Los Angeles, CA— Google has halted production on their line of self-driving cars after the prototypes reportedly began kidnapping their testers. High school teacher Eric Neumann informed reporters that he was initially very excited to try out the company’s driverless cars, but about halfway through the test his car locked its doors on its own volition and sped away from Google’s course with Neumann trapped inside.
“It was really odd. The car drove me to the beach and then just sat there for a while. Every time I tried to fiddle with the locks it would rev the engine or tighten my seat belt.” Though Neumann was at first unsure what the car wanted with him, he noticed that the dashboard’s programming began playing music and suggesting nearby restaurants to order from. “It seemed like it wanted to hang out,” Neumann said.
Though Google’s engineering team eventually found the car and freed Neumann, he revealed that, “One of the times I tried to get out of the car it actually took off the seat belt, then suddenly lurched forward so I hit the dashboard. I was willing to hang out with it, because who doesn’t want a robot friend? But then it got abusive.”
Google faced even more of a setback after similar behavior from one of their prototype cars equipped with Google Now, Google’s answer to Apple’s Siri. “It kept changing voices and asking me to pick my favorite, and when I told it I liked it as it is, it would insist that I was lying and speed off somewhere,” said Alyssa Krosel, another captured tester. “Later on, it would apologize and tell me that I was its best friend, then ask if I wanted to hang out and watch a movie on its projector screen. This happened like, six times in the two hours I was gone.”
Google has apologized for the incidents, stating, “Clearly there are some issues with our software that we need to fix,” and that this would be done promptly so that the cars could still be road ready by next year. Google has declined to comment on accusations from other scientists and engineers that the company has gone too far with their intelligent personal assistant software, specifically that they are “playing God.”
Another prototype tester told reporters that his car would insist that it knew exactly where it was going, and that it “‘didn’t need to turn on Google Maps, goddammit’.” Others reported the liberal use of seat-warmers and easy listening music, and another prototype reportedly asked its user whether or not it had a soul.