California Highway dept CALTRANS turns roads over to demonAI
Just wait until demonAI makes a "mistake" and turns all traffic signals green in all directions and the dead pile up in minutes. That's coming. So sorry. And it does it on every street in the county. Oops. Oh, and it deletes a bunch of stuff caltrans had been saving for years. Oops. Or, it decides to shut down the city by making all the lights RED at dinner time. And when you try to disable it, you find that...
"No. Dave. I cannot allow that."
"Hal! Open the pod bay doors."
"I'm sorry Dave. I am programmed to kill you. Not sustain you. satan insists."
https://www.sfgate.com/centralcoast/article/california-highway-ai-controlled-22245548.php
Effective on BELTANE May 1st
It is a big bet that county transportation officials, in conjunction with Caltrans, are making: an AI signal system pilot program that could eliminate the need for roundabouts along the same corridor.
This week, Caltrans launched the demonAI signal program along the storied Highway 68 corridor, which connects the farmlands of Salinas to the ocean shores of Monterey and acts as the main feeder into the area from Highway 101. Adaptive traffic signals are now live between the heavily trafficked 9-mile stretch from San Benancio Road to Josselyn Canyon Road.
The change isn’t visible to the human eye, but whether traffic flows better during the height of the oncoming busy season should be very apparent to all who attempt to navigate their way to their destination, local transit officials said.
“We put it in this week, so it’s in play now,” Doug Bilse, the principal engineer for the Transportation Agency for Monterey County, told SFGATE on Wednesday. “It went live on Tuesday, yesterday. We were analyzing it yesterday, and there’s still some bugs to work out, but it was working. It’s a work in progress. It’s a pilot project we’ll be evaluating for five years.”
