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A night out with friends, an Uber ride from the eastern suburbs to the inner west, and somehow I almost ended up in Canberra. So if I had been told to drive to the lake, I probably would have done so.
The first sign of trouble was the circuitous route via Zetland. Personally, when I go from east to west in Sydney, I just go through the Cross City Tunnel. But that’s the human brain’s way of thinking about the problem and the driver was following the app as he kept affirming to me.
The Uber driver took the wrong direction and continued on…credit:Luis Enrique Askui
Then, somewhere around St. Peters, he took the wrong exit and entered the M8 tunnel that we went to. When the suburbs ominously counted off at the tunnel walls – Tempe, Warwick Leak, Arncliffe, Barnwell Park – I burst out of the passenger haze. “Where the hell are you going!?” He then promised to refund any additional charges and chanted the slogan “Don’t worry, I’m following the app.”
When I finally hit the southwest highway, I really panicked. He immediately seemed reluctant to take the exit ramp (so far two have avoided it) and the signs to Canberra began to look threatening. Drawing on the time-honored tradition of reducing and doubling losses, I pleaded.
“No, no,” he said. “The app says keep going, right?” he gestures in honor of the “oracle,” the blue line on his phone that told him to keep moving forward until a right turn was possible. did Turn right in Liverpool.
Sometimes you have to ignore the map app and look out the window.credit:iStock
This Uber driver had no navigation skills. The app is designed to allow drivers to follow the lines on their smartphones without needing more extensive context (partly so drivers can’t refuse shorter fares). As a result, this driver hadn’t built his own knowledge of the wider cityscape, and didn’t have the broader context of his journey (i.e. how far he really was).
he took a wrong turn. He could only follow the blue line on his phone. He effectively switched off the thinking brain and left us to the AI.
If he had used a real human brain, the complex thought machine of old, he would have accepted his error of judgment and quickly backed off. Meanwhile, the app was doubling down.
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