Photo illustration by Jim DeMaria/The New York Times and photo by Ben Margot/Associated Press.
In a recent NY Times article, “Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold,” Nick Bilton writes about a recent bug in a ‘smart’ home thermostat that left many (millions?) of customers’ homes very cold on a winter night.
He goes on to explain that this sort of issue “points to a larger problem with so-called smart devices that we are inviting into our lives: Small glitches can cause huge problems.”
He’s right, of course: software will always have bugs, and bugs may have serious consequences.
While there are very serious and nasty potential consequences from faulty software in the connected home (just imagine if your home is hacked the way your credit card can be), what really worries me is the smart car, especially the autonomous, driverless ones being developed and tested now.
Elizabeth D. Herman for The New York Times
Buggy thermostats are one thing. But a buggy or hacked driverless car is quite another thing! Especially one with me in it. John Markoff writes, also in the NY Times, of some of the current issues with autonomous cars: “For Now, Self-Driving Cars Still Need Humans.”
You won’t catch me in one of those any time soon. I know too much about software!
