Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Welcome everyone to Forward Thinking the Audio Podcast.
Speaker 1: My name is Jonathan Strickling. I'm one of the three
Speaker 1: amazing hosts of the show. Hi, I'm Lauren foc Obam,
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. They are equally amazing but modest. Today,
Speaker 1: we wanted to talk a little bit more about autonomous cars,
Speaker 1: and for people who haven't heard the previous episodes or
Speaker 1: maybe aren't familiar with the subject, Joe, why don't you
Speaker 1: kind of explain what an autonomous car is. An autonomous
Speaker 1: car is basically exactly what it sounds like. It's a
Speaker 1: car that is autonomous, which means that it drives itself.
Speaker 1: So you get up in the morning and you get
Speaker 1: ready for work, and you go out, and you hop
Speaker 1: in your car, and you close the door, and you
Speaker 1: pop out a book and start to read um and
Speaker 1: the car takes you to work without any controller input
Speaker 1: from you. You don't need to have your hands on
Speaker 1: the steering wheel, you don't need to have your foot
Speaker 1: on the brakes, you don't need to be watching the traffic,
Speaker 1: and and you know, managing your chance to get out
Speaker 1: here on the road at the car drives itself. And
Speaker 1: this sounds like I'm amazing, wonderful, beautiful future to people
Speaker 1: like me. Yeah, because I hate navigating traffic. And if
Speaker 1: I could just get in a car and and sit
Speaker 1: down and read a book on the way to work
Speaker 1: that I can't I can't tell you how much I
Speaker 1: would love that. Yeah, as someone who does not drive,
Speaker 1: that might be a surprise to some people, but I
Speaker 1: don't drive. I would welcome a robot car overlord into
Speaker 1: my life happily so that I could get around without
Speaker 1: having to either take a very long walk to the
Speaker 1: closest train station, which which I do. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: not it's not terrible. There are worse things to have
Speaker 1: to do. Or I would have to depend upon the
Speaker 1: kindness of my friends who would give me a ride,
Speaker 1: and I really don't like doing that because I don't
Speaker 1: want them to have to go out of their way
Speaker 1: just for me. Right, So I'm also very much looking
Speaker 1: forward to this where I could have potentially a car
Speaker 1: I could just jump into and say, hey, take me
Speaker 1: to such and such, and the only one who's, you know,
Speaker 1: inconvenience is a robot and who cares about them, right right.
Speaker 1: I'm a little bit dubious about it, honestly. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm excited about the prospect because you know, it's like,
Speaker 1: we live in Atlanta. We don't really have terrific public transportation,
Speaker 1: which is normally the kind of place where you can
Speaker 1: hop in a vehicle and read a book and not
Speaker 1: have to worry about the actual controlling the vehicle part um.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, I would I would need
Speaker 1: a lot of research and possibly into anxiety medication to
Speaker 1: give up that kind of control to a to a robot.
Speaker 1: Then you know, I don't know that robot. I don't
Speaker 1: I don't know where it matriculated. Okay, that's fair. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Now that's something we really wanted to talk about in
Speaker 1: this podcast, is there are people who might have anxiety
Speaker 1: issues about giving up control. That's perfectly legitimate. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to, you know, disparage people who have that. I
Speaker 1: I have my own hang ups, obviously. I mean I
Speaker 1: don't drive, and the reason I don't drive is because
Speaker 1: I get severe anxiety behind the wheel of a car.
Speaker 1: So I have no problem with someone who gets severe
Speaker 1: anxiety with the idea of no one being behind the
Speaker 1: wheel of the car. But beyond that we also have,
Speaker 1: especially in America, but I imagine in other parts of
Speaker 1: the world as well, this sort of relationship between the
Speaker 1: idea of driving a car and the whole concept of
Speaker 1: free will and taking charge of your life and being
Speaker 1: able to have the freedom to go wherever you want,
Speaker 1: whenever you want. And there are some views of the
Speaker 1: autonomous car that seemed to suggest that you can't have
Speaker 1: one and the other that you by having the autonomous
Speaker 1: car model, you give up this part of what it
Speaker 1: is to to be part of the car culture. UM
Speaker 1: and an American particular car culture is a big deal.
