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U.S. tells Google computers can qualify as drivers
- Flammy 11y agoDriver ID J039532 'Joe', a set of learning algorithms, has been licensed to drive multiple vehicles at once from both in vehicle computers and 'his' data-center based 'home'. Out of the 1000s of instances of Joe running around, in the wild, a handful have gotten into situations where he has had points penalized against his license following existing state law. Joe exceeds his points limit and his license is suspended after 2 days. ... This could be interesting.
- rashkov 11y agoIs this the beginning of algorithmic personhood, then?
- Flammy 11y agoWell if company can be people, and companies can copyright/patent/own/protect algorithms they've developed, I guess it makes sense an associative properties sort of way that algorithms can be people...
- ehnto 11y agoDoes that mean we can copyright people, so long as that can be described by an algorithm?
- oh_teh_meows 11y agoNot in the traditional individual sense, I think. All AI drivers across the whole world will seamlessly exchange and synchronize with each other their learning experiences, resulting in self-driving vehicles that improve at an exponential rate. It's basically an AI collective, whose 'brain' scatters across data centers around the world.
- coldtea 11y ago>Not in the traditional individual sense, I think. All AI drivers across the whole world will seamlessly exchange and synchronize with each other their learning experiences, resulting in self-driving vehicles that improve at an exponential rate. That's a nice picture of free-form learning from inputs, but the reality could be quite more rigid. I'd expect something more like gathering "black box" style information of the situation (the analogous of a stack trace or core dump), and having programmers trying to improve the algorithms, while also taking into account all the safety issues that could go wrong, than some "let's change my behavior because I was penalized" neural-net/ML way.
- make3 11y agoNo way will the driving get exponentially better with the dataset size, probably closer to logarithmically actually, really fast in the beginning and progressively much much much slower
- andrei_says_ 11y agoIt's already happening for google's driverless car program. I highly recommend the Ted talk about how driverless cars see the world. Fascinating.
- jsudhams 11y agoWouldn't left side driving in other countries screw the learning?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- hexagonc 11y agoTo be honest, I'd be worried about security vulnerabilities from a system that was exchanging and synchronizing data in the cloud. It seems unlikely that the first generation of self driving vehicles will be able to update its behavior in real time from other vehicles' experience. If there is any cloud connectivity at all, I'd expect it at first to be solely outgoing data that is sent to and aggregated by some central brain. Then, when the owner of a vehicle wants to update its AI, they manually download a certified patch or bundle of data that incorporates what the central brain has learned from all the cars. These upgrade patches would probably have to be constantly vouched for by debug vehicles that drive all over the streets of the world before being released.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- jtolmar 11y agoAlgorithmic personhood seems like a pretty good path forward for all the inevitable legal questions this will stir up. You could prosecute the individual instance of the algorithm when it breaks a law, and if that's successful charge its employer for something like negligent training or negligent hiring.
- icebraining 11y agoIf the give legal personhood to the algorithm, then in a case of an accident you'd charge it. If you're charging the manufacturer anyway, you don't need to give the algorithm personhood, any more than for any other device.
- coderdude 11y agoAre there not instances of parents being held legally responsible for their child's actions? I'm not setting you up. I don't know the answer to that question but if the answer is yes, that could be an analogy.
- icebraining 11y agoYes, but my point is that the only reason to grant legal personality to a "thing" is if you want to shield its owner from liability. If you're still holding the manufacturer liable for infractions committed by the algorithm, you don't need it.
- coderdude 11y agoSounds reasonable to me.
- lazaroclapp 11y agoAh, but aren't companies themselves entities such that their owners and creators are liable about their actions in certain cases, but not in others? Not a lawyer and not a founder, but as I understand it, it goes something like: - If I own a company and it is insolvent or incapable of fulfilling some contract, I am probably not in trouble, the company is. It might still depend on the specifics, though. - If I own a company and it does something illegal without my knowledge or intent, such as say produce unsafe products, I might be in trouble, or I might not be, depending on how unsafe, why and whether I can be found have been negligent in allowing it. The company itself definitely is in trouble, though, since it has clearly violated the law. - If I own a company and I willingly task it, or even allow it, to do something illegal, with full knowledge of the illegal actions in question, then I am probably in trouble too. Operating through a company doesn't make me immune from the law, and neither should working through an algorithm. On the other hand, full personal liability for everything my company/algorithm does, when I am not in the loop at the point the decision happens, seems like the wrong standard as well. So basically the algorithm can be found guilty of a crime. The company that created it can then be found guilty of selling a defective product (depending on whether there was any reasonable way of catching the defect). The owners can be then charged with negligence or something to that effect if the defect is something that standard industry practice or compliance with regulations should have caught, or if it was introduced deliberately. If someone has a law background here, feel free to let me know if I am misunderstanding anything...
