Automobile Intelligence?
One Saturday, my dad and I were driving by the High School he taught at. He said the car was trying to turn into the parking lot because of habit. I thought it was kind of funny. Cars don’t do things out of habit, I chuckled. But, perhaps in the near future they will.
Another car adage from dad is his lament that new cars no longer have a personality. New cars start when asked to, they climb hills, drive in hot or cold weather with ease, and always seem to repel rainwater. In Seattle, it is important to have cars that can climb hills, run in cold weather, and keep rainwater out; but Dad had cars that would not reliably do any of those things. My Grandfather would call unreliable traits in cars “personality.” He was a train engineer and learned quickly that no two trains were alike. I have heard the same thing from fighter pilots of their F18s. No two fighter jets act alike which is why they put their names on them. Yet, in today’s car world, they have no personality.
In my senior year in college, I finally got to have a car. It was one that Dad and I had worked on when I was in High School – we rebuilt the suspension and brakes, worked on the transmission and other various assorted ills. It was a 1972 Toyota Corona, faded red with a black top, and ran… most of the time. When it was cold outside, I had to turn the key and push the shift lever forward at the same time to get it to start. I told my friend that it was “a fancy theft deterrent system for thieves who work only in the winter.” When it was hot out, I would turn the key off and the engine would, more or less, keep running. To stop the engine, it required one foot firmly planted on the brake and the other foot nearly as firm on the gas. I told my roommate that the car loved the summer so much that it simply wanted to keep on driving. That car was full of personality!
According to a WSJ article, new cars will be able to learn from the driver and adapt to the driver’s style and, well, personality. Instead of fretting over what features you want your new car to have, it will learn from you and then suggest upgrades/updates after the purchase. With a car subscription service, it will adjust the seats automatically, change the interior temperature, it will know whether we need a cooled or heated steering wheel, and, get this, electric engines can actually upgrade/adapt to give the driver more power if the driver shows a proclivity for needing it. I’m honestly not sure what that means and I wonder what our state troopers would think of that. Nevertheless, this artificial intelligence already exists. The music subscription service I use has already adapted to what I listen to and makes suggestions and recommendations. Netflix has done this for years. And now it is coming to a car near you!
Psalm 123 (the easiest psalm to remember the number of) says this of followers of God: As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their masters, so our eyes look to the Lord our God.
Back when it was written, servants were to anticipate what the master needed so they would wait and watch the hands of the master in order to serve. Likewise, we are to wait and watch for the Lord our God in order to serve better. In our day and time, we believe that to serve God is to serve others who are in need.
Growing up with cars that had personalities, I always seemed to be the one to serve the car. Interesting that, like Psalm 123, cars are now able to watch our hands and to serve us. Hopefully that will help us to serve God and our neighbor better. At least we will be more comfortable while doing it.
-Fr. Dave