Speaker 1: We we met before the podcast to kind of talk
Speaker 1: this over, and Lauren, you made a really good point.
Speaker 1: If you don't have a car in America, you don't
Speaker 1: have a whole lot of options of getting around, especially
Speaker 1: on the longer distances. Yeah, there's you know, lots of
Speaker 1: places in Europe have really great trains that can take
Speaker 1: you very fast anywhere that you want to go, um
Speaker 1: or or you know, if you happen to live in
Speaker 1: New York City or San Francisco or a place that
Speaker 1: has a really good metro, then that's terrific. But here
Speaker 1: in America, we've we've kind of built our country from
Speaker 1: from the end of World War two on on this
Speaker 1: concept of of of cars, of the individual motor vehicle
Speaker 1: and and just getting in and going. And it's it's
Speaker 1: this very sexy, very stylized, filmic epic idea. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: all about the individual. I mean that's again another very
Speaker 1: American kind of ideas that you know, put put that
Speaker 1: focus on the individual. And people have a relationship with
Speaker 1: their cars to sure. I mean a lot of that
Speaker 1: seems to come from the act of driving. That you're
Speaker 1: spending so much time really manipulating this vehicle, you know,
Speaker 1: you're using all the controls on it and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: I mean, people name in their car. Yeah, I've I've
Speaker 1: named my car. I mean, you know, and I do,
Speaker 1: and I do enjoy driving, you know, not in traffic.
Speaker 1: I enjoy driving perhaps at night when there's no one
Speaker 1: else on the road. But yeah, yeah, I can't even
Speaker 1: imagine that to me, the idea of enjoying driving. I mean,
Speaker 1: I understand where people are coming from with it, but
Speaker 1: it's something I don't identify with it all on a
Speaker 1: personal level. And yeah, you're you're exactly right, Joe. I mean,
Speaker 1: when you spend that much time manipulating something, you can't
Speaker 1: help but form an emotional attachment to it. My wife
Speaker 1: and I are a perfect example of that. She spent
Speaker 1: years manipulating me, and clearly the emotional ties are tight
Speaker 1: or or like the weighted companion cube, I mean, I mean,
Speaker 1: I love that cube. Okay, that's another good point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm making light of it, but no, it really
Speaker 1: is true that there are relationships with these vehicles. And
Speaker 1: I think part of the problem some people have with
Speaker 1: the idea of the autonomous car is they seem to
Speaker 1: think that we're going to enter into a world where
Speaker 1: we no longer have any control. And I don't think
Speaker 1: that's ever going to happen. I think that there's always
Speaker 1: going to be at least a fail safe option to
Speaker 1: switch to manual control. And because of that, I think
Speaker 1: that in order to be behind the wheel of an
Speaker 1: autonomous car, even if it's an autonomous mode, you would
Speaker 1: have to be a licensed driver. I can't imagine we
Speaker 1: ever get to a point where it will be all
Speaker 1: right for a group of human beings to get into
Speaker 1: a vehicle, none of whom have a license and just go, um,
Speaker 1: I just don't think that's going to happen. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I kind of hope that someday the technology gets to
Speaker 1: that point, because how how wonderful would it be for
Speaker 1: someone who is physically or visually impaired, or you know,
Speaker 1: who suffered from strokes or for any other reason was
Speaker 1: was not capable of getting a driver's license. It would
Speaker 1: be completely fabulous to have cars for for that segment
Speaker 1: of the opulation. Yeah, they have way more autonomy over
Speaker 1: their own lives. Oh yeah, yeah, I mean it would
Speaker 1: be it would be great. But you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: right now. The technology is certainly not anywhere near there yet,
Speaker 1: and and everything is is very much so like you
Speaker 1: could read a book, but maybe you want to be
Speaker 1: paying attention to what the car is doing, just in
Speaker 1: case something goes terribly terribly wrong. Right yeah, right now,
Speaker 1: I would say they were pretty far along in the
Speaker 1: prototype stage. Obviously, we're not very far into the seeing
Speaker 1: it roll out into cars that consumers would have access to.
