KARL IAGNEMMA

To the extent that trolley problem scenarios exist in the real world, AVs will make them rarer, not more frequent.

For better or worse, we have to bridge this divide between developing cars that drive by the book and cars that drive how you and I drive.

Cities like New Delhi for example, where traffic is dense and it's a more fluid driving environment, that's hard for self-driving technology to deal with.

Building cars is highly specialized, it's hard, and it's capital intensive.

From a technology and economic perspective, it's vastly more likely that autonomy will be used for mobility services.

Writing, for me at least, takes a lot of concentrated work and effort. It takes dedication and the willingness to do the work even when that feeling of inspiration isn't there at all.

If you develop a technology that only works in a single city, where it's kind of optimized for a specific city, that's not really that exciting.

My parents encouraged me to be creative by being creative and interesting people themselves, and by making it clear how highly they valued creativity in others.

It's maybe an unrecognized fact of academia that what you spend a lot of your time doing is convincing people of your vision and raising funds to support your research activity. So in that sense, transitioning to a startup wasn't that big of a transition.

I grew up in Michigan, in the Detroit area, so cars are sort of in my DNA.

My stories often begin with a situation or character rather than an insight about the human condition. It's always been difficult for me to write from an abstract idea, no matter how interesting or compelling I feel the idea might be.

If you're a large organization, you may welcome a bit of regulation to keep the small guys out.

When you contribute to an open-source or a shared solution, and there's a liability issue that arises from the use of that solution, how will this be tracked back to individual contributors?

In Singapore, drivers generally obey the rules, but the attitude around pedestrians is actually quite different. It's culturally different. People drive safely, but it's not the same deference shown to pedestrians.

The AV ecosystem is constantly evolving, and no single winner will be crowned.

I love driving through Western Massachusetts, out through the Berkshires, when the road is empty and it's a nice day. I don't like driving home on Memorial Drive at 5:45 or 6:45 at night when it's crowded and stressful. I think that's true of most people, and the goal of automated driving is to take the stressful part of driving out of the task.

The fundamental problem here is that humans and automation approach the driving task differently.

Even if trolley problems were a realistic concern for AVs, it is not clear what, if anything, regulators or companies developing AVs should do about them. The trolley problem is an intensely debated thought experiment precisely because there isn't a consensus on what should be done.

It's important for automated cars to be able to drive in a human-like fashion - and that does mean adapting to the driving patterns around you.

Surveys show that while many people are open to the idea of an autonomous vehicle driving them to work, far fewer are willing to let one drive their child to soccer practice.

It's challenging to drive in a way that's human-like.

Humans violate the rules in a safe and principled way, and the reality is that autonomous vehicles in the future may have to do the same thing if they don't want to be the source of bottlenecks.

You put a car on the road which may be driving by the letter of the law, but compared to the surrounding road users, it's acting very conservatively. This can lead to situations where the autonomous car is a bit of a fish out of water.

The thing about stories is that they almost always find their way onto the page, even if it takes a while.

Singapore is likely to be the world's first market for self-driving cars. Commercial services around self-driving vehicles will likely be in Singapore before they are anywhere else in the world.