Last week, the AI enthusiasts were served with two of the biggest goof-ups on live TV that left many in splits. These two events, though funny, forced people to reassess their opinion about the future of artificial intelligence. In the next section, we take a look at what happens behind the scenes. This is one of their first live-broadcasted events. This was the second run.

Roborace is a fledgling motorsports series using autonomous racecars, and its beta season is currently being carried out. One of the cars spontaneously decided to drive into a wall from a standstill. It's unclear why the car crashed, but since it had no human driver, nobody was injured. The robot apocalypse is coming… eventually. Well, maybe robots won't actually take over the world one day, but the potential is certainly there, and we've already seen how robotic systems can completely take over tasks normally assigned to humans, especially in manufacturing and even driving cars.

Roborace team SIT Acronis Autonomous suffered a "computer says no" moment on Thursday when its race car drove straight into a wall, mere seconds after it had started driving. If you're familiar with the Little Britain T.V. show, you'll understand the meaning of "computer says no." And it couldn't be more true for this moment. Luckily no one was hurt. But, you live and you learn, and this is one of the ways people working in robotics learn how to improve their systems.

Self-driving cars have made their way to the raceway, but a Roborace in the UK took a wrong turn when one of the vehicles smashed right into a wall. The Acronis SIT Autonomous, operated by a Swiss team, was gearing up for the race when the AI hit the accelerator and made an unexpected turn to the right – hitting the pit-lane barrier. Six teams competed in a three-lap time-trial race with the self-driving, electric vehicles cruising through a mixed reality'metaverse.' This system navigates the cars through virtual obstacles that crews must avoid or lose points, but Acronis SIT Autonomous smacked into a real object before even making it past the starting line. The vehicle face planted into the cement blockade, smashing the front-end that holds the AI camera, LIDAR system and sensors that decide the direction of travel.

A student team from Carnegie Mellon University is joining the upcoming season of Roborace, an international competition involving autonomous, electrically powered vehicles. CMU's Roborace team includes students and alumni from the Language Technologies Institute (LTI) and Robotics Institute, as well as the Information Networking Institute. It will be the first U.S. team to join Roborace and anticipates competing in a Roborace event later this year. "Having the opportunity to work on cutting-edge projects such as this is what attracted me to Carnegie Mellon," said Jimmy Herman, an ex-NFL athlete now enrolled in the LTI's Master of Computational Data Science (MCDS) program. "We are pushing to innovate and create technology with impact potential beyond the racing domain," he added.

What does a fully autonomous, electric, high-performance race car have to do with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? For starters, the vehicle, developed by Roborace, is providing a testing ground for new efforts to build public trust in how next-generation vehicles could improve road safety and reduce the 1.35 million annual road deaths worldwide (SDG 3.6). Increased use of autonomous, electric, connected vehicles could also reduce emissions, improve traffic flows -- and provide affordable, safe and sustainable transport systems to underdeveloped nations (SDG 11.2). But how do we go from race track to the road? A panel of experts – Bryn Balcombe, CSO at Roborace and Founder of the Autonomous Drivers Alliance; Lucas di Grassi, Formula-E World Champion and CEO at Roborace; and Fred Werner, Head of Strategic Engagement at ITU's Standardization Bureau – met at Web Summit 2019 to discuss how AI will make our roads safer, and how ITU is helping lead the charge.

Roborace is the world's first competition for human AI teams, using both self-driving and manually-controlled cars. Race formats will feature new forms of immersive entertainment to engage the next generation of racing fans. Through sport, innovations in machine-driven technologies will be accelerated. A self-driving car has set a speed record of 175 mph. In November 2017, Musk said the next Tesla Roadster would have three motors and be able to travel a whopping 0 to 60 miles per hour in 1.9 seconds with a top speed of 250 mph or even more.

Ever since we first heard about this company called Roborace that builds driverless AI racing cars, we knew we had to see it in action at some point -- change was in the air. A few weeks ago, we finally had the opportunity to do so and joined the final track test for Roborace's Season Alpha. Roborace is an autonomous-vehicle racing series that combines fully-electric race cars with artificial intelligence, the first series of its kind in the world. Roborace was established to "accelerate the development of autonomous software by pushing the technology to its limits in a range of controlled environments." In 2018, one of Roborace's driverless vehicles, the RoboCar, completed the first-ever autonomous hill climb at Goodwood Festival of Speed.

Roborace is the world's first competition for human AI teams, using both self-driving and manually-controlled cars in immersive environments.

Roborace has long talked of completely driverless cars hitting the track when its first season gets underway, but the company has had a change of heart. CEO (and Formula E winner) Lucas di Grassi has revealed to Motorsport.com that Roborace's "Season Alpha" will use a new DevBot 2.0 car with space for a human driver. The organic crews will take the wheel for part of the race, with the autonomous component taking control for the rest. The picture of a driver hopping out of the car "better exemplifies" the differences between piloted and autonomous driving, di Grassi said. He also argued that racing needs a "human component."