Google engineer reportedly says humans aren't designed to drive cars
Commentary: A software engineer for Google-owned Waymo takes to Twitter to describe his struggles with a real-world rental car.
Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives.
These are, apparently, much more intuitive. For an engineer, that is.
Poor thing.
There he was having to slum it in the real, retrograde world and everything was just so Neanderthal.
That was the impression left by a Monday tweet reportedly emitted by Vahid Kazemi. According to his LinkedIn profile, he's a software engineer at Google-owned Waymo. The self-driving car company didn't immediately respond to a request seeking to confirm Kazemi's position.
Captured by Jalopnik, the tweet -- sadly since deleted -- offered this pained thought: "Have been driving in LA with a rental car that doesn't have the autonomous features that my own car has. Almost crashed ten times and ran over five people in two days! Humans aren't designed to drive cars!"
He's quite right. What were we designed for? Procreation? Sun worship? Eating messily? That's about it, isn't it?
Some might say that one small problem with engineers is they assume everything must be engineered for some purpose. I fear that actually we were just dumped here for a bit of a joke.
Talking of which, Kazemi seems to be lamenting the fact that his tweet reached a wider audience.
Bad jokes quickly escalate on Twitter. Note to self only tweet exactly what you mean.
— Vahid Kazemi (@VahidK) December 4, 2017
Sometimes, bad jokes on Twitter do just die. Occasionally, though, they get picked up because some see them as indicative of more than mere bad humor. Haughty Google-engineer superiority, for example.
Kazemi didn't immediately respond to request for comment sent on LinkedIn.
Of course, Kazemi's tweet does throw up a painful reality. As humans are forcibly transitioned into the self-driving world, there will be an awkward period.
It's already started. All too often when self-driving cars have been involved in accidents, Google (and other companies) have been keen to blame humans.
It was only last year, for example, that Google finally accepted that its technology was partly to blame for a crash.
That's the danger of believing your own publicity. Last month, for example, a self-driving bus in Las Vegas got into a little scrape with a truck.
The City of Las Vegas offered this statement: "Had the truck had the same sensing equipment that the shuttle has the accident would have been avoided."
Dear human, you are stupid. You don't think like a machine. Aren't you embarrassed?
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