Look At Me, Driverless Car Says, Leveraging Conspicuousness

Dr. Lance B. Eliot, AI Insider

Human drivers use conspicuousness to get their car seen, same holds for AI self-driving cars

Have you gone to the mountains for a hiking trip and ever been offered advice about how to handle an encounter with a bear?

There are two schools of thought about dealing with bears.

One approach involves being as loud and obnoxious as you can be, if you encounter a bear. This includes yelling forcefully at the bear, raising your arms above your head, waving your arms back-and-forth, and trying to be as aggressive looking and sounding as you can be. Some even say that you should pick-up a small child (if they happen to be handy and are your child), and hold the child up to make you look larger and fiercer. Or, you might instead open your coat and spread it out to look larger, along with standing as tall as you can and possibly even standing on a tree stump to look taller.

That’s the “being conspicuous” school-of-thought about dealing with bears.

Meanwhile, there are some that say you should take the opposite tack. You should avoid being aggressive. Stand still. Keep your arms pinned to your side. Don’t spread your legs and instead keep them tightly close together. Make no direct eye contact with the bear. No screaming, no yelling, no noises at all. This is the “being inconspicuous” approach to bear interaction.