Google’s driverless future: Will self-piloting vehicles rob us of our privacy and autonomy? | Reason.com

“Our cars have sensors with which they magically can see everything around them,” Google engineer Sebastian Thrun exclaimed in a 2011 TED talk. And yet no one ran out of the room screaming. That’s because Google has done such an excellent job of positioning self-driving cars as an unmitigated social good that the privacy implications of these lumbering, 3,000-pound tablets have barely been acknowledged, much less discussed. Instead, the discourse has focused on the thousands of annual traffic deaths self-driving cars will prevent, the billions of gallons of gas they will save, and the carbon emissions they will reduce.

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Hallie Siegel robotics editor-at-large

Hallie Siegel robotics editor-at-large