The Holy Driver - When Virtual Meets Reality

A talented young gamer eventually learns that the driving simulation he’s playing has become all too real, with life-and-death consequences

- By Kai-fu Lee and Chen Qiufan

“The Holy Driver,” chapter six from the book AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future by Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan, tells the story of Chamal, a talented and cocky young gamer from Sri Lanka who is recruited to take part in a mysterious Chinese project. At first, the game he’s been tasked with playing is like other driving simulations he’s mastered, but soon it begins to dawn on Chamal that something is very different—very real—about the game’s increasingly more difficult scenarios. Set roughly two decades in the future, “The Holy Driver” examines the various ethical and moral issues around artificial intelligence and autonomy that are sure to arise as the world and technology move forward. The following is an excerpt from the chapter.

Just as he had at the VR Café, Chamal made it to the top of the training center’s ranking list in no time.

He was no longer the beginner who panicked at the sight of traffic and pedestrians. And it wasn’t just driving for driving’s sake. Chamal began receiving missions, with instructions from the technicians in the training center. The missions were always similar in terms of structure, but with variations in story line. Sometimes they were outlandish, like an alien invasion. Sometimes they were chillingly realistic, like a terrorist attack that caused roads to crumble and cars to crash into one another.