When A Ghost Seemingly Has Taken Your AI Self-Driving Car

Hey, dude, where’s my car?

That was the question on my mind when I walked out to the parking lot to get into my car and it was not there. Given that Halloween was just a few days away, I naturally suspected that perhaps a ghost had decided to take my car for a spin. Seems like those ghosts don’t get much of a chance to spirit away an everyday car.

I put aside the ghost theory and sought to find something more down-to-earth as an explanation for where my car was.

This particular parking lot was quite expansive and there wasn’t any numbering system associated with the parking spots. Thus, I had to remember where my car was supposed to be as based entirely on my own mental “global positioning” brain ware, and absent of having any tangible and more reliable form of tracing.

Relying on my noggin alone was not a sure bet.

I was pretty sure that the parking spot of my car was next to a lamppost and about midway down a row of cars that was visually aligned with a sandwich shop outside of the fenced perimeter of the parking lot. That seems byzantine, I realize. Hey, at least it was a means to pin down generally where my car had to be.

But my car was not where it was supposed to be. Indeed, it wasn’t anywhere near to where it was supposed to be. I stood in the presumed parking spot and looked all around me, stretching on my tippy toes and scanned the horizon like a sailor desperately trying to spy land ahoy.

You might be thinking that I ought to remember what other cars were parked next to my car and thus I could just look for that pattern of say a red pickup truck and a yellow sportscar that were next to me. Unfortunately, this gambit wasn’t going to work out. I had parked my car very early in the morning that day, and it was now quite late in the evening. Most of the cars in this particular lot had turned over and a newer crop of cars had gradually entered into and parked here and there.

The initial reaction to not immediately being able to find my car was somewhat muted since I assumed that my mind was playing tricks on me. I routinely parked in this specific lot and had to jockey each day to discover an available empty space. As a result, each day my car was parked in some semi-randomly chosen spot such that I never knew beforehand where an open spot might exist. This all meant that I could readily be thinking about where I parked yesterday, rather than accurately remembering where I parked today.

I decided that the brute force method of searching was required in this instance.

I stridently walked up-and-down every row of the parking lot. This was done slowly and cautiously, wanting to make sure that I did not go hastily and inadvertently miss seeing my car. I assumed that by methodically searching, I would certainly find my car and the whole affair would be laughed off as a quirky moment of existence. If I were to sprint around in a panic, I figured it would only make me more panicky and I would be unlikely to detect my car, therefore end-up not finding it and shamefully enter into a mind-bending berserk mode accordingly.

Well, the thoughtfully crafted brute force approach failed to unearth my car, which ostensibly meant that it was indeed missing. I was now begrudgingly convinced that my car was no longer in this parking lot.

I knew absolutely that I had parked there. I knew absolutely that I was not somehow in the wrong parking lot. I knew for sure that I had not gotten a lift that morning or otherwise gotten to work by a method other than driving my car. Yes, the car was supposed to be here and it wasn’t, that was unnervingly the plain and agonizing truth.

What did the heck happen to my car (I say that, minus the dude part, respectively)?

I have already now covered the possibility that I had “misplaced” my car in terms of having thought it was in one spot and yet perhaps it was sitting quietly in another spot. So, misplacement was no longer on the list of possibilities.

If my car wasn’t there, it must have been moved.

I realize that seems blatantly obvious. Sorry, but that’s what goes through your mind when the shock of having a missing car strikes you to the bone. I liked my car. It was my favorite car of all the cars I’ve owned to date. Even if I didn’t somehow favor the car, nonetheless it was my car and it ought to be ready and waiting for me.

Well, how could my car have been moved?

One possibility that came to mind was that my car had been towed. Maybe my car was illegally parked while it was sitting in the parking lot. I have no idea how that could be, though perhaps some obscure parking rule had gotten my vehicle in trouble. Or perhaps my car had done something wrong, such as the horn suddenly squawking and nobody could stand the blaring sounds, so the parking lot management had my vehicle towed out of there.

I summarily rejected the notion that aliens from another planet had beamed-up my car. That kind of thinking is fun when making a movie script or playing wild what-if games, but when your prized car is really gone, the practical ways of how it came to be missing are more valued and prudent to consider.

