Trust the Machine

It was an unconventional drive to Calgary as I let Buick’s Super Cruise ™ do 80% of the driving. Other than staring out the front window, I didn’t touch the wheel for minutes at a time, watching the vehicle lane change, adjust speed, and navigate around obstacles. 

Only one incident, with a closely merging semi, caused me to override the computer due to my concern about its ability to handle the scenario.

Anyone who owns a Tesla, has likely known for years how fast the world is changing. The ‘sameness’ junkies will continue to spout thoughtless rhetoric such as “no computer is going to drive my car” or “ya that sounds safe… haha”.

Meanwhile, early adopters, paying attention to data, understand that in many areas of life, from landing aircraft, to portioning off medication, and now driving vehicles, the safety numbers increase, once we eliminate ‘human-error’.

The resistance to adoption is a lack of trust.

Like all avenues of human life, trust is earned, easily lost, and trusting a machine does not feel ‘natural’ for many people.

It is time to set emotion aside, let rational thinking prevail, and focus on the analytics.

Like it or not there are many things that technology is doing better than us, and it may be time for the human ego to relinquish these duties in the areas that are reducing risk to society.

• Now that’s a peak ethos.