Mid-June saw the return of London Tech Week, a programme of events that aim to inspire creativity and foster collaboration. This year it featured an afternoon’s conference on the increasingly relevant – and sometimes contentious – subject of autonomous cars, hosted by law firm Bristows. Jonathan Minter reports
If the annual London Tech Week can be viewed as a litmus test for where the world is moving, then autonomous cars look set to take an increasingly central role in our lives.
In and among talks around bitcoins, new payment methods and cybersecurity, autonomous cars were the theme of a number of talks and presentations given throughout the week across the capital.
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One such talk came from legal practice Bristows, which brought together a number of its legal professionals, as well as Jan Przydatek, associate director of programmes at the Lloyds Register Foundation, and David Wong, currently senior technology and innovation manager at The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders.
Introducing the day, Vikram Khurana, senior associate at Bristows, noted that people are already used to seeing systems that are capable of adding a significant element or autonomy to vehicles, citing examples such as cruise control, and more recently Autopilot in Tesla vehicles.
Increasingly though, he says, rapidly increasing computer processing power and the rising speeds and sophistication of communication networks have seen devices across the board evolve from what were previously “dumb” into “smart” – from smartphones, to smart homes, to smart cars.
“The result of all those trends is a massive spike in autonomous systems, which process vast amounts of data, and connect to the cloud and each other.
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By GlobalData“Autonomous vehicles are probably one of the technologies which are attracting most interest and investment in this area,” he adds.
The transformational effect these cars are due to have on people’s lives is why the firm decided to host an event on the topic, as the legal and regulatory issues involved in taking the person out of the driving experience are particularly complex.
In addition, he notes “the high transformational effect it can have on all lives – how we get to work, commute, get around, and what our cities even look like. As well as a lot of the uncertainty in this area, you have got massive potential disruptions to businesses.”
Changing lives
Chris Holder, partner at Bristows, mirrors these thoughts, noting that the new technology will change how we live our lives. He says: “It is not just us telling a machine what to do, inputting data via a keyboard. What is happening with this new technology is it will create machines to make decisions about the way we live our lives.
“In the case of cars, these will be telling us, driving us down the road, turning left, turning right, stopping, and changing lanes.”
Significantly, he adds: “Machines will enter into a contract on our behalf; machines can cause harm, without human beings being part of the equation.”
This changes the way UK legal society works currently. At the moment a machine cannot enter into a contract on our behalf, a machine cannot be guilty of murder, and a machine is the not necessarily the owner of an IP it may have developed.
There are a host of other issues as well as this. One example Przydatek brings up is around people’s understanding of skills. “You can develop autonomous technology, you can make it. It does not mean we will use it,” he says.
Getting people to use autonomous systems is one thing, but once this has happened, there are other behavioural problems, Przydatek mentions.
In the case of a car, he says: “You can imagine a scene where people walk over the pavement, and they see an obstruction. They will look into the road, thinking the autonomous car will stop for them.
“That is not necessarily the right way to think, but it is about how these human factors can become a very important area.”
Misconceptions
Wong chose to highlight what he calls the five current myths involving autonomous cars.
The first is that people believe autonomous cars are currently on the road. In reality, he says we are nowhere near seeing Level 4 or Level 5 autonomous cars, where people are not in control or expected to be in control, even in the case of a systems failure.
The second myth is that people think autonomous vehicles and connected cars are one and the same, when in fact the two concepts are different.
Often, the two are developed together – for example an autonomous car will be able to handle a junction, however a connected car may have extra information of upcoming traffic on a blind junction.
The third myth Wong took issue with was the description of connected cars as “smartphones on wheels”.
“I can understand where people are coming from, but I would say that it is not actually true. You can just about get away with saying a car is a computer on wheels, but it is definitely not a smartphone on wheels, because a connected car is a far more sophisticated animal than a smartphone,” he explains.
The fourth myth involved data, and the general belief that the rise in connected cars is going to see a free-for-all in the collection of valuable data.
With the incoming GDPR regulation substantially limiting what types of personal data can be used, Wong noted there are two other types of data which can be used: data manufacturers will be happy to share, and data which he describes as “IP-rich data”. In the case of the latter, he suspects investors will not be happy sharing it.
The final myth Wong brought up is the idea that all autonomous cars are going to be electric and shared. Noting that much of the industry is aiming for autonomous cars in the next four to five years, he said this meant it was unlikely they will all be autonomous and shared – particularly initially, and particularly outside of urban areas.
Despite these myths, autonomous cars are destined to have a transformative effect on the world.
Looking at it from specifically a legal point of view, Holder says: “From a lawyer’s perspective, what is going to happen over the next 15-20 years is fundamentally going to change the way we live our lives.”
