Tech-savvy residents go nimby on self-driving cars

KAREN Brenchley is a computer scientist with expertise in training artificial intelligence, but this longtime Silicon Valley resident has pangs of anxiety whenever she sees Waymo self-driving cars manoeuvre the streets near her home. The former product manager, who has worked for Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard, wonders how engineers could teach the robocars operating on her tree-lined streets to make snap decisions, speed and slow with the flow of traffic and yield to pedestrians coming from the nearby park. She has asked her husband, an award-winning science-fiction author who does not drive, to wear a shiny vest while cycling to ensure autonomous vehicles spot him in a rush of activity. The problem is not that she does not understand the technology. It is that she does, and she knows how flawed nascent technology can be.