The Fantasy of Autonomous Self-Driving Cars is Coming to an End as Tesla Faces DOJ Criminal Probe

Tesla electric SUV. Image source.

by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News

For years now the technocrats have made huge predictions about how technology is rapidly advancing and is poised to replace humans, or become hybrids with them, in the not-too-distant future.

The problem with this soaring faith in technology is that many of the lofty techno-prophecies have been largely science fiction, and the kind of propaganda that Hollywood has been brainwashing people to believe in for decades now.

Starting with the mega box office successful Star Wars films back in the 1970s, along with popular TV franchises such as Star Trek, the technocrats have brainwashed the public into believing that such technology as replicating food at the push of button, or transporting people through space, or android and holographic “people” were the destiny of technology, and how it would become a normal part of our lives.

Well, welcome to 2022, where none of that stuff has happened yet, and never will, because it is all science fiction. But we now have several generations of people who still believe in the techno-prophecies, and some of them have become billionaires where they could actually throw a ton of money into trying to invent some of this science fiction.

Perhaps the one technology that has received some of the most techno-prophecy funding is “self-driving vehicles.”

Well if no one else has publicly said this yet, I will be happy to be the first one to do so: The fantasy of completely autonomous self-driving vehicles that will replace human drivers is now officially DEAD.

Reuters announced this week that the DOJ has started a criminal probe into Tesla’s claims of “self-driving” cars, which allegedly began last year, and is perhaps the reason why Andrej Karpathy, the former head of Tesla’s AI department and Autopilot driving assistance software, abruptly quit this past July after working on Tesla’s self driving vehicle system for five years.

While not mentioning the Reuters’ exclusive report on the DOJ’s criminal probe into Tesla, Ford and Volkswagen announced this week that they were halting further investments into AI self-driving vehicles, forcing Argo AI, an AV technology startup founded by Uber and Google veterans, to shut down.

Argo AI, an AV technology startup founded by Uber and Google veterans, will shut down following decisions by Ford Motor Company and Volkswagen AG to halt further investments in the company. The two automakers jointly invested in Argo AI.

Ford said that when it made its investment in 2017 that it expected to bring Level 4 self-driving technology to market by 2021. Level 4 refers to systems that do not require any driver interaction with the vehicle.

“But things have changed,” said Ford President and CEO Jim Farley in its third-quarter earnings release. “We’re optimistic about a future for L4 [advanced driver assistance systems], but profitable, fully autonomous vehicles at scale are a long way off, and we won’t necessarily have to create that technology ourselves.”

“There were a lot of predictions about where we would be with autonomous vehicles, and they’ve just all come crashing down,” said Leonard Lee, managing director and founder of NextCurve, a technology consulting firm, in an interview this week, before the Argo AI news. “Uncomfortable realities have now revealed themselves to a lot of these companies as well as investors.”  (Full article.)

The Great Self-Driving Vehicle Cover-Up: How Safe are these Vehicles? Answer: We Don’t Know

Tesla Model S that crashed in Florida while on self-driving mode killing the driver. (Source.)

While some variation of self-driving vehicles have been on the road for many years now, it was only in June of this year (2022) that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) started reporting on traffic accidents involving automated driving systems (ADS).

In June 2021, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued a Standing General Order (the General Order)  requiring identified manufacturers and operators (reporting entities) to report to the agency certain crashes involving  vehicles equipped with SAE Levels 3 through 5 Automated Driving Systems (ADS). While ADS vehicles are currently still in development, once mature, they will be capable of performing the entire dynamic driving task under defined operating conditions  and will not require a human driver to monitor and supervise the automation system. There are currently no ADS  vehicles for sale to the general public. While the General Order also covers vehicles equipped with SAE Level 2 Advanced Driver  Assistance Systems (ADAS), that data summary is provided in a separate report. (Source.)

Data collected by the NHTSA from July 13, 2021 through May 15, 2022 recorded revealed 367 crashes.

Last week, the NHTSA released new statistics that reportedly revealed that Tesla had the most fatalities among self-driving cars. (Source.)

However, the NHTSA admits that their data is limited because it is based on self-reporting, and before the NHTSA started tracking accidents last year, we were totally at the mercy of the companies producing this technology to report on their safety records.

With $BILLIONS of investment money at stake to produce self-driving vehicles, do you think they were motivated to self-report their safety data?

Earlier this year (February, 2022), Google-owned self-driving taxi service company Waymo sued the California Department of Motor Vehicles to prevent them from revealing their safety records to the public, claiming that it revealed proprietary information that could be shared with their competitors.

