ABSTRACT
Autonomous or self-driving cars are beset with challenges – which involve multiple feedback loops. In early 2018, two road fatalities created worldwide attention. This chapter addresses the embedding of complex systems integrating artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning in dynamic social organizations – with special reference to issues of movement, mobility and immobility. It focuses on automated mobilities and specifically self-driving cars, and on military drones and killer robots. From the period of the car’s development in the early 1900s, and from the inception of extensive paved roads which appeared during the 1930s, the car was deemed a self-driven vehicle. As part of an emerging culture of modern technology, the car rapidly became a consumer item to be purchased and prized. Advances in AI are not only about self-driving cars, smart grid cities and informational road systems. Such advances are also about war, terrorism, and the routine management of organized violence that underpins and shapes modern societies.
