When Software Upgrades Become Life or Death
I love full self-driving (FSD). It's up there with the iPhone for me.
I never realized how much of my brain I used to spend just driving. Staying between the lines, checking maps, knowing where to turn, watching other drivers, checking mirrors, stop-go stop-go stop-go traffic, not dying.
Now I sit back. I think. I listen to music. I get time back, I didn’t know I was losing. I also believe that in 10 years, people probably won't need or care about owning a car anymore. So much is going to change, and I love experiencing the future today.
But this morning, after a simple overnight software update, my car started slamming on the brakes every time it saw a puddle.
Five times in three drives.
It’s thinking differently now. Something changed. It also turned quickly, unlike it had in the past, and another car slammed on its horn after they had to slam on their brakes. Rightfully so.
And I started thinking about how many times I’ve hit Confirm Upgrade in my life without a second thought. And how I've been doing that with my car as well.
Usually, a “critical patch” means someone fixed a bug, a security issue, or the hardware might crash. Not that someone’s car crashed.
The difference between a better model and a deadly one might be one line of code. Or one critical bug that makes it to production.
How should we think about software upgrades, when one wrong line of code could actually mean life or death? In this new era, does rollback mean a bunch of cars just crashed?
I'm gonna start paying more attention. The version I'm on today is doing pretty well, but what happens when I upgrade?