Technologies needed to pass the Automotive Turing Test

brianman · Feb 12, 2014

I was thinking about this the other day and meant to post about it, but I've been lazy and/or distracted. Rather than wait for time to post it eloquently, I'll just ramble a bit. Bear with me. Hopefully folks can focus on the intent rather than get distracted by poor choices of words, etc.

First, let me lean on (and trust) Wikipedia to describe the Turing Test:

The Turing test is a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human. In the original illustrative example, a human judge engages in natural language conversations with a human and a machine designed to generate performance indistinguishable from that of a human being. All participants are separated from one another. If the judge cannot reliably tell the machine from the human, the machine is said to have passed the test. The test does not check the ability to give the correct answer to questions; it checks how closely the answer resembles typical human answers. The conversation is limited to a text-only channel such as a computer keyboard and screen so that the result is not dependent on the machine's ability to render words into audio.

Turing test - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

With that as a backdrop...

Elon has become fond of the phrase "auto-pilot at the limit... is self-driving" (or something along those lines).

So let's run with that a bit. Suppose we define a Model S flavored automotive Turing test as follows:

A family of 4 calls for a taxi, and a Model S arrives. The Model S has some unusual features such as a "visibility barrier" between the driver and all of the passengers; let's say the entire driver area is surrounded by a two-way mirror or some-such.

The driver is not allowed to communicate directly with the passengers, only via a text-to-speech interface that produces a computer voice. The driver does not deal with luggage.

The passengers are not allowed to ask typical turing test questions about life, the universe, and everything. This is not an AI test. It's a driving proficiency test.

To indicate arrival for pick-up, the driver honks the horn and opens the front passenger door.

To indicate readiness for departure, all passenger doors are closed (by the passengers) and the front passenger presses a button on the dash just above the glove box button.

To indicate arrival at destination, the driver announces via text-to-speech that the destination has been reached.

To complete the taxi service, all passenger doors are closed (by the passengers) and a button on the outside of the front passenger door is pressed. (The vehicle does some basic weight/heat/etc. tests on the cabin to confirm this before releasing the vehicle for subsequent service.)

Passing the test means that the passengers don't know or care whether the driver is human or machine.

The intent with this phrasing is to bypass a lot of the logistical complexities that aren't directly related to the task of driving, but are related to transport. While the former are interesting, I'd like to call it out of scope for this discussion.

Now, the question is this:

Which technologies are missing from the Model S to pass this test consistently?

AudubonB · Feb 13, 2014

brianman said:
I was thinking about this the other day and meant to post about it, but I've been lazy and/or distracted.

Ah ha! Well, that proves to me that Brian, at least, really is Brianman and not Briancomputer.

And on other matters, you bring on a great topic. Hope it turns more insightful than this post.

GeekGirls · Feb 13, 2014

brianman said:
Which technologies are missing from the Model S to pass this test consistently?

Sadly, from my perspective it's missing some of the technology it ostensibly includes today. The voice recognition is positively dreadful for me, whereas Siri is generally quite reliable over Bluetooth. Something has to be done there before many of the more forward-looking technologies are even relevant.

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Technologies needed to pass the Automotive Turing Test

brianman

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AudubonB

One can NOT induce accuracy via precision!

GeekGirls

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