Which Way Do I Go?

 

Crap, it's gone again. When I used to blog regularly I'd often carry you, the reader, with me throughout the day. I'd talk to you, describing what I was doing or thinking about. Most of it was discarded, but there was often something worth relating and when I came to write I'd already have a sort of rough draft. I found myself doing that again. I'm not sure why. The only trouble is that I never sat down to write, until now, and now I can't remember what it was that I was thinking.

I do remember one thing. I was driving through the construction on 37, I mean 69. It was raining. The lanes have shifted in various ways over the course of the project and the water made the old lines show up as prominent as the current lines, which have faded somewhat. It was really bad. I had to consult my knowledge of the roadway at times, which I could since I drive that stretch every day. I don't know how people unfamiliar with the area coped and I wondered how a self driving vehicle would deal with a situation like that. Would it just shut down and ask for manual input? What would happen if one car's software interpreted the lines correctly, but another car in the adjacent lane followed the wrong path? I think transportation departments are going to have to spend a lot more on maintaining their road markings when self driving vehicles become common.

I remembered an incident that happened to me a few years ago. I've told this story before, but that was way back in my original blog The Reluctant Trucker, so it won't hurt to tell it again. I was in a construction zone on I 95 in Connecticut. It wasn't raining but it was dark and the lane markings were faded. Traffic was moderately heavy and I was in the middle lane doing about 50 with cars on either side, but none in front of me, when we came to a lane shift. Earlier the lanes had shifted in an equal, opposite direction and those markings were still visible. With no familiarity with the roadway I didn't know which way to go.

It was a crisis moment. There was no chance to stop before the shift and if I made the wrong choice only a miracle could have prevented an accident, maybe even a pile up. The way that I tell the story I heard a voice in my head that said, “Use the Force Steve.” I actually remember it that way, but it's more likely that's something I commented to myself in the exhilaration after it was all over. After all I was busy using the Force.

I Zen'd it. I let go, my body did the driving. I assume that I picked up cues from the cars that were beside me, that I could only see as lights and shine in my convex mirrors because the result was a smooth 50 mph transition to the new traffic pattern, just as if I knew the road like the back of my hand.

Will artificial intelligence be able to use the force? Perhaps better than we flawed humans.

Will artificial intelligence have a soul? Do we?

Sorry, questions for the discussion group.