Self-driving cars will test trust in machine learning algorithms

Car companies and internet giants are all betting big that self-driving cars will be the wave of the future -- and they're racing to own as big a share of that future as possible. The relative success of self-driving cars, and the degree to which the motoring public embraces them, will be an interesting case to see how willing people are to trust algorithms. Of all the companies trying to get in on this modern-day gold rush, each is reliant on machine learning algorithms. Google claims to have unleashed its cars for more than 1.5 million miles of driving. The point of all those miles is to refine the machine learning algorithms that underlie the decisions the cars make.