Preparing Society for Automated Vehicles: Perceptions of the Importance and Urgency of Emerging Issues of Governance, Regulations, and Wider Impacts

Abstract

This study explores the overall picture of how people perceive the importance level and urgency level regarding issues associated with automated vehicles, by sorting out ten issues, developing a questionnaire with 66 measurement items, and investigating how Artificial Intelligence (AI) experts and Computer Science (CS)/Electrical Engineering (EE) majors assessed these issues. The findings suggest that AI experts in Taiwan believed that the top five issues for preparing a society for autonomous vehicles (AVs) should include (1) data privacy and cybersecurity, (2) regulation considerations, (3) infrastructure, (4) governance, and (5) public acceptance. On the other hand, for their student counterparts, the results (1) demonstrate a somewhat different order from the third to the fifth place, (2) show an attention-focused profile on the issue of cybersecurity and data privacy, and (3) indicate that gender and a few wider-impact variables (technology innovation, infrastructure) are significant predictors for the assessment on the importance level of AVs, while some wider-impact variables (technology innovation, governance, economic benefits, infrastructure), which are positively associated, as well as concerns variables (cybersecurity and data privacy, regulations), which are negatively associated, could be predictors for the urgency level of AVs. Suggestions for future research and policymakers are provided.

The Sustainability of Artificial Intelligence: An Urbanistic Viewpoint from the Lens of Smart and Sustainable Cities

“…The blackbox nature of the decisions taken by AIs without much transparency (which, at times, are wrong), the possibility of AI failing in a life-or-death context, and cybersecurity vulnerabilities all limit public trust. AI technology needs to earn the trust not only in the public and the way people perceive it, but also in the minds of companies and government agencies that will be investing in AI [182][183][184]. This is a challenging problem because, as Greenfield [121] notes, AI is an arcane technology meaning that, although it is already part of the everyday of many people, its mechanics and actual functioning are understood by only a few.…”

A multinational empirical study of perceived cyber barriers to automated vehicles deployment

“…Considering that AVs collect extensive data about users and their travel patterns, the degree to which regulations safeguard user privacy will determine how widely AVs are adopted 38 . The authors 7 found that regulation was one of the significant negative predictors of the urgency level of AV development in Taiwan. Therefore, to examine the impact of demographic factors on the lack of AV cybersecurity regulation, it is hypothesised that:…”

“…However, the pace of ITS infrastructure is significantly slower than that of AV technology, which is also a cause for anxiety. Infrastructure was identified as one of the significant positive predictors of the urgency level of AV deployment in Taiwan 7 .…”

Imaginaries of Road Transport Automation in Finnish Governance Culture—A Critical Discourse Analysis

“…Policymakers have so far focused on enabling pilots, while countries and cities have increasingly incorporated SDVs into their plans and visions [33]. Simultaneously, a growing body of academic literature has begun to examine the questions of transport policy and governance concerning the uncertain aspects of the emerging technology (see, for example, [1,3,6,7,23,25,[33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43]). This research has come to a few interconnected and troubling conclusions:…”