Tech entrepreneur Yossi Tsuria wanted to find out. He asked the AI chatbot to generate a prayer. If Joe was praying for his son's health, Mr. Tsuria asked in 2023, how should he pray? The machine responded, "Heavenly Father, In this trying time, I come before you with a heavy heart." Could your next spiritual guide be artificial intelligence?

But for all their fancy sensors and intricate data-crunching abilities, even the most cutting-edge cars lack something that (almost) every 16-year-old with a learner's permit has: social awareness. While autonomous technologies have improved substantially, they still ultimately view the drivers around them as obstacles made up of ones and zeros, rather than human beings with specific intentions, motivations, and personalities. But recently a team led by researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) has been exploring whether self-driving cars can be programmed to classify the social personalities of other drivers, so that they can better predict what different cars will do -- and, therefore, be able to drive more safely among them. In a new paper, the scientists integrated tools from social psychology to classify driving behavior with respect to how selfish or selfless a particular driver is. Specifically, they used something called social value orientation (SVO), which represents the degree to which someone is selfish ("egoistic") versus altruistic or cooperative ("prosocial").

In March 2004, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) organized a special Grand Challenge event to test out the promise -- or lack thereof -- of current-generation self-driving cars. Entrants from the world's top A.I. labs competed for a $1 million prize; their custom-built vehicles trying their best to autonomously navigate a 142-mile route through California's Mojave Desert. The "winning" team managed to travel just 7.4 miles in several hours before shuddering to a halt. A decade-and-a-half, a whole lot has changed. Self-driving cars have successfully driven hundreds of thousands of miles on actual roads.

But for all their fancy sensors and intricate data-crunching abilities, even the most cutting-edge cars lack something that (almost) every 16-year-old with a learner's permit has: social awareness. While autonomous technologies have improved substantially, they still ultimately view the drivers around them as obstacles made up of ones and zeros, rather than human beings with specific intentions, motivations, and personalities. But recently a team led by researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) has been exploring whether self-driving cars can be programmed to classify the social personalities of other drivers, so that they can better predict what different cars will do -- and, therefore, be able to drive more safely among them. In a new paper, the scientists integrated tools from social psychology to classify driving behavior with respect to how selfish or selfless a particular driver is. Specifically, they used something called social value orientation (SVO), which represents the degree to which someone is selfish ("egoistic") versus altruistic or cooperative ("prosocial").

Our personalities impact almost everything we do, from the career path we choose to the way we interact with others to how we spend our free time. But what about the way we drive--could personality be used to predict whether a driver will cut someone off, speed, or, say, zoom through a yellow light instead of braking? There must be something to the idea that those of us who are more mild-mannered are likely to drive a little differently than the more assertive among us. At least, that's what a team from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) is betting on. "Working with and around humans means figuring out their intentions to better understand their behavior," said graduate student Wilko Schwarting, lead author on the paper published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "People's tendencies to be collaborative or competitive often spills over into how they behave as drivers.

Can social awareness improve autonomous cars' road robustness? That's what a team of researchers at MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory set out to discover in a recent study. They built a system that classifies the behavior of other drivers with respect to their selfishness -- in other words, whether drivers are less likely to act altruistically toward other cars. In tests, they say their algorithm better predicted how drivers would behave by a factor of 25%. "Creating more human-like behavior in autonomous vehicles (AVs) is fundamental for the safety of passengers and surrounding vehicles, since behaving in a predictable manner enables humans to understand and appropriately respond to the AV's actions," said graduate student and lead research author Wilko Schwarting in a statement.

Can social awareness improve autonomous cars' road robustness? That's what a team of researchers at MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory set out to discover in a recent study. They built a system that classifies the behavior of other drivers with respect to their selfishness -- in other words, whether drivers are less likely to act altruistically toward other cars. In tests, they say their algorithm better predicted how drivers would behave by a factor of 25%. "Creating more human-like behavior in autonomous vehicles (AVs) is fundamental for the safety of passengers and surrounding vehicles, since behaving in a predictable manner enables humans to understand and appropriately respond to the AV's actions," said graduate student and lead research author Wilko Schwarting in a statement.