AI in cars could soon prevent Charlottesville-style attacks

Artificial intelligence could soon prevent car ramming attacks like the one Saturday in Charlottesville, the head of Carnegie Mellon University's campus in Australia told a newspaper there.

Emil Bolongaita said in an interview with the Herald Sun that technology that would stop cars from being driven into pedestrians could "explode in the decade."

"The research that my colleagues are working on is driven by the desire to if not totally eradicate, then reduce fatalities and accidents. That includes individuals who use vehicles as weapons," Bolongaita said.

"The goal is to manufacture vehicles with artificial intelligence in them so that they will refuse to crash and proceed when there is a human being in front of them. They will automatically stop and refuse to proceed."

James Alex Fields Jr., 20, of Maumee, Ohio, is accused of driving a Dodge Challenger into a crowd of people protesting the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville. Heather Heyer, 32, was killed. At least 19 others were injured.

The self-driving cars whizzing around Pittsburgh already have sensors and LIDAR to detect pedestrians and artificial intelligence programmed in to not hit them. The Uber self-driving car that gave me a ride in May 2016 even stopped for a goose crossing River Avenue .

A human driver could still take control of those cars and override the AI, however. Bolongaita is talking about a car where the driver has no control, more like the car envisioned by Waymo, Google's self-driving car company. It doesn't have a steering wheel or a gas or brake pedal.

Completely removing the human element from driving has long been the goal of self-driving car researchers.

"The eventual goal of the research is to remove the human from the calculation of the vehicle's movement. If you have a human being in control of the vehicle that can override the vehicle, the risk will be there because the ability of the human mind is affected by so many factors," Bolongaita told the Herald Sun.

Aaron Aupperlee is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at aaupperlee@tribweb.com, 412-336-8448 or via Twitter @tinynotebook.