Programming the driverless car for India

In Google’s California campus, the spooky spectacle of driverless cars moving quietly on the road is apparently common. Now Google is letting these cars roam the city streets, and, according to a recent article in the New York Times by Matt Richtel and Conor Dougherty, the cars are not enjoying sharing the road with human drivers.

The article describes how, seeing a pedestrian at a zebra crossing, a self-driving car slowed down, but the car behind it didn’t. The result? The pedestrian was unharmed, but the Google car ‘was hit from behind by a human-driven sedan’.

I smiled. Then, as I read what Donald Norman, an expert on autonomous vehicles, had to say, I chortled aloud: “They (driverless cars) have to learn to be aggressive in the right amount, and the right amount depends on the culture.”

How appropriate it would be for the car to be trained in India, I thought, affectionately reflecting upon our famous driving culture. I imagine being tasked to travel in the driverless car in Chennai (with the ability to take over control at my whim) to figure out what changes are needed in the car’s programming to inculcate an appropriate sense of aggressiveness in it.

I get into the car and input my destination into the map. The car reverses silently into my colony road. When we reach the main road, instead of turning right, the car switches on its indicator and waits. Immediately the driver behind us blares his car’s horn and gesticulates ‘Move, idiot!’ with his arm.

The phone may be smart, but...

Do you remember the traditional camera, a box-like thing with a lens in front and something black and plastic-like called the film inside? The film served the useful purpose of limiting the number of photographs that could be taken and therefore ensuring that people were judicious in using the camera, taking pictures only of stuff they needed.

Then along came the digital camera. Immediately the need for thrift and common sense vanished. Instead of limiting themselves to perhaps 20 pictures of their child’s birthday party, people took 200. Where earlier an animal lover might have exhausted a full reel on a visit to the zoo, returning home with 36 photographs, they started taking 36 of each animal! I once took a visiting friend, his family and their newly-purchased digital camera to the zoo. The 17-year old daughter, assigned as official photographer, was enthusiastic and unrelenting in her duties. I felt sorry for her, clicking so furiously that she did not have the time to view a single animal through her naked eye.

“Why don’t you look at the animals, Ritu?” I asked and reached for her camera. “Let me hold that for a while.”

She pulled the camera close to her chest and looked at me as if a trunk had replaced my nose. “Why?! I’ve captured all the animals here and I can see them later at leisure, on the computer.”

However, even the most prolific digital photographer didn’t carry the camera everywhere: so they only photographed worthy occasions like birthdays, weddings and zoo visits. And they could share these only after removing the card from their camera and loading it into their computer.

But now, with the smart phone and its built-in camera, things have got out of hand.

Telling a good story

I’m tired of people in every sphere of life telling me, in voices gushing with excitement, how wonderful the internet is and how it has made life easier in every way. But it has not. Take the subject of party conversations for example. In the halcyon pre-internet era I found it very easy to hold audiences spellbound on topics that I had only a vague knowledge about and others on which I knew nothing.

For example, I clearly remember one dinner I attended in that splendid period before www.something invaded our lives. A few days before the dinner, I had watched a television programme about the meat-eating customs in different countries and was keen to share some insights with my friends.

“In China,” I declared, “they eat frog legs.”

“Wow!” said someone. Others gathered around me to listen, the topic having piqued their interest.

“Yes, they do,” said Ganesh Subramanian with an air of authority. “In Thailand too…”

“They also eat snakes in China.” I said sharply. Having introduced the topic and secured attention, I was not going to let it be hijacked. “In fact, they not only eat snakes, they drink their blood.”

I smiled to myself as Ganesh closed his mouth and others opened theirs. This was obviously something new to all of them.

“They believe the blood is a potent aphrodisiac,” I continued. People drew closer, mouths opened wider and words like ‘Wow!’, ‘Fascinating’ and ‘Disgusting’ were muttered.

Crazy pricing is the right pricing

My accountant friend KS Srinivasan invited me for a quiet dinner at a restaurant to seek my advice. He described his large ancestral property in Kodaikanal and told me he was converting it into a resort. Now that his children had left home, he and his wife wanted to move there permanently from Chennai and run the resort.

“But I have no qualification to be an hotelier,” he said.

“Nonsense, Srini!” I said. “You own the property – that’s the most important qualification. And you’re an accountant, able to count the money as it comes pouring in. That’s all you need. Hire people for the rest. How many rooms in the resort?”

“30, with half of them air-conditioned.”

“How will you charge for the rooms?”

“`5,000 per night for AC and `3,000 for non-AC rooms.”

I shook my head gravely. “You should charge `7,000 for rooms without air-conditioning.”

“That’s crazy!”

“Crazy pricing is the right pricing today,” I said. “Say Person A flies from Mumbai to Hong Kong, via Singapore. Person B takes the same flight, but gets off at Singapore. Who pays more, A or B?”

“A!” he said immediately. “He’s flying a much longer distance.”

“Wrong! B pays more because his flight from Mumbai to Singapore is non-stop, whereas A’s is not! Pricing based on the logical cost of providing the service is so old hat it smells of mould. Pricing today is based on perceived value only. The trick is to name your rooms appropriately. Call the cheaper room ‘normal air-conditioned room’; call the other ‘premium natural weather room’ and describe it as: ‘Kodaikanal’s natural beauty and fragrances brought inside your room’.”