Tech Adoption Insights
Identifying the human during technology revolutions.
Tesla's AI Appears to Hate Women
AI Fundamentals in the Real World
Reinvent architectures
In June 2026, a month that hasn’t even ended yet, two Teslas struck and killed women in their 70s in two separate incidents.
Mid-June a Tesla Model 3 set on Full Self-Driving (Supervised) driver assistance feature “driven” by 44-year old Michael Butler drove into the suburban home of Martha Avila, 76, striking and killing her. The car is reported to be traveling about 70 miles an hour. According to Tesla, the FSD feature is designed to “keep[s] you safer with 7x fewer major and minor collisions and 5x fewer off-highway collisions” (Tesla, Full Self-Driving—Supervised).
Only a week later, a Tesla driven by struck down a 79 year-old woman resulting in her being pinned under the car. While the circumstances surrounding this case are limited, the Tesla has built-in electronic safety features: “Active safety and crash-avoidance features—including Lane Departure Assist, Forward Collision Warning and others—utilize software and external cameras to help prevent accidents from occurring. The goal is to always get home safe” (Tesla, Model 3).
Given the billions of dollars that Tesla and other companies are investing into AI, I think we can safely conclude that the problem is not artificial intelligence—it's 70-year-old women.
Really, these stories are not about failures of artificial intelligence. They indicate that we are failing to treat AI software as the tool it is. Letting Ai take the wheel without training customers on what it is and how to use it. We make everyone take Driver’s Ed, pass a test, and register at the DMV before operating a car. Why aren’t we treating AI appropriately? These two stories illustrate an important point about Artificial Intelligence that is only beginning to be taken into account; current Artificial Intelligence software is an emerging technology, so we have only a very limited perspective on what it is and how it works.
Relying on current AI with no understanding of what the program is doing, will result in failures, some catastrophic like the deaths described above and others more mundane but no less problematic.
Relying on current AI with no understanding of what the program is doing, will result in failures, some catastrophic like the deaths described above and others more mundane but no less problematic.
The Power of Words
Let’s start with the term “Artificial Intelligence.” Every training I have taken in the last two months and every reference I see people making online define artificial intelligence as “the simulation of human intelligence.” This is not an accurate definition.
Spockismyhomeboy (2017) Princess Bride Reaction [GIF]. Giphy.
Words matter. Definitions matter.
For example…
Speculum
-- a “Medieval Torture Device” – This particular torture device was innovated by a couple of doctors in 1800s (just for context – the Medieval era is generally considered to be the time period between the1000s to 1400). While it’s definitely a torture device, it's not medieval.
“Trump’s Inflammatory Rhetoric”
-- the word you want is “Sophistry.” Aristotle defines rhetoric as the art of persuasion. Sophistry is performative, deceptive, and logically faulty.
Social Media
-- we slap this word “media” onto nearly everything digital or mass communication, but media refers to “a means of effecting or conveying something” – Merriam Webster “Media, Plural of Medium. Media is the mechanism we use to communicate and can include paint, chalk, voice, photos, videos, etc)..