A California judge agreed with Waymo, keeping the public in the dark as to their safety records.

A California court ruled this week to let Waymo hide some of the safety data for its autonomous vehicles—a decision that could have ripple effects for how other autonomous vehicle makers handle the trade secrets of their self-driving tech moving forward.

The ruling, which was passed down Tuesday by the Sacramento County Superior Court and which you can read for yourself here, marks the end of a short, bitter legal battle kicked off by Waymo last month.

The Alphabet-owned company sued the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles to prevent the agency from disclosing proprietary details about its public safety protocols to the general public. The DMV, at the time, was mulling over how best to respond to a public records request for Waymo’s application to deploy its tech across Sacramento. (Full article.)

Not surprisingly, Waymo topped the list of NHTSA’s first report released in June with the most crashes for self-driving vehicles. (Source.)

Investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson recently addressed the issue of safety and self-driving vehicles on her Full Measure show, with an episode titled “Unchecked Tech.”

Bruce Walker, a professor at Georgia Tech University who studies human interaction with technology in unique places like cars, military cockpits, and the International Space Station, participated in the show.

The legacy or traditional car companies, what we like to think of as Detroit, had to have a lot of research and approvals before anything was changed in the vehicle. The pace of technological development and rolling out technologies in the car is happening too quickly for it all to be vetted and tested and approved.

Take a car’s built-in, phone-based entertainment system for instance. Federal recommendations, not rules, suggest drivers take no more than two-second glances at a time to complete a task, like choosing a song or checking the route on a map.

If you’re traveling at speeds of 50 miles per hour, for example, and you take your eyes off the road for even a second, you’ve traveled a long way.

A surprisingly long way. At that speed a 2-second glance from the road means traveling 140 feet. And at 50 miles per hour it takes 170 feet for a car to come to a complete stop.

Smooth touch screens can be far more distracting to operate than those old car radios with distinguishable knobs and pre-set frequency buttons designed to keep drivers focused on the road.

Perhaps most shocking: no federal laws regulate driver-assisted technology.

In this driving simulation, the car is in full self-driving mode and should alert the driver before independently handing control back, under any circumstance. However, it quit unexpectedly, which, at 50 miles per hour, resulted in a simulated crash into an ambulance and the car traveling hundreds of yards before the human driver could get it fully under control.

Watch the full show here.

The Technocrats are False Prophets

Full article.

People are finally starting to wake up to the fact that the techno-prophecies of technocrats are largely based on faith, and science fiction, and not reality, and evidence of this fact is everywhere. The technology is failing, not advancing.

Here is a pretty good list of “technological obstacles” that make the idea of fully autonomous self-driving vehicles impossible, and this list is nowhere near exhaustive:

• Artificial Intelligence is still not able to function properly in chaotic inner-city environments.
• A car’s computer could potentially be compromised, as could a communication system between cars.
• Susceptibility of the car’s sensing and navigation systems to different types of weather (such as snow) or deliberate interference, including jamming and spoofing.
• Avoidance of large animals requires recognition and tracking, and Volvo found that software suited to caribou, deer, and elk was ineffective with kangaroos.
• Autonomous cars may require high-definition maps to operate properly. Where these maps may be out of date, they would need to be able to fall back to reasonable behaviours.
• Competition for the radio spectrum desired for the car’s communication.
• Field programmability for the systems will require careful evaluation of product development and the component supply chain.
• Current road infrastructure may need changes for automated cars to function optimally.
• Validation challenge of Automated Driving and need for novel simulation-based approaches comprising digital twins and agent-based traffic simulation. (Source.)

Those who are waking up first to the failures of this impossible technology are the investors who have already lost $BILLIONS because they were foolish enough to believe the technocrats, and these technocrats have profited magnificently from this false faith in their technology.

Besides the Wall Street corporate abandonment of AI technology for self-driving cars that was announced this week, Amazon.com and FedEx also announced they were abandoning their investment in “last-mile delivery robots.”

October has been a rough month for the last-mile delivery robot industry as Amazon called it quits on their six-wheeled robot “Scout” for home deliveries. Now FedEx is doing the same.

FedEx and Amazon are some of the largest shippers moving packages around the country and the world. When these two companies simultaneously decide to axe their last-mile delivery robots, it indicates the program has been a complete and utter failure. This is excellent news for the humans working at FedEx, Amazon, UPS, USPS, Uber Eats, Instacart, and other last-mile companies that your jobs will be safe for now. (Full article.)

And chief among these technocrats who has probably fooled more people than all the other technocrats put together, is Elon Musk.

