Anyone using Google Now is already sending all the data that constitutes the article's undesirable dystopic vision to Google. And anyone running Android, I suppose, could get an update that began surreptitiously phoning home data. If that's a thing Google wanted to start doing.
Short of being in a faraday cage, we also already know cell phones have a habit of not really rendering you 'untrackable' even when lay users think they've turned them off.
And, frankly, the phone is a superior vector in the first place, as the car has little idea who's driving it, no real idea who the other occupants might be, and little idea where the occupants actually go when they get out. [1]
Yet this article chooses to worry about the cars?
I don't see a huge delta between "I have to leave my phone at home to be sure it can't be used to track me" and "I can't use my 'smart' car, if I want to be sure it can't be used to track me".
[1] The Gym, the massage parlor and the pizza joint might be in the same strip mall. Your car can't know one or ones you go to, whether you get into a subsequent vehicle and go somewhere else entirely, etc. Your phone can know exactly where you're going, and for how long. The car's data is far inferior. Rather than being a data detectives dream, it seems more like a "better than nothing" fall-back, if the tracked-individual happened to actually leave their phone at home or properly disable it.
And anyone smart/aware enough to prevent themselves from being tracked by their phone is smart/aware enough to take a different vehicle, or take the Google car to a transit station/park-and-ride/alibi-establishing-alternate-location/etc.
Most of your points are great, but I just want to point out that it is not true that your phone can be tracked when it is turned off. That's a misconception that is propagated by a few very poorly written articles that misinterpreted some comments in a court case. No power = no tracking.
Isn't the point that not all phones are truly off when the user thinks they're off? i.e. if you can ensure there's no power (removed battery) you can be confident there's no tracking. But if you can't ensure it...
You are conflating a hypothetical with a real claim. it is hypothetically possible, but it isn't actually true. And you can ensure in many ways. Like measuring the power usage when your phone is off. Like looking at the source code of the operating system.
Looking at the source code of the OS does not change anything, as you don't know which compiler was used or even if the same source was indeed compiled. Even further, if you compile it yourself you still don't know since at this stage you clearly wouldn't trust even your compiler.
I think you guys are getting lost in the hypothetical vs the reality. Is it hypothetically possible, yes. Is there any evidence it is true, no. See my comment below to see how cnet confused a physical bug with some inherent bugging capability of the phone.
Even in the hypothetical, don't you think someone would have identified the "bug" by now? It would need to draw power while the phone is off, that would be measurable. It would need software on the phone. Even without the source code, the bug could be found in the OS or firmware. Do you think the FBI is working with ever phone manufacturer to install this and no one ever leaked that info? There isn't one piece of evidence that it is actually true.
The version of Android bundled with several cell phone manufacturers' smartphones isn't open source. In many cases, it's not possible to just check out Google's tree and build it on your Samsung; you still have to fiddle with proprietary hardware modules, etc.
That said, i would only trust my cell phone to be off if I took out the battery.
That's exactly the bad article that started the misconception.
This is a case where you need to let common sense override your trust in journalists. You are probably smarter than them, you know more about tech and phones than them, don't trust them when they write stuff that doesn't make sense. Even if it were true don't you think some hacker woud have verified it by now? Offered a hack to stop it? They haven't because the article is dumb and wrong, and CNet should retract it. I'll cite the source cnet lazily misinterpreted if you give me a minute.
Here is the original source, the court memorandum. You can see how grossly irresponsible/lazy/stupid Cnet was.
Note that it is VERY clear that the government is asking to install a physical bug into a phone that works when the phone is off. It has nothign to do with the inherent hardware of the phone.
Judge Jones granted the application, authorizing continued interception at the four restaurants and the installation of a listening device in Ardito's cellular telephone. The device functioned whether the phone was powered on or off, intercepting conversations within its range wherever it happened to be.
> Yet this article chooses to worry about the cars?
The article doesn't really focus on your car phoning home and telling Google where you are.