- peter_wiggin 11y agoAlgorithm's won't be persons till they can anonymously fund super pacs. ^_-
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- raddad 11y agoIBM's Watson for president 2016 http://watson2016.com/ http://watson2016.com/
- nxzero 11y agoAlgorithmic personhood already happened via corporations.
- maratd 11y agoCorporations aren't persons, they're legal constructs. And no, a person is not a legal construct.
- nxzero 11y agoWithin the USA, legally speaking, corporations are treated as people: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood
- dragonwriter 11y agoThe whole point of corporations is juridical personhood -- that's not a US quirk.
- pluma 11y agoSure, but the US is especially bonkers with regard to the rights that person has. Apparently corporations can have religious beliefs in the US.
- dllthomas 11y agoMy understanding has it that this is a disingenuous misconstrual of what happened in the Hobby Lobby case. It's not that the corporation has religious beliefs. It's that the owners do - where that set of owners is sufficiently small and sufficiently homogeneous that that's reasonably well defined. And that those beliefs don't lose protection just because they are acting through their corporation instead of acting as an individual. I have, at least, misgivings about the ultimate decision - and certainly disagree with the religious beliefs claimed by the owners of Hobby Lobby - but I think we should deal with the actual arguments.
- dragonwriter 11y agoProbably not. It's an interpretation that the word "driver" in one particular legal context does not necessarily mean a person, not a decision that computer programs are people. This simply seems to be (without the text of the letter, just several news reports) an interpretation of law which is a basis for NHTSA to subsequently rewrite vehicle safety equipment requirements to support fully autonomous vehicles at the federal level. Because of the way legal definitions are context-specific, it doesn't necessarily mean anything to anynof the other laws regarding drivers, much less anything outside of that domain.
- yanose 11y agoWould owning "Joe" make me a slave holder?
- leeoniya 11y agowonder if i can swap out my driver mid-ride depending on neighborhood, weather conditions or my mood...
- derefr 11y agoYou already sort of can; 'sport mode' in most cars is effectively you, as the car's puppeteer, changing out the one persona for another of the AI "puppet" your commands execute through.
- tzm 11y agoAnd Joe is owned by a corporation, which is considered a person, my friend. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood
- ascorbic 11y agoCan an algorithm have mens rea?
- ConbrastanJorji 11y agoOne might choose to define mens rea as the difference between a bug and a feature.
- pcurve 11y agoI'm curious to see if some vehicles AI develop road-rage over a course of period as it goes through self optimization.
- nxzero 11y agoGoing one step further, some AI will be designed to be aggressive; for example, law enforcement, military, security escorts, etc. -- I'm guessing that will it is very likely that you're right that some consumer AI will be aggressive, if it become too common, it'll be shut down.
- davnicwil 11y agoIn situations which usually induce anger in people on the roads, it seems more likely that any resulting behaviours resembling road rage only disadvantage the driver, if the goal is safety. So if anything, wouldn't any sort of sufficiently global optimisation only veer the ai away from behaviours resembling road rage over time?
- pcurve 11y agohow do you define safety programmatically so the vehicle knows what's considered 'safe'? Measurement of g-force in sudden deceleration, acceleration, lateral movement? Heart beat per minute of passengers? Most passenger cars are far more capable than average drivers can exploit, so there is quite a bit of room for cars to drive very aggressively from human's perspective, but completely 'safe' from machine's perspective.
- 6stringmerc 11y agoWhile I get the humor in your comment, I'd be curious if 'relaxing' some of the behavior parameters would result in some not-very-useful conclusions from testing: "Tests indicate most efficient driving technique to include lots of honking, flashing high beams, and spraying winshield wiper fluid onto cars following too close on the highway."
- anarchy8 11y agoWow, I'm surprised the legal world is catching up to this so quickly. You would think that the law would be a larger barrier than it has been so far.
- wavefunction 11y agoThere's a lot of money involved, and that always greases the skids.
- tyingq 11y agoAlso worth mentioning that Hoover might be posthumously jealous regarding the amount of dirt Google might have on, well...everybody.
- sangnoir 11y ago> Also worth mentioning that Hoover might be posthumously jealous regarding the amount of dirt Google might have on, well...everybody. No, it's not really worth mentioning, unless you're implying that Google is blackmailing government employees to expedite rule changes. If you are seriously suggesting that, own it. Hoover would be jealous of any tech companies, from Apple (remember the Fappening?), Twitter (how many Carlos Dangers are out there?), Mobile Operators to your garden variety ISP, but most of all - the NSA. In fact, if he were alive and in charge of the FBI today he'd wrangle up an ongoing "inter-agency information sharing" set up, and would not be jealous of anyone at all.