Speaker 1: But the prototype stage, we've already seen cars manipulate their
Speaker 1: ways through various city scales, particularly things like San Francisco.
Speaker 1: I mean, Google has their fleet of autonomous cars. They've
Speaker 1: been working on for a couple of years, and they've
Speaker 1: been going through Mountain View, California, which is right there
Speaker 1: around the San Francisco area that can be a pretty
Speaker 1: congested part of the United States. So they've already started
Speaker 1: to prove themselves. And I think there has only been
Speaker 1: a couple of accidents that have involved the Google cars,
Speaker 1: and when you look at them in comparison to the
Speaker 1: number of accidents that happen with human drivers, it's tiny
Speaker 1: right now, and we would imagine that that number would
Speaker 1: go lower even more as the technology advances and gets
Speaker 1: even more precise. Um, I think we're going to have
Speaker 1: some people definitely put up a bit of a resistance
Speaker 1: to the idea of adapting to autonomous cars. And maybe
Speaker 1: we do eventually reach a future where it's the only
Speaker 1: way you can buy a car as if it's an
Speaker 1: autonomous car, unless it's maybe on the used car market. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, it may someday just be a safety issue, right.
Speaker 1: You can imagine a future where we have a member
Speaker 1: of Congress standing up in front of the house, you know,
Speaker 1: pointing at a chart this many percentage of accidents are
Speaker 1: caused by human error we know that, right now. What
Speaker 1: do they say about it? All depends on the survey
Speaker 1: you read. But yeah, yeah, the National Highway Traffic Safety
Speaker 1: Administrations as about that's the overwhelming majority of accidents have
Speaker 1: human error as at least a contributing factor. These human
Speaker 1: drivers are a menace. They are I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: they threaten all of us. Let's let's take them out
Speaker 1: of the equation and put robots in charge. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean that that sort of thing could happen. I imagine
Speaker 1: that it would be very difficult for any politician to
Speaker 1: to float that by because they have to answer to
Speaker 1: their constituents. Like it's hard for me to imagine in
Speaker 1: America where people are willingly giving up that ability to
Speaker 1: share drive. Uh and Joe, you you brought up another
Speaker 1: good point about how this could affect people who tinker
Speaker 1: with cars, who like to manipulate cars. I mean, what
Speaker 1: happens when we get to a point where the cars
Speaker 1: are so advanced that they are beyond the ken of
Speaker 1: your average hobbyist mechanic. Oh yeah, a good friend of mine,
Speaker 1: he has an old Mercedes from the seventies, and he
Speaker 1: takes it apart and puts it back together all the time,
Speaker 1: you know, he's always working on it. I somehow doubt
Speaker 1: that that's something that you could have the same level
Speaker 1: of confidence doing with the car that that requires all
Speaker 1: this intense computing. And well, I think that eventually it's
Speaker 1: going to turn into the kind of issue where it's
Speaker 1: it's that's going to be the realm of hobbyists. I
Speaker 1: mean much the same way that that these days, I
Speaker 1: have a civic y'all. I mean like like I take
Speaker 1: it to a mechanic who I trust, and I have
Speaker 1: no idea how that car works, quite honestly. And you know,
Speaker 1: for people like your friend, they could probably still you know,
Speaker 1: find the parts and put together their car and maybe
Speaker 1: take it out to can rent time and a track.
Speaker 1: Right now, if you want to go out and and
Speaker 1: race your car, that would be pretty silly for me.
Speaker 1: But as I can get it all up to all
Speaker 1: of like nur, but uh not that I would know
Speaker 1: that from from driving on My Sally starts to shake.
Speaker 1: But if you can ease it paste, it's smooth salon.
