Will XAI save self-driving cars?
$1 billion raised, again. This time by Wayve, an AI self-driving startup from London, UK.
You would think by now that the interest in self-driving technology is slowly dying down to the point where only Waymo (Google/Alphabet) is slowly and cautiously expanding in Phoenix and San Francisco. GM suspended its autonomous vehicle operation and its CEO left. Apple decided to stick with computers and iPhones.
In the year 2000, Avery Brooks in an IBM ad was wondering, ‘Where are the flying cars?’ while Mr. Musk promised us self-driving cars in 2018, 2019, 2020 and in 2023 while admitting that it is harder than originally thought.
From the article discussing the investment in Wayve, you can learn that: 'Wayve has been building software to explain in plain English why a car made a certain driving decision — like why it stopped suddenly or slowed down — a layer of transparency to help win over regulators'.
Interesting attempt to achieve the Explainable AI (XAI).
One hopes that this feature won't be available for the passengers to listen to. Cars are supposed to drive and not talk back like an annoying 'smart fridge'. As novel and futuristic it sounds, computers talking back to you and trying to mimic human conversation will quickly become highly annoying.
If you doubt that, remember Clippy or the cheerful (and wrong) responses by Siri, Alexa or Google Assistant.
Just imagine when the car talks to the officer, explaining its actions.
Q: Do you realize that you’re not supposed to be in the bus lane at this time?
A: I know but I am in a hurry.
Back to Wayve and its product line. The Wayve AI Driver is flush with amazing features like Adaptive AI driving, which is '... rooted in end-to-end (E2E) Embodied AI ...' or ‘mapless autonomy’ which ‘.. eliminates the need for detailed HD maps ...'
Not sure what these amazing things are, but, for sure, they are worth every penny out of the $1 billion.
One interesting thing to notice. In the promotional videos about self-driving cars, I never saw the car going through a roundabout. I guess that's because Wayve is not using detailed HD maps.
While the companies are working hard, the regulators are learning too.
Regulations and requirements are more detailed and explicit. Also, the amount and type of data required is growing. Sometimes, when the manufacturer doesn't — or doesn't want to — provide the required information, the incidents can be found on the internet posted for amusement. Hopefully, the higher the scrutiny, the safer the driving cars will one day become.
When will that be?
To quote from the post from September, 2022: 'The recurrent pattern here? A year from now, I will be writing another post about how close the automakers are to having self-driving cars almost ready for production.'
Sorry, I got distracted and missed one year.
The recurrent pattern? Next year, by this time, I will report back about the imminent arrival of self-driving cars. This time, for sure.