There wasn’t an attendant in the parking lot. Near the exit gate, there was a payment kiosk and it had a red button to remotely make contact with someone associated with the parking aspects. I used the red button. Speaking to a human voice that emitted from a rather balky speaker, we determined that the parking establishment had not towed my car. Of course, someone else could have come into the parking lot and towed it, like one of the bounty hunter episodes. That fleeting thought was instantly rejected as being nearly equal to the alien invasion from Mars.

Okay, it was now down to the remaining possibility that someone drove my car off the lot.

I was the only person with a key to my car. If I had loaned out my spare key to someone else, they would immediately be a suspect in this budding crime scene. Those comedic shows where they pull a gag on someone can at times involve enlisting a friend of the unsuspecting dupe that then helps to drive off with their car, or subtly move it, sparking the person to be baffled at how their car was in a different spot than expected. This was inapplicable in my case.

Anyway, it now seemed apparent that someone unknown to me had spirited away with my car. They must have devilishly gotten into my car and used one of those insidious under-the-dashboard sneaks to start my car and drive it away. Sadness ensued.

I reported the matter to the police.

They informed me that the odds were that my car was long gone by the time I had reported it missing. Having grown up watching TV shows that involve an all-points bulletin of citywide searches for a missing whatever, I was disappointed to discover that not only was such a street-by-street search not going to be undertaken, but there were also lots of other cars stolen on that day. In that sense, my stolen car was one of many and now was a statistic rather than something that had seemed very personal and personable to me.

Shifting gears, the future of cars involves the emergence of self-driving cars.

Here is today’s interesting question: Is it possible for an AI-based true self-driving car to go missing, and if so, what happens next?

Let’s unpack the matter and see.

Understanding The Levels Of Self-Driving Cars

As a clarification, true self-driving cars are ones that the AI drives the car entirely on its own and there isn’t any human assistance during the driving task.

These driverless vehicles are considered Level 4 and Level 5 (see my explanation at this link here), while a car that requires a human driver to co-share the driving effort is usually considered at Level 2 or Level 3. The cars that co-share the driving task are described as being semi-autonomous, and typically contain a variety of automated add-on’s that are referred to as ADAS (Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems).

There is not yet a true self-driving car at Level 5, which we don’t yet even know if this will be possible to achieve, and nor how long it will take to get there.

Meanwhile, the Level 4 efforts are gradually trying to get some traction by undergoing very narrow and selective public roadway trials, though there is controversy over whether this testing should be allowed per se (we are all life-or-death guinea pigs in an experiment taking place on our highways and byways, some contend, see my coverage at this link here).

Since semi-autonomous cars require a human driver, the adoption of those types of cars won’t be markedly different than driving conventional vehicles, so there’s not much new per se to cover about them on this topic (though, as you’ll see in a moment, the points next made are generally applicable).

For semi-autonomous cars, it is important that the public needs to be forewarned about a disturbing aspect that’s been arising lately, namely that despite those human drivers that keep posting videos of themselves falling asleep at the wheel of a Level 2 or Level 3 car, we all need to avoid being misled into believing that the driver can take away their attention from the driving task while driving a semi-autonomous car.

You are the responsible party for the driving actions of the vehicle, regardless of how much automation might be tossed into a Level 2 or Level 3.

Self-Driving Cars And When They Go Missing

For Level 4 and Level 5 true self-driving vehicles, there won’t be a human driver involved in the driving task.

All occupants will be passengers.

The AI is doing the driving.

First, let’s dispense with the idea that the AI is somehow sentient. It is not. The AI of today is programmed and involves the same everyday kind of computers as found in your smartphone or laptop. To clarify, yes there are specialized computer processors that are built to aid in self-driving activities, such as chips that can process Machine Learning and Deep Learning algorithms rapidly, but those are still in the realm of conventional computing.

I bring this up due to the interest in addressing the question about what happens if a self-driving car goes missing.

We can reject outright the possibility that the AI of its own accord might drive the vehicle away from a particular place or parking spot. If the AI driving system drives the vehicle, it is because there is some everyday world reason for it. Thus, this does not include the AI as a sentient being that somehow decides today is the day it will go for a drive and showcase its freedom from the bonds of mankind (for my discussion about those kinds of futuristic and rather outsized notions, see the link here).

Let’s consider the reasonable possibilities for why a self-driving car might go missing.

