Anyone who has had an even passing use of a computer at home or at work knows about the minefield individuals and companies need to go through every single day to keep them secure, virus free and usable.
When a hacker gets into your computer it can have a devastating effect on your life ranging from stealing your bank accounts right up to pretty much stealing your entire life with identity theft.
Now consider that every function of an autonomous car is controlled by one or more computers. It's not such a big step to imagine what would happen if a freeway full of autonomous cars travelling at high speed suddenly got hacked? Identity theft would look pretty good in comparison to the widespread death and destruction that could be the result of a state sponsored attack on the road system of another country.
I don't for a minute doubt that this will be addressed before a widespread release of this technology happens, but as history shows us, we don't know what we don't know.
For example if you own a Jeep Cherokee there is a chance that someone could have taken control of your car and crashed it for you.
Wired magazine has very good story here about two researchers who did just that. Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek have found (and exploited) a weakness in Chryslers' systems that allowed remote access once they have the IP address of a computer installed in these cars called Uconnect.
Once they had that they could download code that effectively gave them control of everything electronic within the vehicle..... including the steering and brakes.
To be fair this never made it into the wild as Chrysler issued a fix extremely quickly.
But as I said, we don't know what we don't know so the possibility of someone with evil intent finding a flaw like this and exploiting it for nefarious purposes is a very real possibility.
To me, this is another reason that governments need to be proactive in this technology, not by controlling it but setting the laws and standards of testing to ensure that issues such as this can be mitigated.
Not that industry would deliberately falsify or compromise safety standards or emission controls would they? OK Volkswagen springs to mind with diesels, oh, and with cars stopping for no reason, and yea, Toyota cars failing to stop and... you get the idea. Admittedly the Volkswagen and Toyota problems with stopping and failing to stop respectively appear more to do with software testing than malevolence but just goes to prove the point that we don't know what we don't know. The manufacturers thought that the software that controlled these functions worked just fine but they didn't know that certain circumstances could create problems.
I don't claim to know the inner workings of car design but it needs oversight in the form of regulation to ensure that testing is rigorous and effective and as the car assumes more and more of the driving functionality it becomes more and more critical that the software is up to the job.
Another software control that needs to be built in and I know that some cars already have this, is multiple computers that cross check each other, so if there is a failure, the cars knows it's ill and can safely move off the road while refusing to go back into autonomous mode.
I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that!
All of the onus isn't on the car manufacturers either. As this technology becomes more pervasive the road system will need to become smart as well. No longer will it be enough to have speed limit signs and road work signs. Some cars, such as Mercedes can read these but it would be far better to make the road system more intelligent and proactive. That way the car can know road conditions and delays before it gets there and if there is a more efficient route, change its course. Road works with temporary lane markings and speed limits can be transmitted electronically (and enforced).
The software that controls that will need to be vigorously tested and secured as well, as there are public safety implications to be protected.
I never thought that I would be an advocate for government to be involved in private industry decisions and I still don't but I do believe there needs to be a government framework around all of this to ensure that public safety comes before the corporate need.
Corporations are there to make profits for their shareholders and sometimes the corporation comes before the welfare of the people.
For any large organisation, be it government or corporate, there has to be a system of checks and balances for the greater good.
I keep saying, and will keep saying that government needs to be involve now, before the car makers set the standards and build a power base that can't be reversed.
The time to do this is now, before it becomes mainstream, by then it may be too late and any changes or legislation once there is a large user base will only serve to delay the implementation of this technology, not assist in its uptake.
Now for something completely different.
New technology of the week, only from the Dutch.
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