Would you want your flying car to be operated by AI? Would you trust it more to stay in the air with or without AI?

You might think these are trick questions and you might be right. It's hard to imagine that the flying cars of the future, maybe the near future maybe not, would be made without a huge dollop of AI helping their control systems and their driver-interface systems, maybe even their radios. Wouldn't that be interesting? An AI to pick a station for you to listen to while simultaneously monitoring chatter from other cars, control towers, the weather and all sorts of other things.

That sounds like an actual good use for AI!

But AI is not what I wanted to talk about today. It's cars. Self-driving cars and some of the interesting downsides that have been appearing recently. Let's start with the newest story first. Cops Are Starting To Tow Away Teslas To ‘Secure’ Recordings Captured By The Cars’ Cameras.

Think about this. You bought an expensive, high-tech car. Really high tech. You take it out as much to show it off as just to drive it. Or let it drive itself. Cars can sort of do that now. You have dinner at an expensive restaurant. The valet is impressed, and tells you so when he gives the car back to you after dinner. In a few years, the self-driving aspect of these cars will be so good and so common it will put all the parking valets out of jobs because the cars will park themselves. But not yet.

You go home feeling good. Then a few days later the police call. It seems a crime was committed in that parking garage while you were having dinner. They say your car is a witness. You see, it has an externally-pointed camera as part of the security system. They want the security footage on the off-chance that it will show them a suspect or something. Oh! And if you tell them it's your car and you don't have to cooperate, they'll get a warrant and take it anyway.

You'd think that a car that expensive would come with a lawyer, too, wouldn't you? Or even a built in legal module. Or at least a system where the cops could download what they want over the Internet so they don't have to take your car. No, wait. That's a terrible idea. Hackers would be downloading images of every place you stopped, every person who rode in the car, every stop sign you rolled through, every speed limit sign you laughed at as you went by. Everything!

Hackers are like that. They never even wonder if they should get a warrant. They just go ahead and do what they want. And then, as often as not, they send you a bill.

If I had no other car stories today, I might not even bother. But this next one, which is actually from a few weeks ago, is hilarious. Self-driving Waymo cars keep SF residents awake all night by honking at each other.

The upshot is that the Waymo self-driving vehicles sometimes give each other a little honk, just to be friendly or something. At 3 in the morning, when an entire parking lot of them are toot-tooting away at each other all at once, it drives the neighbors crazy. Trust me on this. Some people have NO sense of humor when they're trying to sleep.

By now, Waymo may have applied a patch to make it stop happening between certain hours or under certain conditions. That's the nice thing about having cars with lots of software in them. It's not like a recall for a bad engine grommet. You can apply the patch over the Internet and everything will be fine.

Just as long as hackers don't figure out how to tap into your software update system. You might not like what happens then.

Both of these issues are examples of something that, in the political world, is called the Law of Unintended Consequences. Or, in more common phrasing, "It seemed like a good idea at the time, your honor."

It's what happens when people are looking for little extras that will "delight" the customer. I used the word “delight” intentionally, by the way. I've been in training where they talked about how to do that. Give the users something cool that they didn't even know they could ask for, and they'll become loyal repeat purchasers of your product. So product design people who've taken this training or read the books or seen the videos (and everyone in the start up universe has) work extra hard to think of little, non-obvious features that will make their products special. Something to pop out and make people smile.

They never think, "How will hackers exploit this?" And they never ever think, "Could this trigger a lawsuit or even an unreasonable search and seizure by the police?" They should think those things but they don't. Maybe I should be a consultant doing that for them. Pay me a ridiculous amount of money so I can tell you about the ways your product's most delightful features will make people's lives miserable!

I'm actually at least half serious about that. Cool idea, isn’t it?

Update: In my last post, I mentioned the weird sonar-like noises coming from Boeing Starliner. Well, NASA has decided it's feedback on an audio circuit¹. That's the weirdest feedback I've ever heard! But, I can't actually prove that it's aliens so I guess, for now, we'll let it go. For now.

Update 2: Starliner has returned to Earth without the astronauts. The re-entry and landing were perfect. Poor Boeing! They did something right (pegging the landing) and still get a black eye because the 2 astronauts are still stuck until next year!

Here's that prompt: "A busy modern roadway with both flying cars and ordinary cars sharing the space. One of the flying cars, a sleek police vehicle with flashing lights, is pulling over another flying car. The police car is hovering in the air slightly above the ground, while the pulled-over car is hovering just in front of it. Below, regular cars drive along the road, and the scene is set against a backdrop of a futuristic city skyline with tall buildings and some greenery."

The image doesn't seem to be very close to the prompt, does it?