When my conventional car was missing, I initially assumed that I had “misplaced” my car. This meant that I was potentially confused about where I had last left my car. Perhaps I had parked it in place X and my mind was trying to convince me that I had parked it in place Y. The car was still sitting in place X and therefore was right where it was to start with. The alleged movement was only in my mind.

Is it feasible for a self-driving car to get “misplaced” in the same manner as a conventional car?

A fair answer to that question is that yes, it is conceivable.

Suppose you owned a self-driving car and you parked it in the same parking lot as to where I work. You could readily do the same thing I did, namely coming back out later on and not be able to immediately find the self-driving car. In my case, it really was gone, but it was seemingly equally likely that I could have failed to remember accurately where it was parked.

The beauty of a self-driving car is likely to be that it can be remotely activated and retrieved.

A conventional car won’t drive itself to you. The best that most conventional cars can do is wink their headlights and toot their horn when you try to access them remotely. A true self-driving car would be able to properly and safely pull out of a parking spot and drive to wherever you might be standing and waiting for it to arrive (doing so entirely autonomously, and no human hand or guidance involved).

In that sense, it is going to be very hard to misplace your self-driving car per se. No matter where your self-driving car was originally parked, it doesn’t especially matter, since it can find its way to you, assuming that it can be accessed remotely.

I emphasize this remote access facet due to the off-chance that the electronic communications to your self-driving car are unable to function, perhaps being in a remote area or having some other form of communications networking issues. In that case, you would presumably have no means of alerting the self-driving car that it is needed and that it ought to startup and come to you.

Likewise, if the self-driving car is out of battery charge and does not have the needed electrical energy to function, this also implies that you would not be able to remotely communicate with the vehicle. The proverbial dead battery is apt to make the self-driving car into a multi-ton paperweight, which of course could be said of any conventional car too.

The point overall is that you could “misplace” a self-driving car, though finding it is altogether going to be relatively easy since you won’t search for it, and instead it will search for you (or, more likely, come to you).

There is an added twist to this misplacement aspect.

Since the self-driving car can drive itself, there is a chance that it might have opted to move from the parking spot that it was originally left in. With a conventional car, there is no chance that the car will opt to move (a human might do so, but not by the acts of the car alone). This suggests that if you did decide to walk out to find your self-driving car, it readily might not be in the original parked spot.

The AI could have chosen to move the vehicle.

Why would the AI do such a thing?

Again, it is not as a result of sentience. Put aside any anthropomorphizing of today’s AI. The rational and easily explainable reason could be that the AI might have been programmed to detect adverse conditions while being parked. For example, suppose another car was backing into a spot that was head-to-head with the parked self-driving car. If the AI driving system was active, it might detect this danger, and start the car to move it away from getting dinged by the other car. The AI might then seek a different parking spot.

In theory, the AI driving system would then send out an electronic message to indicate it had moved. The fleet operator or perhaps the owner would hopefully get dutifully notified. In any case, regardless of whether a notification was to occur, the notion is that the AI driving system can move the car, doing so for some programmatic reason.

Indeed, it could be that the fleet operator opted to remotely activate the self-driving car, sending it to a local carwash. Unbeknownst to you, the AI driving system drove the self-driving car and left the parking lot, drove to a carwash, went through the carwash, perhaps refueled, and came back to the parking lot. All of that might take place without your awareness. That being said, this is somewhat farfetched in that if you owned the self-driving car, the odds are that the fleet operator would likely inform you of such actions.

As an aside, some pundits reject wholescale the idea that individuals will own self-driving cars. The logic is that self-driving cars will only be owned in large fleets and by sizable companies, such as major automakers, major ridesharing firms, and the like. I am known for my contrarian stance that argues there will be individual ownership of self-driving cars (see my discussion at this link here).

I bring up this particular point because some would insist that you will never have a self-driving car and therefore never be able to “lose” a self-driving car (obviously, if you don’t have one, you can’t somehow lose it or misplace it). The future will consist of people always riding in self-driving cars on a ridesharing basis. A self-driving car will pick you up and take you to your destination. At no juncture will you care about where the self-driving car is parked. All that you know is that it appears when you need it, and it goes away when you don’t need it.

