The Volkswagen car did not faulty: he planned to cheat intelligently. The rules assume that human beings live in a universe reliably unreliable: people are tempted to lie if they think the benefits outweigh the risks, the objects no.
When you ask a person if they always use the seat belt, at best, his answer will be suspect; when measuring the energy efficiency of a light bulb, the answer is always honest. Objects sometimes do not work and have unpredictable behavior, but does not have a strategy, do not choose to deceive.
This was true in the past. Today objects contain software, and the software code can be included strategies based on game theory and any other form of applied mathematics. For companies in the near future it will be impossible to resist the temptation to teach products to lie strategically – as did the Volkswagen – even at the risk of severe penalties. As has always happened with financial fraud, it is just to find a way to do better than before.
Environmental regulations are ground too easy for strategic scams that aim to profit, but not the only one. The software that powers your car, the TV or the bathroom scale will also respect the privacy rules, but simply an upgrade of the software automatically and invisibly to turn that object into a lamp that provides discreet personal information through channels well hidden (the software is updated constantly: this is one of the aspects of the internet of things – the fact that the objects of daily use are connected to the internet – no one likes to dwell on that, because it will be a problem).
In addition, in a world in which every device interacts and depends on a host of other objects, devices of a company may jeopardize the operation of the competition. The problem of our legal system is that technical standards must be precisely defined to be fair and that this makes them easy to find and to get around.
These rules are based on a mechanical universe, not one in which the software inserted in the objects is updated with new lies every time that regulators devise a new system of verification. And even if the software did not change, check that it has undesirable behavior would still be impossible in many cases, the programs make mistakes because organizations that produced them have occurred (or could not verify) that behave as expected.
So our perception of the world will reflect more and more that of our computers and the Internet. All we sometimes have the feeling that our computer is a tool rather unpredictable full of programs that we never installed and performing activities never authorized to benefit companies of which we have never heard of.
In the future, cars, traffic lights and even the buildings will behave in the same way suspect. The car that drives itself is slowing down on purpose to give way to more expensive models? The ecological conditioner is really less efficient with a thermostat to another company? Because the TV, it should use the camera just to follow gesture control, it offers to download Disney movies whenever you sit in front of your children?
Probably none of these things will be legal, but all will be profitable, and if an object is able to conceal the state, as well as to you, it will be difficult to prove otherwise. Centuries of financial fraud have taught us that violate regulations is extremely profitable and worth comes late: why organizations continue to fall into temptation.
The cost of environment and health of the scam Volkswagen is remarkable, but it is easy to imagine situations in which industries and could be even worse. We can only hope that the violation of the rules on the internet of things are taken more effective remedies than those to which we have used the great financial wrongdoing.
(Translation of Floriana Pagano)
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