Instead, it talks about restrictions on how fast you can drive, driving style, and loss of autonomy by having an AI drive for you. Almost all of the benefits being touted as advantages of driver-less cars only become reality if everyone uses the AI. In theory, in some dystopian future, everyone would be forced to rely on the AI to drive.
I don't want to be forced into a situation where I cannot drive my car.
Of course, the problem here isn't the presence of some AI, but laws requiring me to use one. Having the choice to drive with an AI is certainly better than not having the choice, but choice is key.
> The article doesn't really focus on your car phoning home and telling Google where you are.
Apparently you and I didn't read the same article, since the main worry of the article seemed to be that Google can't be trusted with your data.
>Almost all of the benefits being touted as advantages of driver-less cars only become reality if everyone uses the AI.
The article does imply this, but it's simply not true. Autonomous cars will be able to reduce accidents and park themselves the moment they are available. There have been some past pie-in-the-sky ideas of ultra-high-speed internetworked cars, but the practical problems of those are (perhaps counter-intuitively) harder to solve than the technical problem of a car that can drive autonomously without communicating to other vehicles.
Furthermore it is obvious with a little thought that autonomous vehicles will have to be able to function well on roads where every other car is driven by a human. Otherwise there will never be a "first" autonomous car.
> In theory, in some dystopian future, everyone would be forced to rely on the AI to drive.
1) IMO that is still far in the future
2) Whether or not this is dystopian is subject to debate; certainly in the hypothetical future where the car sends all your travel data Megacorp X without any option to opt-out it's dystopian, but the same would be true of mandated tracking devices in cars without mandated autonomy. I personally would be perfectly happy with a future where manual driving was forbidden on public thoroughfares but I could still take a sports car to Laguna Seca and burn some rubber.
"But is everyone really so eager to see the automobile, which stands as one of history’s great amplifiers of personal autonomy and liberty, evolve into a
giant tracking device controlled by a $250 billion corporation that makes its money through an increasingly intimate and obtrusive knowledge of its customers? "
As a blind person the short answer is yes. Unfortunately job opportunities don't always line up with the few cities that have good public transportation and everything I need easily accessible so it's a fact of life that I need to sometimes rely on others to help me get places. I would be willing to give up a lot of privacy if I could have a self-driving car at a reasonable price. While I don’t know how it will turn out I’m hopeful that with Google backing this cost will be driven down into affordable cars, not $100000 cars. I’ll gladly trade a lot of privacy for a $50000 discount on the price of a self-driving car.
Not to mention the annual 40,000 lives lost and even more injured due to car accidents, and the huge swaths of land that would be freed up when parking lots are no longer necessary.
So get the driverless car that isn't run by Google. I get that there are privacy issues, but I still think this article is overly alarmist.
As an aside, I expect autonomous driving to be phased in gradually - I'd wager freeways first, then city centers, and rural areas only at the very end. However, once there's a sufficient installed base of autonomous vehicles, I expect it will be illegal to drive manually in those areas, because it kind of defeats the point.
I can only take an example from my own life: I'm a licensed motorcycle rider, I use it as my primary form of transportation when it's over 50F rain or shine. Being a motorcycle rider, I can never get a ticket for not wearing a seat belt, or driving with all of my doors open (silly analogy, I know). All of these safety devices don't apply and riding a bike requires substantially more skill and practice than the weekend course required in most US states to receive a license. Arguably it is an incredibly dangerous way to travel compared with driving or riding in a car and it's still legal.
I wonder if the guy/gal of the future who decides they want to reject driver-less cars won't resemble the modern motorcycle rider in this way. I can see those of us who love our motorcycles standing up for (and probably being) supporters of "driver's rights". I made that up, but a similar movement among riders resulted in my state lifting the mandatory helmet law despite outrage from non-riders. I can't imagine the state getting away with banning motorcycles. I don't believe it'll have enough support to ban drivers in a driver-less majority world.
