Loneliness has become an epidemic, and among ways to cope, perhaps self-driving cars might be part of the cure.
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We are in the midst of a loneliness epidemic. And, unfortunately, it is predicted to worsen.
According to stats by the U.S. Health Resources Services Administration (HRSA), one in five Americans indicates that they are lonely and feel socially isolated. Approximately 25% of Americans live alone.
Loneliness is more than merely a debilitating state-of-mind, it also can be physically damaging and reportedly take months or years off your lifespan, increase chances of having a stroke, along with being considered equal in body harm to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
By the demographics, those that are young tend to be vulnerable to loneliness, though we normally think only about the elderly being lonely (they are too, perhaps more obviously so).
Many senior citizens find themselves single again, becoming widowed or suffering through a divorce, often having few friends, living by themselves, and gradually plunge into social isolation. Sadly, some become hermits, rarely leaving their adobe, succumbing to a vicious cycle of being alone and getting lonelier and lonelier over time.
You might assume that young people could not possibly be lonely since they are often armed with and have grown up immersed in social media. Presumably, social media allows someone to have armies of friends, spread all across the globe, ready to befriend you at a moment’s notice, twenty-four hours a day.
The reality so far is that social media seems to have exacerbated loneliness.
Yes, that’s right, social media appears to actually spur loneliness.
Adverse Impacts Of Social Media On Loneliness
How can social media make things worse rather than better, you might wonder?
It is believed that by substituting the in-person aspects of bonding and friendship with an electronic connection, social media access tends to make any friendship into an acquaintance rather than someone you’d consider as a heartwarming buddy.
Furthermore, there is a constant drumbeat on social media of wanting to showcase only the best side of your endeavors, creating a kind of competitiveness and one-upmanship.
For various other paradoxically logical reasons, the vaunted hope of social media as a friend-generator seems to have underwhelmed expectations, and perhaps even fostered an adverse unexpected consequence of driving some into loneliness rather than away from it.
Sociologists have proposed that we all need to collectively combat loneliness, treating it like a disease or other scourge that requires overt action to cure. Non-profits and governmental programs have been springing up to attack the epidemic of loneliness, including offering tips and techniques to get past your loneliness and gain friendships, plus undertaking campaigns that increase awareness about loneliness and how to deal with it.
One of the toughest aspects is that loneliness tends to be viewed as a personal choice and therefore “live and let live” if that’s what the person wants to do. Unfortunately, the stigma and falsehoods about loneliness are so infused into our culture and society that it is hard to get much support for trying to battle this plague.
Here’s a perhaps startling proposal for you: Autonomous self-driving cars could help solve the loneliness epidemic.
The Role of Autonomous Cars In Solving Loneliness
I realize that it might seem like a bewildering leap in logic to somehow connect the blight of loneliness to having autonomous self-driving cars serve as a kind of serum or antidote to solve the loneliness issue.
Allow me a moment to explain why driverless cars could be a handy aid or at least possibly ameliorate the matter to some substantive degree.
First, let’s be clear cut and agree that we don’t yet have autonomous self-driving cars, meaning that we have not yet achieved true Level 5 driverless cars. There are various public roadway experiments and tryouts going on, usually involving having a human back-up driver in the self-driving car, and there is closed track or proving ground efforts too. But these are not fully autonomous cars, nor are they prevalent, and thus we don’t really yet know what will happen once true self-driving cars are here and commonly available.
Let’s use some keen scientific and psychological reasoning to infer how the advent of driverless cars could battle loneliness.
There are several direct means and also some noteworthy indirect means.
Here they are:
• Ridesharing Sharing. Autonomous cars are predicted to be an exponential boon to ridesharing, meaning that the ease of access to ridesharing will be greatly expanded. If that actually happens, it could allow for what some are calling Mobility as a Service (MaaS) and our society will be reshaped around the mobility enabled by driverless cars. This could also mean that people might opt to rideshare together, more so than today, and thus you might encounter other people while ridesharing, gaining new friends, or being more face-to-face with existing friends or colleagues. It could chop away at the loneliness pillar.
• Group Interaction Inside. Automakers are envisioning that self-driving cars will have a redesigned interior, no longer needing the steering wheel and driving controls. This frees up space inside a car. Concept designs suggest that you might have swivel seats and perhaps even a table to work on, allowing you to confer in a group setting while riding in an autonomous car. Doing so would further chop-off a piece off of the loneliness megalith as people carry on meetings within a self-driving car.
• Remote Group Interaction. Another possibility for the interior of autonomous cars involves having large LED screens on the windows, the screens facing inward, allowing you to enjoy video streaming while a passenger in a driverless car. With the widespread emergence of 5G as a speedy electronic communication protocol, you might opt to interact with others remotely, using the LED screens in a FaceTime or Skype manner, possibly to get some training or education courses undertaken while commuting. This same capability can allow someone that might be alone inside a self-driving car to interact with other people elsewhere. Take another notch off the loneliness stone.
• Ease Of Transport. Currently, you need to find a human driver to take you someplace when you want to make use of a car. This can be difficult to arrange. With a self-driving car, it is assumed that such cars will readily be available on an Uber or Lyft type of network, or possibly a Facebook or Twitter type of network, and you can easily request one to give you a lift. As such, the barrier to getting out of your home is lessened. It reduces the mobility friction that nurtures loneliness.
• AI Driver Can Be Your Friend. With advances in AI capabilities of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and socio-behavioral man-machine interaction, you’ll likely be interacting fluently with the AI driving your self-driving car. Indeed, it is anticipated that such AI systems will incorporate empathetic computing that can gauge your emotions and respond to you in a seemingly emotion-based manner. Your AI driving system might get to know you better than your human friends.
Each of those above aspects can be a separate means to mitigate loneliness.
If you combine them together, you have an array of loneliness reducers that might be potent enough to make a dent in loneliness.
Conclusion
Does this all mean that self-driving cars are a guaranteed cure-all of human loneliness?
Decidedly, no.
Suppose the cost of using autonomous cars is high and therefore the assumed access to mobility is only for those that can afford it. This could leave out a large portion of society that is afflicted by loneliness.
Another concern is that the use of AI to bond with people might make humans actually less likely to seek out human relationships and human interactions.
Why deal with the rough edges of humans, including getting into arguments and having tiffs, when you can chat with an AI system that treats you like royalty and never talks back. Anthropomorphizing of the AI could be another kind of scourge that we later on need to contend with.
Keep in mind that it will be many years, likely decades, before we have true self-driving cars of a Level 5 that are pervasive in society. And, we currently have over 250 million conventional cars in the United States alone, which are not going to overnight be transformed into driverless cars, and nor be replaced readily by driverless cars (the economics won’t enable it).
So, let’s be realistic and acknowledge that if self-driving cars are going to solve the loneliness epidemic, it’s a remedy that won’t be available for a long while to come.
As such, meanwhile, we ought to be taking other prudent steps, and not waiting around until the driverless car as antidote arrives.
Please join the fight against loneliness, via everyday conventional approaches, and keep your eye on the future of self-driving cars.
