ILLUSTRATION: PAUL RYDING
One of the profoundest gifts of human consciousness is the ability to introspect. By watching ourselves and our fellow humans we are able to learn and advance as a species. Yet I was recently taught something about human behaviour not by another human but by a machine. Admittedly that machine, complex though it was, had been programmed by humans.
I was being driven by an experimental autonomous Nissan. We were circumnavigating a roundabout and I asked the engineer whether this car, which obviously has visual technology of extreme acuity, can see other vehicles’ indicators and act accordingly. He snorted and said no, that’d be far too unreliable. Oh dear: for my whole driving life I’ve clung to the notion, even in the face of endless evidence to the contrary, that it’s not only worth indicating myself but also taking others’ indications seriously. This self-driving tech is telling me I’ve been wrong.