When AI Self-Imposed Constraints Aren’t Good For Self-Driving Cars

Dr. Lance Eliot, AI Insider

[Ed. Note: For reader’s interested in Dr. Eliot’s ongoing business analyses about the advent of self-driving cars, see his online Forbes column: https://forbes.com/sites/lanceeliot/]

Constraints.

They are everywhere.

Seems like whichever direction you want to move or proceed, there is some constraint either blocking your way or at least impeding your progress.

Per Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s famous 1762 book entitled “The Social Contract,” he proclaimed that mankind is born free and yet everywhere mankind is in chains.

Though it might seem gloomy to have constraints, I’d dare say that we probably all welcome the aspect that arbitrarily deciding to murder someone is pretty much a societal constraint that inhibits such behavior.

There are thus some constraints that we like and some that we don’t like.

In the case of our laws, we as a society have gotten together and formed a set of constraints that governs our societal behaviors.

In computer science and AI, we deal with constraints in a multitude of ways.

When you are mathematically calculating something, there are constraints that…