I know that there are probably versions of AI that are hidden from the public both private and military but something tells me if we were close to the advent of anything self operational it would be evident. There would be transitional technologies emerging on the markets. More than likely there are pieces of very complex intelligence resembling mechanisms that are held together by teams of people.
The idea of even the most modern intelligence system navigating through an environment as elaborate and dynamic as New York City or downtown Chicago should give anyone pause. I can see them being more useful for long distance journeys such as hauling a trailer across rural desert areas where all the vehicle needs to do is stay in its own lane, maintain a set speed and brake if something obvious gets in front of it.
To be frank, the lane keeping ADAS has been out for years and most car manufacturers offer such a thing on their high end models. Usually radar supported and pretty reliable from what I hear.
Perhaps it's not the best idea to use these more advanced Level 4 systems in the densest city yet, but most of driving does usually happen on highways and regional roads so it's not a major loss.
I'm sure someone will eventually figure out how to detect "eyyy im walkin eer" and honk back automatically, and then it should be usable in NY as well.
> versions of AI that are hidden from the public both private and military
I do think you overestimate how much the military has its shit together. These systems need gigantic amounts of driving data to train and nobody else has that aside from car manufacturers with their fleets. And out of those Tesla is the one that's been doing it the longest.
No, I think it's reasonable to wonder whether some powerful enough agents have some "super secret tech" and aren't telling. It wouldn't be the first time. For instance, the US didn't exactly advertise having the atomic bomb before they first used it (although it was a very short time after and they did specifically work on the atomic bomb to use it as soon as possible).
That said, personally, I think it's unlikely.
First, the vast majority of AI research is happening out in the open. It's often funded by militaries (e.g. DARPA) but it's not owned by them directly, rather the owners are universities and similar.
Second, private corps promote their AI advances very aggressively and this marketing is a big part of the advantage they try to establish over their competitors, so it doesn't seem obvious why they would keep a new advance "under wraps". For example, what would Google do with a secret machine vision system capable of 20% better performance than that of its rivals? I can't tell.
Of course we can assume that Google or someome similar have a much more advanced system than anyone else, like a real AGI. We can imagine such a system sitting at the heart of Google, dirctly advice Larry and Sergey how to run the company. But then, if we can imagine that, we can imagine anything.
Well I do think it's very possible if not certain that they have unusually advanced systems that have been kept secret, but I would expect them to be in the areas they actually have data for.
As in security cameras, finances, cell tower data, etc. Facial and gait recognition, location tracking, etc. far beyond anything commercially available. But I'd doubt they have an AGI behind closed doors :P
Well actually if you look at the rest of what I said, it’s that if there were advanced systems hidden behind the curtain, transitional stages of said systems would have made their way into the public realm. You can’t just jump to something as massive as full blown AI and not have byproduct tech. Consider the space race for instance, and all the resulting byproduct techs it brought. So many inventions that were created along the way that made their way into the public realm. I find it difficult to believe that any other breakthrough of similar or greater magnitude would not do the same.
The idea of even the most modern intelligence system navigating through an environment as elaborate and dynamic as New York City or downtown Chicago should give anyone pause. I can see them being more useful for long distance journeys such as hauling a trailer across rural desert areas where all the vehicle needs to do is stay in its own lane, maintain a set speed and brake if something obvious gets in front of it.