On techno-skeptics
People decide to be techno-skeptics for different reasons: in many cases it has to do with our natural tendency toward inertia, rejection of change, comfortableness with what we know, or fear of the consequence of the new. For other people it’s rooted in a lack of culture, or the result of simplifying things so that they fit with deeply held beliefs.
Over the last week or so a number of events have prompted skepticism in some quarters: self-driving cars and using drones for logistics.
Last week began with Google’s announcement that in line with its long-term plans, and the reason it created Alphabet Inc, it was spinning off its autonomous driving division into an independent outfit, Waymo, which will be part of the holding company. The news leaves no doubts as to Google’s decision to move from the test phase to creating a business by looking for markets and customers and creating turnover.
Almost immediately there were comments along the lines of “Google abandons self-driving project,” that it was “disinvesting” or “scaling back”, along with invented quotes attributed to management that “the project was unviable.” A clumsier, absurd analysis, and one based on total ignorance of the company.
Skepticism about the topic reached such a point that when a related story about Uber’s plans for self-driving vehicles in San Francisco appeared, within a few hours there were stories circulating about the project being cancelled because one of its cars had been filmed running a red light and that its permits had been withdrawn.
In reality, a driver from a rival firm had filmed an Uber vehicle running a red light, just like thousands of cars do each day in cities around the world. What’s more, the footage was sent to the San Francisco Examiner despite there being no evidence that the vehicle in question was in self-driving mode.
It should be obvious to anybody with an ounce of common sense who has seen the video that the maneuver presented no threat to anybody and that the decision to temporarily lat the tests had nothing to do with lack of permits or running red lights: no government anywhere in the world would react that quickly.
All that had happened in reality was that Uber had taken for granted that it didn’t need a specific license, given that its self-driving cars would, for the moment, have a driver at the wheel ready to take over. The California Department of Motor Vehicles has said that the license in question would “likely” be obtained.
The episode illustrates all too clearly that technology skepticism is usually based on anecdote. The same thing happened with when a Google car swerve onto the wrong side of the road producing a minor scratch on a bus: this was the only case of software failure, but this didn’t prevent the skeptics from charging that the project was being cancelled, when in fact all that happened is that a few minor changes to the software were required.
The idea that a self-driving project would be “frozen” or “cancelled” because of a minor incident such as those described above is patently absurd. And yet, I have seen people I considered intelligent up to that point affirm such things without blinking. In other words, renouncing rational thought when the facts seem to fit your world view.
Techno-skepticism, like all skepticisms, such be a good thing: it should mean that we are being realistic, that we are not getting carried away, that we are seeing things as they are, and not how we’d like them to be. The world needs skeptics, but when skepticism becomes irrational, in a systematic disbelief or something to be proud of, when it becomes a question of reducing everything to absurd simplifications, that it has become an object of ridicule.
Autonomous cars are already on the roads, and Amazon’s drones are in flight. This was really only a question of logic: when well-funded companies with a track record of success make these kinds of announcements, they don’t do so with the intention of looking naïve or blundering.
The test period is fast coming to an end, and the next phase, that of finding markets and customers, is underway; next will come mass adoption by the public. To all intents and purposes, self-driving cars and drones are already with us. So if you count yourself among the techno-skeptics, wake up and smell the coffee!
(En español, aquí)