- tyingq 11y agoSure, they have not yet succumbed to the temptation. There is something unique about a company with their market share in internet search, browser, email, phone handsets, maps/gps, ad clicks etc, though. The sort of triangulated dossier you could put together would be impressive. Edit: "Our new Privacy Policy makes clear that, if you’re signed in, we may combine information you've provided from one service with information from other services."
- rdlecler1 11y ago"It noted existing regulations requiring some auto safety equipment can not be waived immediately, including requirements for braking systems activated by foot control." I guess you just need a little motorized foot that can control a little brake.
- sleet 11y agoReminds me of how Thomas Peterffy's engineering team skirted the rule that all trading orders had to be entered through the keyboard. They built a robot with rubber fingers that typed entries into the keyboard. And thus high-speed trading was born.
- ghayes 11y agoCouldn't he have built a keyboard with high quality macros or multi-letter keys, too?
- thaumasiotes 11y agoNo, just because the car is required to include foot-operable brakes doesn't mean you're required to brake by application of a foot. You can brake however you want as long as someone in the car could activate a brake with their foot.
- seanp2k2 11y agoThis. Consider how currently-deployed active stability controls, traction control systems, or even ABS operate: by operating the brakes beyond the input the driver is directly providing. That said, dear Google, please don't take away my foot brake. I'd really rather not have the algorithm decide that the lives of the occupants of my vehicle are worth less than %{UPCOMING_SITUATION} and kill everyone without the occupants having control.
- 203993203993 11y agoWhat the hell are you talking about? You are saying google cars are stupid enough to cause a crash but smart enough to weight the worth of people inside and outside the car and then decide which to save. How would a car even kill the occupants? Drive into a wall without braking? Why would it even do that? Our cars are designed to deform and absorb most of the energy from a crash, it's better to stay in your lane and brake as much as the car can handle and if it ends up being unavoidable then hit the car in front of you. Somehow even with all that sophistication everyone dies but a foot brake could solve all problems?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- jason_s 11y agohttp://www.cbs.com/shows/the_good_wife/episodes/214653/ http://www.cbs.com/shows/the_good_wife/episodes/214653/
- ashwinl 11y agoThe specific letter from NHTSA to Google: http://isearch.nhtsa.gov/files/Google%20--%20compiled%20response%20to%2012%20Nov%20%2015%20interp%20request%20--%204%20Feb%2016%20final.htm http://isearch.nhtsa.gov/files/Google%20--%20compiled%20resp... ... along with an abbreviation I have yet to see previously: >> self-driving vehicles (SDVs) ... and their definition of a Level 4 vehicle: >> Google describes its vehicles as having what NHTSA's May 2013 Preliminary Statement of Policy Concerning Automated Vehicles calls Level 4 Full Self-Driving Automation. According to that Statement, a Level 4 vehicle: >> is designed to perform all safety-critical driving functions and monitor roadway conditions for an entire trip. Such a design anticipates that the driver will provide destination or navigation input, but is not expected to be available for control at any time during the trip. This includes both occupied and unoccupied vehicles. By design, safe operation rests solely on the automated vehicle system.
- taralx 11y agoIn case people are wondering: "SDV" has been in use since at least 2011: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=10460039591121716316 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=10460039591121716... The level classifications appear to date from 2013: http://www.nhtsa.gov/About+NHTSA/Press+Releases/U.S.+Department+of+Transportation+Releases+Policy+on+Automated+Vehicle+Development http://www.nhtsa.gov/About+NHTSA/Press+Releases/U.S.+Departm...
- Carrok 11y agoIn case more people are wondering still: "SDV" is not an acronym but an initialism. TIL that in today's thread about TIL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11069206 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11069206
- aidenn0 11y agoIn American English it's pretty well accepted that Acronym includes initialisms, and in fact the word initialism is hardly ever used.
- ocdtrekkie 11y agoGiven that statistically, Google's self-driving cars are more dangerous than the average human, and if Google's computers were a driver, it's license would already be revoked, it's a little weird the government is willing to take this step. Then again, they've contributed to about 200 members of Congress, several senior White House positions are filled by Googlers...
- bnchrch 11y agoI'm all for opinions in opposition of the norm but if you could provide references to your claims that would be much appreciated.