The other issue is one of need for such legislation. The author states that the automobile stands as one of history’s great amplifiers of personal autonomy and liberty. Liberating? For some of us, but probably not most of us. I think more people see it as a tool to get from their home in suburbia to work/kids to baseball practice. Most people see driving as something they have to do rather than want to do and will be happy to get rid of the chore if the price was right. Those of us who do find it liberating will be part of an enthusiast market that has always existed for both cars and motorcycles. We'll be the ones taking the most risk and consequences for taking that risk, while the driver-less passenger will, arguably, be much safer.
You bring up some good points, I think it's a great idea to make it tougher to get a driver's license and driverless cars will allow those that can't pass, or aren't interested in driving themselves the ability to get around. Older people need to get places too, but it becomes clear that many, past a certain age, cannot do so safely.
I think it's too early to make these conclusions. The self driving cars are produced by Google X, and have nothing to do (yet) with the data-collecting Ads division. I would be very surprised if the cars send personally-identifying data back to Google, and I think there would be a considerable public backlash.
It's going to take a long time to get people comfortable with driverless cars. In the meantime, can the technology be immediately converted to "assisted" driving to help avoid collisions, crossing the center line, etc.? Make it a lot harder for people to "bump" into each other. We might be able to get some of the benefits of driverless cars sooner.
Yes, however the technology has not "trickled down" from high end cars (albeit some car makers are pushing hard on this). We still need to wait a little bit more before we can find some of these on a Civic/Corolla.
Assisted driving technology has existed for years and is deployed in a lot of cars. There is no need to convert this technology, it already exists and is widely deployed. The only thing that prevents this technology from being used in every car is that the price for that technology isn't low enough, yet.
Self-driving cars are really just an incremental improvement to what high-end manufacturers like Mercedes or BMW already offer.
> Self-driving cars are really just an incremental improvement to what high-end manufacturers like Mercedes or BMW already offer.
So you are telling me that I can go to a Mercedez/BMW dealer right now and get a car that almost drives itself in regular traffic conditions? Simply not true. There's a lot of assisted driving technology (blind spots alarms, HUDs, assisted parking) out there, but nothing like Google's self-driving car.
“The company says it is preparing to launch in 2014 its first batch of autonomous vehicles capable of driving up to 31 miles per hour. The limited speed reflects the technology’s expected initial use in heavy traffic.
Volvo says it is working on higher-speed autonomous driving, but isn’t yet disclosing when it would be available. Its prototypes have run thousands of miles of test drives on public roads in Spain and on the company’s test track in western Sweden.”
Well the examples you are citing are PR reports or some assisted driving technologies. While some car companies might be working hard on their projects, as of right now, only Google has shown a working prototype performing on street traffic, and their technology is simply not an incremental step from anything else out there, as he claimed. That was the point I was trying to refute, I was not saying that nobody else is working on it but Google.
Maybe some people won't be comfortable with driverless cars at first, but I'm guessing at least 10% of the cars on the road will be driverless within 10 years. Regardless of how people feel about it, once the actuaries get some data to crunch on liability regarding driverless cars, it'll quickly become more expensive to insure your own car than a driverless one.
Any place where mobility is needed is where you'll want to start. I was simply stating that if uptake was going to be slower due to human irrationality, you'd start where people absolutely need transportation and have no other option.
People are much more open minded about a choice when they have no other choice.
there's a fundamental assumption in this article that I think is very doubtful. this article assumes that part of the customers 'payment' for a self-driving car will be advertising.
That seems like a very poor assumption. Personally, I assume google will make money selling a car (or the tech), just like any other business. Just because the search business is free and makes their revenue through advertising doesn't mean that the car business would have the same approach.
> Personally, I assume google will make money selling a car (or the tech), just like any other business.
I am a Googler and I've heard Larry, Sergey, and many on the self-driving car team talk about the project. While I'm sure monetization is on their minds as well, the very clear message from them is that they view this project as changing the world for the better.
