This image destroys the imagination of Tesla's self-driving car

A two-year video showing a joker confusing an autonomous car has become viral for the second time, and it demonstrates a key reason why Tesla's autonomous cars will never become ubiquitous.

Go viral once is an important event, but a "recurring" viral video indicates that something about the content has viscerally gripped people.

In this case, it is the fact that human ingenuity can deceive an autonomous car. This makes us understand why it seems unlikely that they will ever be attractive to the mass market, regardless of the company that makes them.

How to confuse a self-driving car

The video below shows an autonomous car surrounded by a solid and unbroken salt line, which is then surrounded by a circle made of dashed salt lines.

The video shows that the autonomous car understands that it can cross the dotted lines and even the continuous line that follows it.

As anyone who has ever driven a car knows, the dash-solid pair is the universal symbol that allows a car to move in the opposite lane to overtake a vehicle in front of it.

However, while a human driver knows that he must then return to his original lane to avoid a head-on collision, the autonomous car only sees its moving activities in a vacuum. Previous crossing data for the dotted line has not been used to understand that they need to be returned.

As a result, the car finds itself stuck in the solid salt circle. The artificial intelligence interface believes that, because of the continuous line, it is impossible to cross it to avoid a risk of frontal collision.

It seems likely that at some point, software engineers will find a solution to this particular problem.

However, it is also indicative of the infinite variables that exist when a human being drives a car, combined with an infinite number of variables that exist when that driver shares the road with other vehicles.

Maybe one day this can be fixed. May be.

Driving is not fun for these reasons, and it will not be, no matter what Tesla CEO Elon Musk says.

Even though autonomous cars and artificial intelligence interfaces become smart, they will never be able to account for all situations. This will cause terrible accidents and the public will take note.

The same goes for insurance companies and lawyers specializing in injuries.

The public will never trust Tesla robot cars

The public will be afraid to trust autonomous cars that commit this type of mistake. Insurance companies will be reluctant to cover autonomous cars. Lawyers specializing in personal injury will rub their greedy hands at the prospect of terrible accidents.

This is not to say that the public will never accept autonomous vehicles, but to expect the mass market to adopt them in less than ten years is crazy, whatever Elon says. Musk.

While the technology will progress sufficiently to the point of avoiding any such problem, this technology is likely to be decades away.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in the article only commit the author and in no way represent those of NCC.