Driverless Car Useless

Instead of working on a useless driverless-car, why couldn't Google work on something useful?

If they can create a driverless car, why can't Google:
-Detect whether an 80 year old grandmother at the airport has a bomb on her.
-Detect when a woman is getting paid less than a man for the same work.
-Detect when your child is being molested or bullied.
-Detect when you are getting spam.
-Detect when Google Chrome is going to crash.
-Detect when your retirement fund is going to become worthless.
-Detect when your identity has been stolen.

Google could be spending its time, and your money, doing something useful.

Comments

[Terry Newman]

We need a "Like" button for this post. All valid points.

[Justacooldude]

So, increasing moblity for the disabled and senior citizens and last but not least to save over 30,000 lives a year is useless? I think not!

[Miles Bader]

I agree. It's not that such technology is really completely useless (it will probably find some good niche), but it's certainly not the "painless tech fix" so many people are wishing for ("Hey, with driverless cars, we don't need to bother with that icky mass transit and increased density, we can just keep our current lifestyle as-is, forever! Score!").

I think the Google folks are smart and well-meaning, but I suspect most of them were raised, and live, in America's car culture, and are rather blinkered by that. When all you've ever known is hammers, you tend to try solving every problem with hammering...

[D. P. Lubic]

About the car culture, particularly from a political point of view:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/06/17/1100829/-Sunday-Train-The-Steel-Interstate-and-the-Great-Highway-Lie