In today's world, it is very hard not to be cynical, and it's especially hard not to be cynical online without looking like a Pollyanna or a corporate shill but in this case, I believe the opportunity for public good is the strongest motivator for the project.
Much like NASA, Google gets tons of ancillary benefits from doing all of this R&D so even if the project itself isn't a revenue generator, it will still deliver value to Google, but I think what gets many of the people working on it up in the morning is the chance to reduce the number of traffic fatalities, to turn parking lots back into parks, and to let people spend time on the road enjoying themselves and not grimly staring at the car in front of them.
I'm an admirer of Google. My point, which I was being kind of oblique about, is that IMO its not really logical to expect Google to have the same revenue model for a car as they do for the search service.
To me it seems totally reasonable that Google would charge for the software. It's an innovative, valuable product. I see no reason why they shouldn't get paid for that.
Could the self-driving tech be the automotive version of Android? Even if Google stripped out personally identifiable data the sheer amount of data they could get for their maps would have to be worth a lot of money. Whether it’s enough to partially subsidize the required research and development as well as weather the automotive industry would be willing to enter an agreement with them are questions I don’t have the answer to.
I don't know about other people, but I would use a driverless car just for the countless hours it would save me from sitting behind the wheel wasting my time either stuck in traffic, waiting at stop lights, or just plain driving from point A to point B. I don't know how much time the average American spends behind the wheel in a lifetime, but this reason alone would be enough, not to mention the decrease in accidents.
So many downsides (increased danger, maintenance costs for vehicle, insurance costs, can't drink then drive). The only upside (mobility) can be compensated with money (i.e., cabs). It does suck when I want to go on a roadtrip though.
Don't you think that the same could be said about pretty much everything? Regarding driving, a lot of the risks can be mitigated by being a defensive driver and by purchasing cars with good safety features. I find your reasoning very interesting, I just can't imagine not having a car, but I live in a place where you are pretty much forced to have one because of the distances and the bad bus service. Oh and I also love driving :)
> Don't you think that the same could be said about pretty much everything?
... Not really. Sure, there are risks involved with most activities, but this is one I found I can actually avoid. I chose to move to a city (NYC) where the vast majority use public transit anyway.
When weighing the balance between even through the lens that this article presents, the driverless car is still a net good. Google potentially knowing if I have cancer is an ok exchange if it reduces the very real chance of death, injury or legal problems that my commute presents me every day.
A person in security told me that a big fear they have is car bombs. You would now be able to send groups of cars to a location without risking human life. That us good enough reason to not want self driving cars. I still think some of the functionality can be used for accident prevention.
Car accidents kill orders of magnitude more people than terrorists do. I think even if the number of car bombings jumped to 10 times its current level with autonomous cars society would still likely come out ahead.
Short of being in a faraday cage, we also already know cell phones have a habit of not really rendering you 'untrackable' even when lay users think they've turned them off.
And, frankly, the phone is a superior vector in the first place, as the car has little idea who's driving it, no real idea who the other occupants might be, and little idea where the occupants actually go when they get out. [1]
Yet this article chooses to worry about the cars?
I don't see a huge delta between "I have to leave my phone at home to be sure it can't be used to track me" and "I can't use my 'smart' car, if I want to be sure it can't be used to track me".
[1] The Gym, the massage parlor and the pizza joint might be in the same strip mall. Your car can't know one or ones you go to, whether you get into a subsequent vehicle and go somewhere else entirely, etc. Your phone can know exactly where you're going, and for how long. The car's data is far inferior. Rather than being a data detectives dream, it seems more like a "better than nothing" fall-back, if the tracked-individual happened to actually leave their phone at home or properly disable it.
And anyone smart/aware enough to prevent themselves from being tracked by their phone is smart/aware enough to take a different vehicle, or take the Google car to a transit station/park-and-ride/alibi-establishing-alternate-location/etc.