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Buckle your seat belt, the future has arrived.
The first commercial self-driving truck shipment was successfully completed on October 20, 2016.
2000 cases of Budweiser beer was transported from Fort Collins, Colorado to Colorado Springs, a distance of 120 miles. It was accompanied by a human driver who was ready to take control of the rig at a moments notice, if need be. He wasn’t needed.
Thanks to the AI technology (Artificial Intelligence) present in the Otto truck, the driver was not free to move about the cabin— but he only had to load and offload his cargo.
The old TV commercial of the Maytag (washer) repairman comes to mind— no actual work required because their washing machines were (supposedly) so darn reliable. They instead stand around hoping to do some actual work. How prescient to the world we are heading toward in a wholly unintended manner.
One of the old Maytag tv commercials: “The Maytag repairman, the loneliest guy in town”
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“The road to hell is paved with good intentions:”
This is only a tiny glimpse into the AI world that is fast approaching.
In time, not just drivers and menial laborers, surgeons and other knowledge workers across major industries will be facing the very real prospect of being supplanted by intelligent-like machines. More overtly ominous, is a major thrust by the Pentagon to incorporate AI into semi-autonomous (and possibly, fully-autonomous) combat weaponry in the U.S. arsenal.
The point is not to turn our back entirely on artificial intelligence which (of course) is not possible. The larger point is to say, the AI technology is advancing rapidly with major implications for all of society. As citizens, at the very least, we better start paying closer attention and begin a national discussion of the major issues if we have even a chance to avoid a total calamity.
In the not too distant future, we may wake to a world beyond our wildest dreams, or conversely, of our greatest living nightmares.
Like a petulant teenager, the human race must learn a collective sense of its own humble mortality. In our continuing quest to become god-like, we may be laying the seeds for our future enslavement.
Read the full article: Self-Driving Truck’s First Mission: A Beer Run