When self-driving cars were first becoming a thing, I was one of the skeptics who would say things like, "Call me when the AI can avoid situations like https://i.imgur.com/cmR2PDm.jpeg ." At the time, my thinking was that the software would have to recognize both fixed and moving objects nearby, capture their position and velocity, infer or look up their inertia tensors, and run at least a basic dynamics simulation to anticipate and prevent accidents like the one that's about to happen in the photo.

However, I didn't consider the possibility that such a simulation might emerge from a model driven by nothing but visual input, given a large-enough data set and the right training. At this point my old argument seems like a losing one, even if present-day systems can't answer the "What happens next?" question reliably enough to trust in all driving situations. It won't exactly have to be perfect in order to outperform most humans.

As a matter of fact, I just checked, and the situation in the meme is already partially recognized by ChatGPT 4: https://i.imgur.com/wLSBSkJ.png , even if it misses the comedic implications of the truck heading for the overpass. Whether it was somehow trained to give a useful, actionable answer for this particular question, I don't know, but the writing's on the proverbial wall.

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Edit due to rate-limiting: note that I intentionally cropped out the WAIT FOR IT frame when I submitted the pic, so that it wouldn't see it as a meme loaded with comedy value. When I explicitly asked it what was funny about the image, ChatGPT4 eventually answered:

"When the truck hits the overpass, given that the convertible is following closely behind, the occupants could be in for quite a shock. The impact might cause the portable toilets to become dislodged or damaged, potentially resulting in the contents being spilled. For the people in the convertible, this could mean an unexpected and unpleasant shower, especially because the convertible's top is down. The humor perceived here is in the anticipation of the unexpected and the sudden reversal of fortune for the individuals in what appears to be a fancy car – it's a form of slapstick humor."

But I did have to provide a couple of strong hints, including telling it that the truck was not towing the car ( https://i.imgur.com/AlPRgEQ.png ). I was going to feed Claude the same hints, but it repeatedly failed to recognize the SMS code for registration.