The spy who self drove me
Data. Machine Learning. AI. We hear these terms every day and we see the wonders this kind of technology can bring us. It’s like we’re on a magical merry-go-round where the ride gets better with each revolution. What will we see the next time around?
Not everyone is fully enjoying this ride. They’re afraid of where it leads, maybe to a future of lower wages, massive job losses, Deepfakes, autonomous weapons... Maybe on the next lap around the merry-go-round, their Machine Learning-powered horse develops a mind of its own and throws the rider.
I take such things seriously, but one thing I like about this merry-go-round of innovation with data? It’s fun when you can game the system.
A fun side of data? Let me explain.
Simon Weckert is not a household name, but maybe he should be. This guy single-handedly confused and convinced Google that there was major traffic congestion. How? First, he got 99 mobile phones. Then he put them in his red wagon and slowly started walking along the streets. Soon enough, Google maps started reporting major traffic congestion anywhere Simon showed up.
Speaking of mischief involving traffic and driving.. A Waymo self-driving carsuddenly stopped when it encountered traffic cones on the road. It started driving away as support personnel arrived on scene. (As a side note, you can imagine what life is going to be like when there is support for self-driving cars. The first thing they will ask you is whether you tried turning your car off and then restarting it...) Then, there was the self-driving car trapped and driving endlessly in a roundabout.
What can I say? People like me who work with technology naturally love it when it works. But we can also appreciate when it doesn’t quite go as planned.
Of course, gaming the system isn’t always fun and games. The Chinese government understands this all too well.
Beijing banned Tesla cars from being driven in and around military areas and where government agencies operate. What is their concern? Tesla cars have cameras and sensors. They could record a lot of data, including images, in these sensitive areas and send that data back to the company. If you think this is just the usual protectionist strategy of picking on US-based competitors, think again. For similar reasons, their cyberspace administration just said it would remove 25 mobile apps operated by the Didi ride-hailing corporation from app stores.
I actually don’t think the Chinese government is wrong to be cautious about this. (“Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you,” the author of Catch-22 once said). In the future, only domestically-built self-driving cars will be allowed to drive around in the country where they originate. They will send their images straight to government servers.
Remember, next time you see a Tesla car driving around. It is spying on you.
Technology is a reflection of us, for better or worse. Either as individuals or as business people, we can use it for fun or fear, an enabler for our imagination. It is for you to choose. And that's the recurrent pattern.