As self-driving cars come closer to being common on American roads, much of the rhetoric promoting them has to do with safety. About 40,000 people die on U.S. roads every year, and driver errors are linked to more than 90 percent of crashes. But many of the biggest advocates of autonomous vehicles aren't car companies looking to improve the safety of their existing products. Huge backing for self-driving technologies is coming from Silicon Valley giants like Google and Apple. Those of us who have studied the relationship between technology and society tend to look more carefully at the motivations behind any technological push.

People who text and drive may want to think twice, as there could soon be more than the police on their case. An AI-enhanced speed camera has been designed that will catch people on their phones and notify the authorities directly. The futuristic technology could be used to monitor behaviours including leaving suspicious packages, drivers distracted by mobile devices, and intruders trying to access secure locations. People who text and drive may want to think twice, as soon there could be more than the police on their case. Advanced algorithms reside inside cameras themselves, and information processing occurs instantaneously, rather than the information needing to be sent to the cloud to be processed.