Extremely good point. The triumph of marketing over realism.
Meanwhile, more conventional software is hooked up to mechanism and kills people without regard to consultation (737 MAX MCAS). I don't understand how people can feel comfortable about "self-driving" cars. Coming soon: air taxi service by robot drones. "Oh, the future is cool!" Yeah, it gives me a chill down my spine.
Long ago, I chanced across a science fiction story from the early years of pulp magazines, about automated automobiles. Instead of a mechanical brain, they had grown synthetic organic brains, suspended in a globe of nutrients, and hooked up to the vehicle controls. All goes well, until a (literally microbial) virus arises and begins to infect the synthetic brains with progressive insanity, with really bad results. The foreshadowing of the future a hundred years hence was uncanny.
Extremely good point. The triumph of marketing over realism.
Meanwhile, more conventional software is hooked up to mechanism and kills people without regard to consultation (737 MAX MCAS). I don't understand how people can feel comfortable about "self-driving" cars. Coming soon: air taxi service by robot drones. "Oh, the future is cool!" Yeah, it gives me a chill down my spine.
Long ago, I chanced across a science fiction story from the early years of pulp magazines, about automated automobiles. Instead of a mechanical brain, they had grown synthetic organic brains, suspended in a globe of nutrients, and hooked up to the vehicle controls. All goes well, until a (literally microbial) virus arises and begins to infect the synthetic brains with progressive insanity, with really bad results. The foreshadowing of the future a hundred years hence was uncanny.