Gear

Observation Deck: What Happens When Cars Start Talking to Each Other?

The cars: They will drive themselves. That’s pretty much a given at this point, thanks to artificial intelligence research at Stanford and elsewhere. And they’ll talk to each other, too — the processes that let our cars go fast and get to where we tell them won’t be centralized.
Observation Deck What Happens When Cars Start Talking to Each Other

Now, when independent elements of a group get sets of discrete rules to follow as part of a larger cohort, some predictable flocking behaviors start to emerge. It’s true for birds, fish, robot cockroaches and democracies. And I think it’s going to be true for cars, too. What might that mean on the highway? Click the video.

This post originally appeared on Underwire.