Death by a Thousand Edge Cases

Edge case

/ˈedʒ ˌkeɪs/ 

noun

A problem or situation, especially in computer programming, that only happens at the highest or lowest end of a range of possible values or in extreme situations.¹

Edge case (autonomous cars)

noun

In sectors like AI for autonomous cars, which operate in the physical realm, edge cases are all the things that can go wrong in the real world that you never generally do not expect.² Things like children, squirrels, and soccer balls entering the road at the most inopportune times or the most inconvenient angles of entry.³

We’ve gotten quite friendly with computers over the years. Perhaps not quite as friendly as with our cars (I’ve named my car but not my laptop), but we cannot seem to let go of the notion that our smartphones and laptops and other devices are our friends, and continue to anthropomorphize the hardware and software we use. The current AI craze has deepened that tendency: we now use words like hallucinate, plagiarize, write, draw, think and create in relation to generative AI systems. These are words that in the not-too-distant past were exclusive to humans.

We also do the opposite: we refer to biological or living things in computer terms. We talk about uploading or downloading info into/from our minds, or say our mind glitched when we can’t remember some detail we wanted to share. I myself jokingly refer to my aging hardware when I can barely keep up with my pre-teen on a 9-mile bike ride. “As long as the software works,” I say, and my fellow moms laugh, knowingly.

As entertaining as it is to spin up metaphors and analogies to the way the human mind and computational machines mirror each other, it also carries a fundamental gap. It’s a gap that’s about as deep and wide as the Mariana Trench.

And that gap is lined with edge cases.