Recently a new kind of Intelligent Transportation reached the marketplace. Tesla made available to its car customers via a software upgrade an autonomous driving system for highways. Would this technology pass a driving test? The uncertainty illustrates that autonomous driving is starting off in the wrong gear.
Tesla’s action publicly demonstrates that cars are fast becoming the independent thinking machines envisioned by science fiction writers, especially Isaac Asimov in his anthology of short stories I, Robot originally published in 1950. Even 65 years ago Asimov realized that autonomous machines would need to operate according to common, transparent rules that safeguard people.