For the moment, go with me on the perspective that people will be able to individually own a self-driving car. If you are agreeable to giving that notion some airtime, it means that we can continue the discussion about what happens when a self-driving car goes missing (which, as an aside, can be said to even apply when owned by a fleet, since the fleet owner could have similar concerns arise).

Here’s where we are on this matter.

A self-driving car that is parked can readily move from the parking spot.

In contrast, a conventional car cannot readily be moved. It can be towed, of course. It can be driven by a human too. Each of those actions is somewhat harder to pull off than the same act of moving a self-driving car. With a self-driving car, there is an AI driving system in the car and ready to go, and for which can act somewhat on its own (perhaps pre-programmed to leave the parking lot at a particular time of day) or by remote activation.

Could a self-driving car be towed?

Yes, absolutely.

We all need to realize that self-driving cars are in fact going to be towed from time to time. A self-driving car is still a car. Cars have various mechanical failures and breakdowns. An AI driving system cannot drive a car that is broken, any more than a human could drive such a vehicle. As such, you should not be surprised to witness self-driving cars getting towed to repair shops (see my coverage at this link here).

Could a human steal a self-driving car by breaking into the vehicle and driving it off?

For a conventional car, a criminal can potentially break into a car, start the car, and drive it away. A quite natural question arises as to whether a human could do the same to a self-driving car.

Well, eventually, the idea is that true self-driving cars won’t have any human-accessible driving controls. The thinking is that it will be best to prevent humans from driving cars since otherwise, they will continue to drive while drunk and drive while distracted. The hope is that by making self-driving cars only drivable by an AI driving system, we can reduce dramatically the number of car crashes and car-related fatalities and injuries. If that comes to pass, which not everyone agrees will necessarily happen, there won’t be any direct means for a car thief to drive away with a stolen car. They might be able to break into the self-driving car. They won’t have access to the driving controls.

The odds are that self-driving cars will employ some form of Natural Language Processing (NLP) system for human riders to be able to tell the AI driving system where the person wants to go. In that case, presumably, the thief that has broken into a self-driving car could try to verbally instruct the AI driving system to spirit away with the car.

This seems an unlikely scenario in that the odds are that NLP for AI driving systems will potentially use various security measures to make sure that the instructions being given are coming from the appropriate source. All told, the breaking into the vehicle is most certainly going to be detected by the AI driving system and that alone would setoff various alarms and alerts. A crook that then frantically tries to command the AI to drive away is bound to get nowhere.

And, some predict that we will rarely have self-driving cars stolen at all.

The sensors of the self-driving car will capture on video the car thief. The electronic communications of the self-driving car can instantly send out a message to the police and other authorities. Without any readily accessible driving controls, the thief cannot just hotwire the vehicle and drive away.

Stealing a self-driving car also doesn’t make much sense for other various important reasons. For example, most self-driving cars will automatically be in touch with the fleet operator to indicate where the car is, what its status consists of, where it is going, etc. This is a vital form of traceability and monitoring by the fleet operator. A car thief would be tracked and generally unable to sneak away with the self-driving car (unless they could use some form of cybersecurity hacks to subvert or avoid the tracing, see my columns covering that looming prospect).

Conclusion

The good news is that stealing a self-driving car is going to be a tough crime to successfully commit.

Even if a thief decided to steal a self-driving car via the act of towing (rather than driving off with the vehicle), the odds are that the towing action would readily be detected by the AI driving system and would emit automatically an electronic tipoff to the fleet operator that something has gone amiss.

The somewhat unsettling news is that wherever you believe that you parked your self-driving car, there are lots of valid reasons why it might not be there anymore. At the same time, it won’t especially matter to you. You can park your car and forget where you parked it, doing so to your heart’s content.

Almost akin to a beloved dog like Lassie, the AI driving system can come and find you when the time arises for you to need a ride. To clarify, the AI won’t be showering you with love and affection, and don’t expect those cherished canine slobbering kisses, since the self-driving car will only be doing what it was programmed to do.

Perhaps someday we will have sentient AI, in which case the AI might be happy to see you, though the downside is that the AI might arbitrarily decide that it doesn’t want to give you a ride and will refuse to come and pick you up.

We might need special Blade Runner-style bounty hunters that can wrangle those ornery AI driving systems that have decided purposely to go missing.