Well actually, the headline read “Bringing emotional intelligence to self-driven cars”, but the suggestion is the same. Self-driven cars are a great application of artificial intelligence, but it seems the biggest challenge to date is the unpredictable behaviour of humans. Nothing new there – it is a challenge for human driven cars as well, which accounts for many of the car accidents today. So if human-to-human drivers/pedestrians cannot interact safely, how can AI-to-human driver interactions improve of the scenario.

One approach adopted by Drive.ai is to not only program cars for recognising and avoiding pedestrians, but to also enhance the cars communication abilities – to share their intentions with humans.

Drive.ai promote that its cars will also signal their intentions to humans through lights, sounds, and movement. The retrofit kit uses a sensor array, computer and a LED sign to communicate its intentions with pedestrians/other drivers. With 20 or more staff members direct from Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence Lab, there is some serious brain power involved in integrating emotive intentions into the AI mix.

Using deep learning [machine learning], the automated systems should be able to learn from their own experiences, and integrate this learning into refining its own AI program. Building a library of experiences, the ‘machine’ will be able to decide on how to react to each and every situation – just as humans learn and modify their behaviour. The upside is that such behaviour will not be modified by alcohol, drugs, sleep deprivation, emotions, or any other human factors.

This ability for the car to emote what it is trying to do aims to help these cars co-exist with the existing cars as well as humans. For example, the car might include some external signal to show pedestrians that it is currently being operated as a self-driven vehicle, and could use movements or sounds to indicate its intent.
Self-driven cars are a pioneering foray into the world of combining man and machine – and an arena where the complexities of the human mind are providing more than the expected challenge.

However, with the idiotic behaviour I see weekly from human drivers, I would actually feel quite comfortable integrating with AI cars….what about you?

Author: Gail La Grouw. Insight Mastery Program Director, and Strategic Performance Consultant for Coded Vision Ltd.