Autonomous Driving Deployment Too Early, Toyota Expert Says

Practically every major car company in the market is investing in driverless cars in one way or another, and there are even companies like Uber that are staking the future of their business on the success of autonomous driving. However, at least one expert believes that the industry as a whole should slow down. According to him, the technology and the world are not ready for driverless cars.

The expert in question is Gill Pratt, the CEO of the Toyota Research Institute, Tech Crunch reports. Even though the Japanese car company unveiled a concept vehicle during the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show called the Concept-I, Pratt still said that reaching the required Level 5 autonomous driving is still a long way off.

“Historically human beings have shown zero tolerance for injury or death caused by flaws in a machine,” Pratt explained. “As wonderful as AI is, AI systems are inevitably flawed… We’re not even close to Level 5. It’ll take many years and many more miles, in simulated and real-world testing, to achieve the perfection required for level 5 autonomy.”

To anyone paying attention, this pronouncement really isn’t news. Level 5 autonomous driving is basically where human drivers do so little while behind the wheel that they might not as well be called drivers at all. Almost all of the driverless vehicles on the road right now can only operate within a very narrow set of rules and conditions, often involving driving only within cities and with an alert human behind the wheel.

Looking at the company’s concept car, the Concept-I, it’s clear that Toyota is sticking with its philosophy that drivers should never be removed from the equation, Futurism notes. Rather than giving vehicles complete autonomy, Toyota believes that it would be better to improve the interaction between the car and the driver as it transitions from self-driving to manual driving.