Visualize yourself sometime in the future, sitting in the driver’s seat of a new, Level 4 high-automation, self-driving vehicle. The car will have many sensors allowing it to see the world and a network tuned through experience to navigate the environment. As the driver, you turn on the car, enter a destination, and it will take care of the rest. 

We will be the secondary driver in a self-driving first vehicle, with the car being the primary driver. When traveling to a destination, the vehicle drives and makes all the decisions. Under normal conditions, we do nothing except passively watch as the car drives. We are the supervisor at the wheel, overseeing a self-driving system. As the secondary driver, we serve as an additional level of processing that can take over when the vehicle encounters an error or if we simply want to take control. Both the car and the driver coalesce as one to navigate the environment successfully.

By default, the vehicle is the primary driver, providing an instant response to all it encounters. As the driver, we experience the result of the car’s automatic decisions but have no say in its initial response. We can only take the wheel after the fact. Let’s say the car is driving and decides to accelerate. As the driver, we feel the result of that decision, then determine if it is moving too fast. We can only take control and apply the brakes after appraising the automatic response.

As the secondary driver of an automatic system, we can take over whenever we want or when the vehicle needs us to. Naturally, we will take on a passive role as the car can drive independently, so there is no reason for us to drive under conditions it can handle. In general, the vehicle would do around 90 percent of the driving, and we would take the wheel the remaining 10 percent of the time. How much we drive versus the vehicle would be a spectrum that varies from person to person. We could do all the driving if we wanted, but why would we? 

Humans have been coming up with metaphors to explain what it means to be a living person with a brain since the beginning of our existence. These are helpful because they make complex concepts easy for anyone to understand.¹  One of the oldest metaphors on life, dating back to the time of the Buddha, is that we are the rider on an elephant.² In the book The Happiness Hypothesis, author Jonathan Haidt explains that each of us is a rational rider positioned on top of an emotional elephant.³ We have the reins and make decisions, but the elephant can get hungry or scared at any time, overpowering the rider and doing what it wants.  

The elephant and rider metaphor allows us to visualize two active forces present in our brain. The elephant provides instant reactions, impulses, and desires, while the thoughtful rider directs them.⁴ The challenge in life is to use our rational rider to manage our mighty emotional elephant the best we can.  

New findings from social psychologists in the 1990s validated the elephant and the rider metaphor, stating that every brain has two separate processing systems. The first system is automatic and instantly responds to all it encounters. While the other system is controlled and provides manual control over the automatic one.⁵

Current discoveries in neuroscience and psychology are not only validating but surpassing the rider-and-elephant metaphor. The latest advances in AI and self-driving cars offer an opportunity to evolve the metaphor and deepen our understanding of what it means to be human. The new version of the rider-and-elephant metaphor is that we are the driver inside a Level 4 high-automation self-driving vehicle.  

Our brain comprises circuits that form an automatic self-driving system, which processes information and produces an instant response to everything we encounter. On top of that, we have executive circuitry that gives rise to the driver at the wheel who supervises the self-driving system. 

Like a Level 4 high-automation car, our human vehicle leverages a pseudo-design to navigate its environment. There is a self-driving system that serves as the primary driver navigating our environment; it is always on in the background by default. We are the driver at the wheel who processes self-driving decisions and can decide whether to go with them or take the wheel in corrective action. As the driver, we are a secondary system that can manually override and take control of the self-driving first vehicle to provide an alternative response. 

It is difficult to imagine that we are the secondary driver of an automatic, self-driving vehicle, because the illusion of life is that we are the primary driver in complete control. We have been riding in our self-driving human vehicle for so long that we no longer even notice it exists, fully associating with everything it suggests. In reality, 80-90 percent of our thoughts and responses come from the self-driving system, with the rest coming from the driver.⁶

The total amount of driving performed by the self-driving system over the driver is a spectrum that varies from person to person. Some people are asleep at the wheel, as the self-driving system is left unsupervised to do all the driving, even though they think they are the ones driving.  Others continually engage with their driver, closely monitoring the self-driving system and taking the wheel for corrective action whenever necessary. 

We spend our whole lives unknowingly wiring a self-driving system that, in adulthood, is left unsupervised to do the driving. Many of its responses are inaccurate, but we are aligned as the driver and rarely challenge them. Further chapters will use science to fully explain our self-driving design and bring awareness to our automatic nature. From there, we will learn about the executive at the wheel and how they can take control of the vehicle with deliberate attention. We will explore how anyone can overhaul and rewire their self-driving circuitry by taking corrective action with the driver.   

Endnotes

1. Haidt, Jonathan. P.15.The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom. Basic Books, 2006.
2. Haidt, Jonathan. P.15.The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom. Basic Books, 2006.
3. Heath, Chip, and Dan Heath. P.6. Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard. Random House Canada, 2010. Kindle file.
4. Amen, Daniel G., and Tana Amen. P.213. The Brain Warrior’s Way: Ignite Your Energy and Focus, Attack Illness and Aging, Transform Pain into Purpose. Berkeley, 2016.
5. Haidt, Jonathan. P.29.The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom. Basic Books, 2006. Kindle file.
6. Myers, David. P.26. How Do We Know Ourselves?: Curiosities and Marvels of the Human Mind. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022. Kindle