Speaker 1: But no, it's just going to I would suspect enter
Speaker 1: the realm of of hobby Yeah, well, well, will we
Speaker 1: see a convergence of the auto shop tinkerer and the
Speaker 1: computer hacker. That's a possibility. I mean, you know, again,
Speaker 1: when you're talking about something that is so important when
Speaker 1: it comes to the safety of the person who's sitting there,
Speaker 1: I mean, there there's there are two arguments to have,
Speaker 1: right There's an argument of you shouldn't mess with it
Speaker 1: because it could mean that you're risking your life. The
Speaker 1: other argument is, who's to say that the hacker isn't
Speaker 1: better at designing a system that is safe than the
Speaker 1: company is, because we've seen hackers design things that ended
Speaker 1: up making huge improvements to products and uh, and so
Speaker 1: it's it's an argument that's going that's well, it's being
Speaker 1: made in all sorts of industries, but I'm sure in
Speaker 1: the car industry it will be way up there because
Speaker 1: you're talking about something that's not just a symbol of freedom,
Speaker 1: but is a very powerful machine that could be potentially dangerous. So,
Speaker 1: I mean that's a good point. It's an interesting question,
Speaker 1: especially I can imagine modifications coming in if you're going
Speaker 1: to have competing proprietary navigation software, like different car manufacturers
Speaker 1: have their own software that they own and control and
Speaker 1: is not open source. I mean I can see that
Speaker 1: being scary. Yeah, I wonder if that's even going to
Speaker 1: be possible the way that I mean, because it's all
Speaker 1: going to have to interact with it with an infrastructure,
Speaker 1: with an internet of objects around cities that help cars
Speaker 1: decide where to go and when to go. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean that the ultimate build out of the autonomous car
Speaker 1: goes beyond the autonomous car. It goes into that internet
Speaker 1: of things that we've talked about in the past, this
Speaker 1: idea that you have sensors and and and devices that
Speaker 1: can react to real time dynamic situations and changed based
Speaker 1: upon that, and that the autonomous car would play a
Speaker 1: part in this larger system. And in that case, yeah,
Speaker 1: you might have to require that everyone used at least
Speaker 1: something that can interface with the larger infrastructure. But then
Speaker 1: even then, you know, how are you going to build
Speaker 1: that infrastructure. Are you going to have it so that
Speaker 1: every single major metropolitan area has to roll it out
Speaker 1: the same time, because if you don't, one city's infrastructure
Speaker 1: could be very different from another city's infrastructure. I drive
Speaker 1: from Miami to Atlanta. Yeah, but these are these are
Speaker 1: some problems that we don't have the answers to yet
Speaker 1: because we aren't there yet. But again, it's one of
Speaker 1: those things that we have to think about because it
Speaker 1: could very well be that as you're getting to the
Speaker 1: outskirts of a city, your car starts to slow down,
Speaker 1: and the reason your car is slowing down is because
Speaker 1: it's actually downloading the latest update. It needs to be
Speaker 1: able to navigate through the next city because it's a
Speaker 1: totally different operating system that's there's on this road. It's right,
Speaker 1: could be could be had like warning lag ahead. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we joke about it, but really, unless you have a
Speaker 1: truly open source approach, or maybe not even open source,
Speaker 1: just standardized, a standardized approach across all manufacturers in all cities.
Speaker 1: Traffic protocol. Yeah, you're just yeah, exactly, it would be
Speaker 1: its own kind of it would be literally traffic protocol.
Speaker 1: It would be that that kind of a system that
Speaker 1: would tell cars how to get through certain areas. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's something that has to be thought about. So I've
Speaker 1: got a question that I thought would be interesting, Hit Majo.
