You Would Be Surprised How Much Your Vehicle May Know About You

You have most likely seen an article regarding Tesla and its innovations in self driving vehicles. Perhaps this article was about a Tesla vehicle that crashed while engaged in autopilot mode, and why autonomous vehicles are bad for society. When Elon Musk took over Tesla, he led the company on an innovative path based on the principle of taking the automotive world all electric. As of today, Tesla officially became the first automotive company worth over 100 Billion dollars. While this is a remarkable display of valuation, there are a lot of questions about the inherent ethicality behind Tesla, and several other automotive manufacturers in the race to autonomy, and rightfully so. 

Elon Musk addressing a crowd. Earlier, Tesla became the first 100 Billion dollar car company

The engineering marvel of self driving vehicles is no easy feat, but there are several ethical questions that come into play as it comes into prominence. There have been several questions regarding the data that Tesla collects on its customers, and how they are utilizing that data. Tesla has openly admitted to what data attributes it collects on its drivers, many of which extend beyond the data collected by most other automotive brands. Tesla knows how fast drivers regularly drive, on average, meaning they are well aware of whether or not you are a regular speeder and a danger to other drivers on the road. They know most frequently traveled to locations of drivers. Tesla's even regularly record their surroundings via the "Sentry Mode" feature of the vehicle.

These advancements in technology, accompanied by increased amounts of data harvesting on users have brought up many questions. In parallel, these concerns align directly with the opinions expressed by James Moor, also known as Moor's law: As advancements in technology increase, the amount of ethical issues regarding said technology also increase. There is arguably no company more cooperative with Moor's law than Tesla, since they are consistently at the peak of innovation in tech, and also at the peak of media outlets, blogs, and other reporting sources headlines. 

Going back to the topic of how much Tesla actually knows about you, users actually have the option to opt out of sending Tesla this data, which they claim is crucial and necessary for the improvement of their software. However, opting out of Tesla's data collection could affect your car's operation, prevent software updates and disable some features, Tesla says. This almost seems like forced collection of user's data, and very much resembles Moor's law, since the advancements are not possible without the surrendering of the data.

The controversial nature of companies like Tesla certainly brings up interesting societal problems regarding advancements in technology. Elon Musk has some things to figure out, and some angry people to apease before he can realize his dream of truly making electric cars the automotive norm.