I don’t know if Musk is a “huckster” as James Corbett refers to him in his podcast this week, or if he actually believes in his techno-prophecies that he sells to others, particularly regarding Artificial Intelligence (AI).

A few weeks ago Musk appeared at the annual Tesla AI Day event, where he revealed the company’s prototype AI robot. He admitted that the one they demoed last year was just an actor dressed up like a robot.

We’ve come a long way, and compared to that (the actor from last year), it’s going to be very impressive.

Before they brought the AI robot out on stage in front of a live audience, one of the engineers on the Tesla autopilot program said:

This is actually the first time we try this robot without any backup support, cranes, mechanical mechanisms, no cables, nothing.

Once the robot came out on stage, the autopilot engineer even pointed to something on the robot and said:

This is essentially the same self-driving computer that runs in your Tesla cars, by the way.

Watch for yourself this “amazing” AI robot that Elon Musk and his team have created to see for yourself just how far the AI technology that powers Tesla cars has come:

Now, if after watching this demonstration of their AI robot you feel more comfortable that they have developed AI technology to the point that it can replace humans and drive cars safely, then you are seeing something else that I am not seeing, because all I am seeing is a large toy that billionaires like Elon Musk like to play with and brag about.

Think about all the $BILLIONS they are investing, and they expect us to believe this technology will replace humans??

Now before some of you start emailing me with condescending comments about how foolish I am and that I just don’t understand the power of this technology and what it can do, let me give you a bit of history about my background.

My graduate school training was in linguistics and pedagogy, but I was also a “geek” when it came to technology, and I clearly remember when the first PC computer was introduced to the market in 1982. I had my own laptop by 1988, as well as a desktop PC.

I started teaching English at a university in Saudi Arabia in 1992, and self-taught myself how to do computer programming. I began developing English language software that today would be considered “Artificial Intelligence,” as this teaching software would adapt to students’ responses to various exercises with either more simple or more difficult problems, based on the data the students entered.

My work was published in journals, but I never got to implement it because I was not part of the Computer Science department, who was developing their own software, but had no training in linguistics or pedagogy, so they just stole mine.

I left Saudi Arabia in 1995, and briefly did tech support for the new Microsoft Windows 95 operating system, and then went on to develop my own business as a Microsoft Certified Trainer in many of the newer Microsoft products that were coming out, specifically their Window NT networking suite at the time.

So I am a former “insider” to this technology, and watched it all develop, and while I prefer not to use an appeal to authority and instead present the facts and evidence to our readers here, please understand that probably most of you who feel you want to email me and talk down to me about how ignorant you think I am about the technology today, are probably a lot less intelligent in these matters than I am and just regurgitating some stuff other people told you whom you feel are “authorities.”

For example, I have a friend who is a PhD researcher but does not have as much experience with the technology as I do, and this person sent me a video that he thought really showed how far AI had come. Here is the video he sent me called “Android Babe”:

This video is fake, it’s science fiction. But videos like this fool a lot of people.

When you see a video like this, it is either an actor made to look like a robot, or it is completely created by computer graphic programs, such as CGI. This one is probably an actor, because she blinks, and there is no reason for a robot to blink.

To know something is real, it needs to be demonstrated in front of a live audience, as Elon Musk did a few weeks ago with his AI robot. Elon Musk is the richest man in the world, and if the technology existed to create an “Android Babe” like the one in this video, don’t you think he would have a few already?

There are also certain buzz words that the technocrats like to throw around that sound real, but are totally bogus, such as “neural networks.” This terminology which suggests machines can interact with biological functions of humans, has been used in Hollywood science fiction movies and TV programs for decades now.

It’s all fake. And once again, Elon Musk is at the top of this imaginary technology, with $BILLIONS invested in his Neuralink Corporation.

Musk was supposed to have a “show & tell” event on the latest developments in this technology, but has now delayed it to a further date.

Elon Musk’s Neuralink’s “show & tell” event was initially scheduled for Halloween day but has been pushed back until the end of November for unknown reasons.

Musk tweeted Sunday, “Neuralink show & tell now on Nov 30.”

The delay led some on Twitter to say, “you are a stupid loser and your bad products are going to fail,” while others were excited about possible new developments of Neuralink’s transhumanistic technology.

Neuralink, based out of San Francisco, aims to “implant wireless brain-computer interfaces that include thousands of electrodes in the most complex human organ to help cure neurological conditions like Alzheimer’s, dementia, and spinal cord injuries and ultimately fuse humankind with artificial intelligence.”

In 2020 and 2021, the brain-machine interface startup held demonstrations of the chip implant at work in pigs and monkeys, but the SpaceX and Tesla founder has voiced concerns about the slow rate of progress.

