Jun 11, 2019
Craig was on with Jim Polito. Today, they discussed the latest goings on with autonomous vehicles
These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com
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Autonomous Cars - Are they ready for prime time
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Transcript:
Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors.
Airing date: 06/11/2019
Autonomous Vehicles
Craig
Hey, good morning, everybody. A little update on Ortiz, he got
flown into Boston, the Red Sox flew him in. He's a Boston general,
I guess he had like a five-hour operation. And they did more to
help with his gunshot wound. It's just crazy. Anyhow, Mr.
Technology got pumped off this morning. If this happens, sometimes
I'm on a phone call. I am, you know, calling in on the phone to the
radio station. I'm talking to them. I got knocked off, and I don't
notice that I got knocked off, right. Well, it happened this
morning. We will go into some detail about autonomous cars and what
that all means including automatic lane change features and those
types of things. That's what we talked about this morning with Jim
Polito. I thought it was interesting. In fact, that's all we talked
about. There are some implications to all this autonomous
technology that I don't think many people have really thought
about
Jim
Here is our friend, one of the most popular guests on the show. And
all around great guy Craig Peterson, our tech talk guru. Good
morning to you Craig
Craig
Hey, good morning, Jim.
Jim
Craig we've been spending the morning, the gentleman and I talking
back and forth about autonomous cars or self-driving cars. We even
get into discussing that adult film that was shot in the front seat
of a self-driving Tesla while it was going down the road. We don't
need to get into that here. What we want to get into is the
question, are these cars ready to hit the road? Are they really
prepared to hit the road?
Craig
It's an excellent question. The answer is, and I love this, this
explanation that the Wall Street Journal had here about a month or
two ago. They were saying driverless cars are 90% here. There's
only another 90% left to go.
Jim
See you get it. You get the Tech Talk stuff. And then you get a
little bit of comedy. Don't forget to tip your server. So yeah, it
does seem that way. Oh, yeah, we're there. But don't try to take a
left turn.
Craig
Yeah, exactly. There is a long way to go. There's a lot of
acceptance problems still. In fact, I don't know if you're aware of
this. But right now human drivers are quote, unquote, these
so-called driverless cars. You probably haven't seen one of
these.
Jim
Oh, you know what I see it the social justice warriors coming out
now. Does the car has feelings? I don't know.
Craig
Here's what's been going on. Several companies have been trying to
figure out how people will respond to driverless cars. So what
they've done is that they've modified these vehicles, so that they
change the driver's seat. So the person is actually sitting there.
But they're sitting inside the driver's seat, and they eat. Unless
you look very closely, you can't tell there's a person there. And
then they have the driver drive the car around. So from just a
casual observers point of view, it's just a car driving. You know,
it's kind of like those, those body suits. I don't know if you've
seen them, and you know, they're completely covered head to toe,
yet you can see outright, yeah, the same sort of thing, except
they're covered with the fabric of the seat. So they drive these
things around. And they've been doing experiments trying to figure
out what are we going to do, how we're going to do it? And how
people are going to respond things like, you know, do we put a cow
catcher on the front or pedestrian capture, right? Do we need to
have lights indicating, hey, pedestrians, I'm going to start moving
forward now, or I'm going to make a left turn all of these types of
things? They've been finding people bullying the cars, knocking
them on the hood, stepping into the way of them.
Jim
Oh, my God, you can't do that. These cars have feelings.
Craig
Let's make it even worse. Here's what happened here. When these
pretend autonomous cars are driving in traffic, and people notice
the car, other vehicles will do stupid things to mess with the
autonomous vehicle. They will pull right in front of it, they'll
break hard. And the quality of the studies is saying that people
are trying to confound these cars, overrule them exploit the
driverless vehicles. It has the automakers and tech firms really
concerned. Obviously, there's one thing to have technology that
works great in a lab, or maybe it works great on the streets of
Phoenix, which is where a lot of these tests are going on right
now. However when you've got a greedy human driver, and we've all
seen them, and of course, it's not on the other guy.
Jim
Of course, it's never the guy in the other cars, always.
Jim
The connection is gone bad. He can't hear me. I'm going to drop the
call and have him call back. Because we've lost him. Basically, to
recap, where Craig was right now is that Yeah, you've got people
out there seeing an autonomous car thinking oh, let me see what
will happen if I drive in front of it. Or if I do this, it'll mess
things up. That is not good. That is not good. And you know what
that is? That's going to be an issue. When you have 50%, autonomous
cars on the road, and then 50% of people just driving, because you
know this is not going to happen overnight, everybody's going to
have a self-driving car. It's just not going to work that way. The
way it's going to work is some people are going to have them only
like right now very few a tiny percentage of people have a car that
will self-drive right now. And that's, that's what worries me. Oh,
and by the way, if I can just add here a little personal thing. And
I think Steve, you'll get a kick out of this is that, I do know
that a substantial portion of the people listening to us right now
are in cars. So, what if they could be in the car and be watching a
video? You know, or listening to you and me?
