The director of the Google self-drive car project has said that his plans are partially motivated by getting his son on the road. Chris Urmson wants the technology to be on the roads within five years, with his 11-year-old son planning to take his test in “four and a half years”. Urmson says that his team are “committed to making sure that doesn’t happen”.
Google’s own car will have no steering wheel or conventional controls, although models for early testing will have extra controls. The prototype electric pod being developed by Google was revealed in December. Other companies working on similar cars are adding driver-assist functions to their models in a bid to win over anxious skeptics.
Urmson says that self-drive cars could reduce traffic accidents dramatically, and that there are good reasons for introducing the technology as soon as possible. The self-driving cars have undergone rigorous testing and have totaled up over 700,000 road miles.
Some experts have claimed that it would be dangerous to rely completely on Artificial Intelligence, though, The Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence’s Oren Etzioni did say “AIs will empower us and help us tackle the real problems that face humanity.”