5G provides breakthrough for driverless car tests

[Anonymous]

https://news.sky.com/story/5g-provides-breakthrough-for-driverless-car-tests-11808333

Apparently a detailed navigation map of Britain can be downloaded in a single second.

This is all well and good and while 5G will no doubt play a part in these vehicles, as I've said before I sincerely hope these vehicles aren't dependent on control signals from cloud services that these vehicles connect to over 5G as any drop could mean that the vehicle either comes to a halt or just carries on which could be devastating.

[Bambino]

I'm not ready to put my trust in that kind of technology yet. I think it will take many more years before any of that becomes acceptable on a large scale. Way too much risk of failure at this point.

[anticpated]

Or hacking. Fast and furious 8 had a storyline like this. Hard to believe yes although with 5g that could be a reality.

[Anonymous]

@anticpated 

It's been done in real life by security researchers who demonstrated how easy it was to drive a car remotely by exploiting weaknesses in it's wi-fi hotspot which allowed them access to the vehicle management functions including steering and throttle control because the electronic systems in a vehicle are linked via a Controller Area Network or all the code runs on a single Electronic Control Unit.

No system is ever 100% secure, the best you can hope for is that bugs are found and patches issued and applied quickly.

Taking things slightly off topic I think this is why Microsoft started forcing updates as they knew a lot of people didn't restart to apply them as it was seen as a hassle.

Indeed, I've worked on some home PCs for people and seen 10 or 15 updates queued pending restart.

@Bambino 

Yes as it's going to be particularly dangerous while there's a mix of AI and human drivers.

[jonsie]

I totally agree with @Bambino , I could never put my trust in this kind of technology. Not in my lifetime hopefully.

[Anonymous]

@jonsie 

AI is being touted as the cure for all manner of problems and this is concerning as while there may at some point be 'The Terminator' scenario, in the nearer term systems will break down but there might not be people who know how to fix them because either the companies themselves don't know or those at the top are unwilling to share the 'secret sauce'