Fatal Accident in Self Driving Cars

According to the article, there was a fatal accident between a Tesla Model S and a tractor trailer. This article states that this is the first fatal accident in over 130 million miles. At the time the article was written, the NHTSA had just begun to evaluate what went wrong. According to Elon Musk, the radar was not able to differentiate between the bright sky and the white trailer. Elon Musk also stated that the Autopilot is nothing more than an assistant and that the driver needs to be aware at all times of what is going on. This is because it is new technology that is being tested.

First of all, I just want to say that I am amazed by the fact that Tesla has driven automated cars 130 million miles without a single fatality. That is not to say that there were no other crashes, but it is still impressive nonetheless. I honestly agree with what Elon Musk said. The driver should have been aware that this is still experimental technology and it needs to still be monitored.

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Why Security?

As you can see in my “Why Artificial Intelligence?” post part of the reason why I am interested in security is because it goes together with how dangerous artificial intelligence things are. However, the danger does not apply to just A.I. It also applies to everything else software related. Our society is moving towards an internet of things (IoT). IoT is a society in which everything is connected to the internet. This includes your car, your toaster, even your lights. When everything is connected, that means that everything needs to be secure. You never know, someone can get into your lights and set your house on fire. This is why security is becoming more and more important topic that I feel needs to be a bigger focus in school.

Why Artificial Intelligence?

The reason why I am so interested in A.I. is because it is the next big thing in computer science. With its application in self-driving cars, the medical field (diagnosis being the big one), and robots, it is growing rapidly. There are so many ways that it can help people. With self-driving cars it allows people who can’t normally drive have the ability to do so so much easier. It also allows driving to be safer as well. It helps in the medical field by assisting doctors. This gives them one or more less things that they need to worry about.

This is not to say however that A.I. is only good. There are many issues with it. There have been many, many stories about robots rising up and enslaving mankind. This, however, is not where I see that the real danger lies. I see the biggest danger is us as people. People make mistakes and software engineers are no exception. Code is often filled with bugs and other issues. The real danger though are the people who want to do harm. The world is growing more and more connected all the time. This allows hackers to do who knows what. With self-driving cars there are so many ways that a hacker can ruin things. This is part of the reason why I am also interested in network security.