Potential non-racist American taxi coming within the next decade

Recently reflecting on an article by Paul Larosa in the Huffington Post, as an African American who still struggles to successfully hail cabs, I could relate to his story. In the article he talks about how African Americans are still not being picked up by taxi drivers. Larosa introduces his story about a friend who was with his daughter and tried to hail a cab in downtown Manhattan with no luck. He then thought his biracial daughter could do it. Her efforts failed as well.  He then tried what many black Americans do, use the “bait and switch” method, when you get a different person to hail the cab.  In this case Larosa’s friend had hiswife, who is white, to hail the taxi. Within two minutes she was successful. This is an all too familiar reality in America. The article wonders why this happens. Only 6% of cab drivers are American born, so how can they have these deeply held biases? They gain this after being indoctrinated into American society, and likely even before they reach American soil. They are probably taught black Americans are less desirable fares and they should not pick them up. What was even more shocking, a Senegalese taxi driver admitted he can spot American blacks from a block away and tries to avoid them. This is ironic because, as a black man in America, he would be ignored as well.

                

Though frustrating, there is a potential solution that will solve this discriminatory practice within the next decade. Driverless taxis. As driverless cars are quickly becoming a reality, machine learning can be used to tackle this problem. Ideally, a driverless taxi would not discriminate no longer requiring black Americans to rely on “bait and switch” methods. In Fujisawa, Japan Robot taxis will test a driverless taxi as early as March of 2016. The cars work with a series of sensors that help the car stay on the road, avoid accidents, and avoid hazards. These will run on their own with human supervision, but eventually will be sufficient enough to run completely on their own.  If this is successful, Toyota plans to launch a driverless taxi by 2020 for the Olympics in Tokyo. These taxis will take spectators to venues across Tokyo and surrounding areas. If this is successful, then cab companies around the world will likely switch to driverless taxis.

After successful tests at the Olympics driverless cars can revolutionize the industry. For the first time, I could potentially get the first available taxi without experiencing racial bias. This is extremely exciting.  However, this excitement comes with reservations. The fear is with machine learning. Will these cars learn from the internet the same biases current taxi drivers have? With only 6 % of drivers

American born many of these drivers developed their biases here and before coming to America. As we learned from IBM’s Watson, machines connected to the internet learned many swear words. When driverless cars connect to the internet, what will happen? Will they learn the same biases as humans.  If this happens, black Americans have no hope for fairness.