自动化需要打击平衡行为

Earlier this month, I crawled into Dr. Wendy Ju‘s autonomous car simulator to explore the future of human-machine interfaces at Cornell Tech’s Tata Innovation Center. Dr Ju recently moved to the Roosevelt Island campus from Stanford University. While in California, the roboticist was famous for making videos capturing people’s reactions to self-driving cars using students disguised as “ghost-drivers” in seat costumes.

去年1月，丰田研究发布了一份报告on the neurological effects of speeding. The team displayed images and videos of sports cars racing down highways that showed spikes in brain activity. The study states,”we hypothesized that sensory inputs during high-speed driving would activate the brain reward system. Humans commonly crave sensory inputs that give rise to pleasant sensations, and abundant evidence indicates that the craving for pleasant sensations is associated with activation within the brain reward system.”

The brain reward system is directly correlated to the body’s release of dopamine via the ventral tegmental area (VTA). The findings confirmed that higher levels of brain activity on the VTA “were stronger in the fast condition than in the slow condition.” Essentially, speeding, which most drivers engage in regardless of laws, is addicting as the brain rewards such aggressive behaviors with increased levels of dopamine.

Autonomous vehicles could lead to a marketing battle for in-cabin services pushed by manufacturers, software providers, and media/Internet companies. As an example, Apple filed a patent in August for “an augmented-reality powered windshield system,” This comes two years after Ford filed a similar patent for a display or “system for projecting visual content onto a vehicle’s windscreen.”

Both of these filings, along with a handful of others, indicate that the race for capturing rider mindshare will be critical to driving the adoption of robocars. Strategy Analytics estimates this “passenger economy” could generate $7 trillion by 2050. Commuters who spend 250 million hours a year in the car are seen by these marketers as a captive audience for new ways to fill dopamine-deprived experiences.

我预计在下个月的消费电子(CES) in-cabin services will be the lead story coming out of Las Vegas. For example, last week Audi announced a new partnership with Disney to develop innovative ways to entertain passengers. Audi calls the in-cabin experience “The 25th Hour,” which will be further unveiled at CES. Providing a sneak peak into its meaning,CNETinterviewed Nils Wollny, head of Audi’s digital business strategy. According to Wollny, the German automobile manufacturer approached Disney 18 months ago to forge a relationship.

沃尔尼（Wollny）解释说：“您可能熟悉他们的想象部门（沃尔特·迪斯尼（Walt Disney）想象中），他们非常沉重地为客户建立体验。他们对将来的汽车发生的事情非常感兴趣。”他继续说：“（对于奥迪）将有一种商业化或商业方法……我称其为一种新的媒体类型，目前尚未充分利用在车辆中。我们共同创造了全新的东西，这是技术驱动的。”

在向CNET的路展上说明这一愿景时，Wollny指出奥迪完全自主的概念车设计“模糊了外界与车辆的机舱之间的界限”。这是通过将窗户变成具有数字叠加层的屏幕来实现的，这些覆盖层同时显示媒体，而外界每小时以60英里的速度冲入。

Self-driving cars will be judged not by speed of their engines, but the comforts of their cabins. Wollny’s description is reminiscent of the marketing efforts of social media companies that were successful in turning an entire generation into screen addicts. Facebook’s first president, Sean Parker, admitted recently that the social network was founded with the strategy of consuming “as much of your time and conscious attention as possible.” To accomplish this devious objective, Parker confesses that the company exploited the “vulnerability in human psychology.” When you like something or comment on a friend’s photo, Parker boasted “we … give you a little dopamine hit.”

The mobile economy has birthed dopamine experts such as Ramsay Brown, co-founder of Dopamine Labs, which promises app designers with increased levels of “stickiness” by aligning game play to the player’s cerebral reward system. Using machine learning, Brown’s technology monitors each player’s activity by providing the most optimal spike of dopamine.纽约时报专栏作家戴维·布鲁克（David Brook）的说it best, “Tech companies understand what causes dopamine surges in the brain and they lace their products with ‘hijacking techniques’ that lure us in and create ‘compulsion loops’.”

自动化的承诺是使人类摆脱沉闷，肮脏和危险的琐事。另一方面，许多人拥护的是，人工智能可以使我们过于依赖技术，无聊的社会。已经将半自主系统被认为是工作场所事故的原因。英国运输商会的安德鲁·莫尔（Andrew Moll）警告说，通过将决策外包给计算机的自动化水平更高，导致海上碰撞水平更高。

Moll pointed to recent spat of seafaring incidents. “We have seen increasing integration of ship systems and increasing reliance on computers.” He elaborated that “Humans do not make good monitors. We need to set alarms and alerts otherwise mariners will not do checks.”

莫尔惊呼技术越来越多地使工人懒惰，因为许多人感到“缺乏意义和目的”，并且正遭受精神疲劳的困扰，这导致工作场所受伤的增加。莫尔警告说：“海员到达港口时会感到疲倦和沮丧。”这些观察结果不隔离到运输。

在皮克斯电影中WALL-E, the future is so automated that humans have lost all motivation to leave their mobile lounge chairs. To avoid this dystopian vision, successful robotic deployments will have to strike the right balance of augmenting the physical while providing cerebral stimulation.