Jim
Yeah, well, I mean, the two hours of the show is simulcast if you
have charter TV three, channel 193. In general, they're sitting
there watching Game of Thrones rather than looking at the road.
Yeah, yeah. Well, no, but what I mean is I'm talking job security.
I'm being very selfish about this concern. Oh, well, we're fine.
Were you sure?
Jim
Oh, yeah. These things? Oh, yeah. I mean, I got I just, I
understand what Craig is saying, but I don't I just I don't see how
and he sort of touched on it. I don't under I don't see how the
autonomous vehicles and humans are supposed to interact together. I
just I don't really trust either of them. I don't trust humans
behind the wheel. And I don't really trust robots behind the wheel,
and you couldn't put the two of them together. I think it's a
disaster. Know, people. Look, you will talk about looking for
insurance claims gamble, throwing themselves in front of cars,
people. Yeah, it's one thing to mess with them. It's another thing
to be able to sue Tesla and then get rid of your you know, Geo
Prism and gets yourself a nice little upgrade.
Jim
Yeah, well, we'll wait a minute. Hold on think I think about this.
Okay. Not to be all science fiction here. But you know, with the,
you know, with the artificial intelligence, the whole like the
matrix, that movie, like the Terminator, that movie. What if all of
a sudden, you know, the car gets mad at you for smacking it on the
hood? And speaking of slapping it on the hood. Here is Craig back.
I'm sorry, Craig, that connection just went south. You couldn't
hear us. And you're, you were like in a tunnel. And again, I think
it's the phone. I don't think it's anything other than that. I
know, the machines are trying to shut you down. But yeah, Craig, I
see you smack the car in the hood. And once we have artificial
intelligence, it wants to get even with you. And then it's like,
the movie Stephen King the book, Christine. And it's, it's running
over your car?
Craig
Yeah. Well, here's another aspect of this. And then Sorry, I lost
you there I was going on the spin and then nobody. But let's look
at, for instance, people's driving culture. And there's a great
article that just came out in Fast Company about a week ago, as
well. It was talking about people's preference to drive versus
flying. What they found is that people today, if it's a five-hour
drive, no matter how long the flight is, if it's a five-hour drive,
and if they're going to rent a car, on the other side, two-thirds
of people prefer to drive. Yeah, and the numbers changed
dramatically. If you've got a 10-hour drive, obviously, the vast
majority of people want to fly. However, if it's in the tournament
vehicle, a truly autonomous where they can have a nap, they can be
there reading, they can be working, having meetings, that number
goes way up. And what they found is even in the longest drive that
they were looking at, which is a 45-hour drive, right now only one
in 10 people would prefer to drive themselves. It's a handful.
Think about driving to the airport, right all the crap you have to
go through. But with an autonomous vehicle that changes to one in
six people would prefer to drive themselves on a 45-hour drive,
which means a quarter these stats of the airline industry would
lose at least 10% of its travelers. And we're also looking at this
change, it's also going to make it so that we don't have to expand
our roads. They're thinking we could get, you know, 10 years more
on the roadways that we're building or expanding than we would
otherwise because the vehicles are going to be moving more
progressively. You're not going to have somebody who hits the
brakes and causes a major slow down and accidents and things. We're
not there yet. There are a lot of companies working on it. Remember
Fiat-Chrysler, they just broke off their talks with Reneau, yeah.
And they turned around. And they got an agreement with his
self-driving technology company in California called Brora. We've
got another company out now with what's called LIDAR tech. They
just got 170 million dollar funding round for self-driving cars.
And this is just fantastic technology. And I've talked with the
inventors before. This is the this is going to happen. But as we
talked about with the Wall Street Journal, we're 90% there, and we
only have 90% to go. Because part of the problem, Jim is we don't
really even know what problems we're going to. We're going to have
just as we talked about, people believe in these autonomous
vehicles. Yeah, we're going to be taking small steps and even Elon
Musk is aiming towards the small step category now and is stepping
back slightly from as a tundras vehicle stuff, but-but they're
coming and they're going to be I think they're going to be a
godsend, especially when we're our 80s. Right. Well,
Jim
For the elderly, I think, and for people who may have some type of
mobility issue. I think they are going to be helpful. Craig
Peterson is our tech talk guru. Now we went off on this topic. He's
got many more like, Can you still trust Google? So, if you want to
get this information, text My name to this number 855-385-5563. So
text Jim, or any questions you have 855-385-5553 Alright, standard
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Craig Peterson will not annoy you and not try to sell you something
and not sell your name Craig thanks so much for that. We really
appreciate the time.
Craig
Hey, thanks. Take care. Jim. Take care
Jim
When we return a final word. You're listening to the Jim Polito
show, your safe space.
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