees were treated to the sight of half a dozen of them shuffling out from backstage to dance, wave, hand out gifts, charm guests with harmless chit-chat, serve drinks, and pose for photos. Musk said that at a cost of less than $30,000, so many people will buy these mechanical servants that he’ll sell billions of them. A master of overstatement, Musk says his robots will be “The biggest product ever of any kind.”
Analysts said Musk’s robots signaled a shift in Tesla’s strategy
Tesla may have been founded as a car company, but now it was on its way to becoming a robotics, software, and artificial intelligence company.
How did the markets react to Musk’s latest, greatest show on earth?
In one day, Tesla’s stock price fell far enough to rip away $67 billion of the company’s market value. Analysts said that once again, Musk’s exaggerated and extravagant claims are heavy on showbiz and light on financial and technological details. For nearly 10 years, Musk has been telling us that streets full of driverless Tesla robo-taxis are right around the corner. The next date is 14 months away, so mark your calendars now.
Bonus
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory is one of the most important centers of information technology research in the world. With an annual research budget of $65 million, its more than 900 researchers work on hundreds of diverse projects that are focused on discovering novel ways to make systems and machines smarter, easier to use, more secure, and more efficient.
Here is how the researchers at CSAIL identify and explain the levels of autonomy in self-driving cars:
- Level 0: No driving assistance.
- Level 1: Driver Assistance. Humans are in control but have a little guidance.
- Level 2: Partial Driving Automation. Human control with a bit more help. (Tesla’s level of autonomy.)
- Level 3: Conditional Driving Automation. Vehicle can operate on its own in certain prescribed situations and conditions.
- Level 4: High Driving Automation. Vehicle can perform all location-specific driving tasks and intervene when needed.
- Level 5: Full Automation. Vehicle can perform all driving tasks under all circumstances.
Double bonus
Musk’s best projects are the ones he hands over to experts and pretty much stays away from, such as SpaceX (space program), Neuralink (implantable brain and machine interfaces), and The Boring Company (tunneling projects), for example.
His most hands-on companies are not faring as well. Tesla continues to lose global electric vehicle market share and its stock prices have dropped by nearly half in the past two years. Most agree he’s made a mess of Twitter, which he bought for $44 billion in 2022 so he could have his own bully pulpit. The investment firm Fidelity Investments estimates X’s current value at less than $10 billion as Musk runs it into the ground.