The billionaire said he is “cautiously optimistic” the chip implant can restore full-body functionality for tetraplegics and quadriplegics and has said human testing could be next. Neuralink’s efforts have yet to receive FDA approval.

Musk, of course, is neither a doctor nor a scientist… and actual scientists at MIT recently wrote in the MIT Technology Review:

“Elon Musk’s livestreamed brain implant event made promises that will be hard to keep.” 

“None of these advances are close at hand, and some are unlikely to ever come about,” the article stated, calling most of the company’s medical claims “highly speculative.”

Full article.

We don’t Need to Fear the Technocrat’s Transhumanism Prophecies, but They are Dangerous in the Area of Data Collection

The technocrats want you to fear them and their false techno-prophecies that AI and robots are going to take over the world. And they are very successful in creating this fear, as even in the Alternative Media I see articles in my newsfeed almost every day talking about the “dangers” of AI and transhumanism, when in reality that “danger” does not exist, and in fact, the technology is starting to fail, and fail miserably.

Read these articles talking about “transhumanism” with a very critical mind, and look for all the appeals to authority, especially if there is a lot of money behind it for “research.” Just because something is being researched and Wall Street is spending $BILLIONS on it, does not mean it is true. And research articles can be purchased if you have enough money, to say basically anything you want them to say.

Look for the evidence, and if you do, you will probably find it does not exist.

Because as you are busy worrying about AI robots and transhumanism taking over the world, the true danger of AI is right in front of you, and it is in the area of data collection.

The technology to collect data has been around for quite some time now, but the technology to actually be able to search that data and try to find something, is much more elusive.

That’s where the real danger of AI is showing itself today, because AI programs that use algorithms to analyze data are falsely believed by many to be “impartial.”

Again, this comes from a false belief in the technology, because no computer program is impartial. It will evaluate the data based on the parameters set by those who created the program, and also the bias of the programmers. And as long as this data is stored somewhere, it can be hacked by others.

This is especially true in the area of “healthcare” today.

Provider and tech organizations alike often say that artificial intelligence, if fully realized, could herald a new paradigm for healthcare delivery.

Even today, teams across major names like the Mayo Clinic, Google and Kaiser Permanente are working on tools that can rapidly scan images to predict medical diagnoses, skim medical records to highlight optimal clinical decisions for practitioners, triage patients, streamline administrative tasks and nudge consumers toward healthier tasks or information.

But those same AI evangelists are also quick to acknowledge the numerous barriers and pitfalls where the technology has so far stumbled. Chief among these are issues of privacy, transparency and equity.

“Everyone should have the opportunity to achieve the full benefits of AI from their healthcare system,” Michael Howell, M.D., chief clinical officer and deputy chief health officer at Google, said Monday during an online discussion about healthcare AI. “We should work systematically to eliminate those barriers.”

Recent years have seen several reports (PDF) warning of algorithms intended to support care delivery inadvertently driving race and class disparities. (Full article.)

See also:

Advocate Aurora says 3M patients’ health data possibly exposed through tracking technologies

So beware of the technocrats that collect data. Facebook is probably the largest website in the world where people willingly surrender their personal data, and law enforcement and other government agencies monitor it constantly.

Amazon.com was one of the first companies of the modern era that didn’t earn a profit but operated at a loss for more than a decade, as investors kept pumping money into it to keep it going.

Why?

Because Jeff Bezos was accumulating something that the Globalists wanted during all those years: data. As his database of online customers and their shopping habits increased, so did the investors, regardless of whether or not Amazon.com turned a profit.

When they began to build their own server farms and put them in the Cloud, Amazon Web Services was born, and that is where they made their profit, and it was also where the CIA hosted their secure data.

And now another technocrat billionaire is set to be in a position to own massive data: Elon Musk.

Why do you think Elon Musk wanted to buy Twitter, and why do you think he was so concerned about all the fake accounts in Twitter?

Data collection. And you thought it was because he is a good person and champions uncensored “free speech”?

I doubt it. Musk has made his billions by taking handouts from the Government, and it is probably pay back time now.

I would not be surprised at all if some of the Globalists finally figured out it was a mistake to expel all the conservatives and COVID deniers from Twitter, because then they cannot track them, and then they presented their plan to Musk to go buy it and get everyone to come back on so they could be monitored and tracked.

People have asked me if we will go back on Twitter since Twitter banned Health Impact News over a year ago, if Twitter removes our ban.

Not a chance. And we don’t get our Internet service from Starlink either. And I most certainly do NOT drive a Tesla.

Comment on this article at HealthImpactNews.com.

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