Speaker 1: If we have autonomous cars, how efficient can we get
Speaker 1: in terms of all the driving we do. Imagine it's
Speaker 1: Saturday morning and I've got six errands I need to
Speaker 1: run today, Can my autonomous car solve the traveling salesman
Speaker 1: problem and figure out what is the most efficient way
Speaker 1: to get to all six of those different places I
Speaker 1: need to go? Joe has just posed what is called
Speaker 1: a non trivial pro problem, the traveling salesman problem. For
Speaker 1: those of you who aren't aware, it's exactly what Joe
Speaker 1: is saying. It's the ideas, it's a traveling salesman who
Speaker 1: has to visit, you know, a certain number of cities,
Speaker 1: and how do you plan out the most efficient route
Speaker 1: between all those cities and back home so that the
Speaker 1: traveling salesman spends the least amount of time traveling And
Speaker 1: it's it sounds simple, but as you add destinations, it
Speaker 1: gets increasingly complex because you have to take into account
Speaker 1: all the different variations that could occur within that group
Speaker 1: of of stops. And then we add traffic into the mix. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you start adding in dynamic elements, and now
Speaker 1: you've really caused some some real uh computer headaches, computer headaches. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's for a classic computer using a regular processor. The
Speaker 1: way this works is that the classic computer will work
Speaker 1: out one set of those variables and come up with
Speaker 1: an answer and then it will go to the next
Speaker 1: set of those variables, like the next arrangement of those stops,
Speaker 1: and it will do that for every single variation it
Speaker 1: can until it's all done, and then it will compare
Speaker 1: are all of those times against each other to determine
Speaker 1: the right amount, the right the right version. In which
Speaker 1: case what you should do is, uh, the Saturday before
Speaker 1: your Saturday when you are going to go on these
Speaker 1: these errands, you tell your car what you're gonna do
Speaker 1: in a week and give your car a week to
Speaker 1: figure it out. And even then, with a classic computer,
Speaker 1: you're talking about thousands and thousands of hours of computing
Speaker 1: to come up with these answers, even with the fastest
Speaker 1: processors we have today. Now, if you were to switch
Speaker 1: that to a parallel processor like a graphics processing unit,
Speaker 1: then you can do lots of calculations in parallel with
Speaker 1: each other, come up with a bunch of answers at
Speaker 1: the same time. You know, put those aside and do
Speaker 1: the next set of parallel calculations, and you really cut
Speaker 1: down on the amount of time it takes to finish this.
Speaker 1: But it is a non trivial problem. So if your
Speaker 1: car can do it, it means we've reached a level
Speaker 1: of computing that's so amazing that I'm not really concerned
Speaker 1: about leaving the house anymore. What we're saying is that
Speaker 1: hopefully we'll all have quantum computers on our dash. Just
Speaker 1: don't if you don't look at your car, it will
Speaker 1: get to you to where you're going. Just don't observe
Speaker 1: your car, because by observing your car, you have changed
Speaker 1: the route Heisenberg's uncertainty card. That's right. Yeah, people will
Speaker 1: ask you where are you? Like I can tell you
Speaker 1: how fast I am or where I am, but not both,
Speaker 1: and make sure you don't accidentally inspire the car to
Speaker 1: gain self awareness. No, you definitely don't want to do that, Michael.
Speaker 1: All right, so let's uh, let's let's wrap this up, guys.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a great fun discussion to have
Speaker 1: because again we're thinking about the future and what it's
Speaker 1: going to take for us to get there, and the
Speaker 1: fact that it's not all technology. Some of this is
Speaker 1: culturally based, some of its policy, you know. So it's
Speaker 1: it's fun to really kind of wrap your mind around, Well,
Speaker 1: we see what the future could be, but how are
Speaker 1: we going to physically get there? These are fun discussions
Speaker 1: to have. So guys, if you have any suggestions for
Speaker 1: future topics that we should tackle on Forward Thinking, I
Speaker 1: recommend you go to our website. It's fw thinking dot com.
Speaker 1: Check it out. We've got blogs there, we've got video series,
Speaker 1: we've got the podcast, and let us know what you think,
Speaker 1: what it's you excited about the future, let us know
Speaker 1: what we should be talking about next, and we will
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