>Picture hackers employed by a hostile nation finding a way to command large numbers of cars on U.S. roads. Picture those hackers ordering the vehicles to suddenly accelerate and turn hard to the right, flipping them over, killing many passengers and clogging freeways with junked cars.
Car only needs a computer - not a network. Modern cars already have computers. Picture hackers employed by a yadda yadda remotely disabling power-steering on cars across the nation or disabling ABS and you have the same disaster scenario in an already-existing attack vector.
>Or envision a lone-wolf terrorist loading explosives into a car and programming it to drive to a targeted building or public space.
Already possible. Even Mythbusters sets up "life size" RC cars for some of their crash-related myths.
> Already possible. Even Mythbusters sets up "life size" RC cars for some of their crash-related myths.
It's already possible, but it takes a lot of work, and (AFAIK), you don't end up with a vehicle that can be programmed with destination coordinates tens or hundreds of kilometers away and then left to its own devices.
There's always the possibility of a lone-wolf, obsessed Unabomber-style terrorist who has their own machine shop and whatnot, but that's an edge case. The potential danger here (IMO) is the terrorist who can steal a few autonomous cars from parking lots (or call up a few autonomous taxis), load them up with cellphone-detonated explosives, and be all set. That scenario doesn't require anything really technically-challenging, and IMO is very likely to occur.
The random "crash a bunch of cars on the freeway" scenario is not as likely, IMO, because the number of people who are interested in killing tens or hundreds of random people is lower than the number who are interested in killing a few very specific people, or destroying a very specific building/piece of infrastructure.
I don't think this is a reason to disallow autonomous vehicles, but I don't have a good answer for how to address it, either.
Car only needs a computer - not a network. Modern cars already have computers. Picture hackers employed by a yadda yadda remotely disabling power-steering on cars across the nation or disabling ABS and you have the same disaster scenario in an already-existing attack vector.
>Or envision a lone-wolf terrorist loading explosives into a car and programming it to drive to a targeted building or public space.
Already possible. Even Mythbusters sets up "life size" RC cars for some of their crash-related myths.
I really hate puff scare pieces.