Driving my son to lessons last week we found ourselves behind a self-driving car, branded with an Internet company logo you would undoubtedly recognize instantly.
My son immediately launched into a detailed explanation the rules of self-driving vehicles as we watched the young lady in the self-driving car, with hands folded in her lap, gazing at the scenery going by.
As we both approached a busy on-ramp, the self-driving car in front of us slowed to maintain a safe distance and accommodate vehicles merging onto the freeway. The result was a huge clump of slow traffic compounded by cars approaching from behind, adding to the ever-growing clot of slow traffic.
I explained to my son that one major contributing factor to the slow traffic, now impeding all three lanes of the freeway, was that the self-driving car never activated its brake lights as it slowed, and traffic approaching from behind was thus not warned. Taking that point into consideration, he started discussing the viability of self-driving vehicles driving on the same roads as person-driven vehicles. It seems that the rules for deciding how to react to another vehicle are different depending on whether a computer or a person is making those judgements.
My son thought quietly for a while and then said, “That car uses a computer to make judgements and people use imagination. Imagination comes from your soul. There is no way a computer could replace a human soul. Ever.”
Hold tightly to your child’s soul and let them develop imagination.