What's all this about?

The inexorable rise of the machines. Self-driving cars are coming, and already they're showing signs of possessing rudimentary artificial intelligence.

How so?

Meet Jack. To all intents and purposes, Jack is an Audi A7 fitted with the German firm's central driver assistance controller (zFAS) autonomous technology. That means that Jack can drive about on his own. However, during tests on the A9 autobahn near Audi's Ingolstadt base, Jack has begun to show signs of consideration for other road users.
He leaves extra room when passing lorries. He indicates and then moves close to the lane divider markings to signal clearly to other road users that he's thinking of changing lanes, before actually making the switch. He can even work out whether it's best to accelerate or brake to smoothly accommodate other vehicles entering his lane from another. He knows where you live (this last statement is untrue).

Crikey! Jack sounds pretty advanced...

Doesn't he just? Remember, this is the same self-driving Audi A7 that lapped the Hockenheimring in 2014 at race pace. Jack is turning out to be a very talented driver indeed - and while the long-term future of mankind might be bleak, ruled as we will be by a race of thinking machines that are our natural superiors, in the short to medium-term we benefit from this dawn of artificial intelligence thanks to the development of useful semi-autonomous goodies, like assisted traffic jam driving in the current A4 and Q7 models.

Matt Robinson - 16 May 2016