Spells Against Autonomy

[Image: From “Autonomous Trap 001” by James Bridle].

By now, you’ve probably seen James Bridle’s “Autonomous Trap 001,” a magic salt circle for ensnaring the sensory systems of autonomous vehicles.

By surrounding a self-driving vehicle with a mandala of inescapable roadway markings—after all, even a person wearing a t-shirt with a STOP sign on it can affect the navigational capabilities of autonomous cars—the project explores the possibility that these machines could be trapped, frozen in a space of infinite indecision, as if locked in place by magic.

[Image: From “Autonomous Trap 001” by James Bridle].

Five years from now, rogue highway painting crews well-versed in ritual magic and LiDAR sigils shut down all machine-vision systems on the west coast…

As Bridle explained to Creators, there should be at least a handful of more examples of this automotive counter-wizardry to come.

(Earlier on BLDGBLOG: Robot War and the Future of Perceptual Self-Deception. See also The Dream Life of Driverless Cars.)