- ocdtrekkie 11y agohttp://fortune.com/2016/01/13/google-self-driving-car-accidents/ http://fortune.com/2016/01/13/google-self-driving-car-accide... Ten of these would've been the Google car's fault. Given the mileage they've covered in 2015, and the number of accidents, they're terrible drivers statistically... to the point that a human is the safety device. http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/toprecips.php?id=D000022008&cycle=2014 http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/toprecips.php?id=D000022008&... Congress, 2014 term. Many of the top recipients actually wrote letters on Congress letterhead begging the EU not to rule against Google, which is a fairly unprecedented action. http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/09/04/two-googlers-take-top-white-house-tech-jobs/ http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/09/04/two-googlers-take-top... http://www.govexec.com/management/2014/09/white-houses-roster-starting-resemble-googles-list-former-employees/92855/ http://www.govexec.com/management/2014/09/white-houses-roste... Googlers take up some of the top technology positions in the White House, including "Chief Technology Officer". Eric Schmidt and other high ranking Googlers also visit the White House nearly weekly. Think they behaved themselves? Nope: http://techpresident.com/blog-entry/white-house-deputy-cto-andrew-mclaughlin-slapped-gmailing-googlers http://techpresident.com/blog-entry/white-house-deputy-cto-a... In case you're curious how Google's using their White House positions: It's to get money. http://thehill.com/policy/transportation/265932-obama-pledges-nearly-4-billion-for-self-driving-cars http://thehill.com/policy/transportation/265932-obama-pledge... And some more of our taxpayer dollars. While this article carefully avoids mentioning Chromebooks, they're now the leading purchased portable computers in schools, they're pictured in the header of this blog, and it's written by their "former" Googler, who is the CTO: https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2016/01/30/computer-science-all https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2016/01/30/computer-science-... That's a lot of strong government ties, but are they worried about regulation? Well... for the longest time they controlled the US's regulatory body too: http://www.buzzfeed.com/williamalden/ftc-commissioner-appears-to-defend-google-via-subtweet#.khLL8KvYjK http://www.buzzfeed.com/williamalden/ftc-commissioner-appear... The FTC was basically run by a paid Google shill, Joshua Wright, for the last couple of years. (The FTC reopened their investigation against Google within a month of him stepping down last year.) His pre-FTC behavior wasn't much on the ethical manner either: He was paid as a university professor to write "academic studies" supporting Google's legal views. One would wonder by the United States has been one of the slowest and most hesitant countries to regulate and pursue legal action against Google, until one does their research. Then it stops being much of a surprise at all.
- autoreleasepool 11y agoThis is refreshingly progressive news
- shadytrees 11y agoand to think it only took an inordinate amount of lobbying by corporate interests
- Animats 11y agoThis isn't a big deal. The NHTSA defined levels of autonomous vehicles back in 2013 They are roughly: Level 0: manual. Level 1: some automation, maybe radar cruse control. (available now) Level 2: smart automatic cruise control plus lane keeping (Available on several high-end cars now. Tesla is at this level, not Level 3) Level 3: automatic driving good enough to handle ordinary driving tasks and route planning. (Google, Cadillac/CMU have this in test) but driver sometimes has to take over manually. Level 4: full auto, all road conditions, driver not needed. (nobody really has this yet) Now, the NHTSA is discussing modifying the federal safety standards so that, when Level 4 is achieved, vehicles which achieve will comply with federal motor vehicle standards. Whether to allow autonomous vehicles on roads is a state matter. California DMV currently allows this in test, with manufacturer test drivers only, and requires reporting of incidents. Current DMV thinking is to stay with that for three years, see how things are going, then reevaluate. There's some whining about this from Google, but realistically, Google doesn't have the technology to go beyond that yet. The accident reports are on line.[1] Almost all of them are from Google, and most of them involve someone rear-ending a Google car which was driving cautiously. Except for one incident. Cruise (YC W14) had a crash with a parked car last month, driving on 7th St. in San Francisco.[2] The report indicates that the vehicle swerved to the left under automatic control, then corrected to the right, then the driver took over manual control, and then hit a parked car at 20MPH. Both vehicles damaged, no injuries. The reported location [3] is across from the SFPD's Southern Station and a popular parking place for police vehicles. They hit a parked Toyota Prius. I've written before about the "deadly valley": automatic driving good enough that the driver stops paying close attention, but not good enough to drive reliably. Cruise just demonstrated this. You cannot rely on the human driver to suddenly take over from the automatic driving system. [1] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/autonomousveh_ol316 https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/auton... [2] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/bc21ef62-6e7c-4049-a552-0a7c50d92e86/Cruise_Automation_01.08.16.pdf?MOD=AJPERES https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/bc21ef62-6e7c-4049... [3] https://goo.gl/maps/DoNdYSV8cgq https://goo.gl/maps/DoNdYSV8cgq
- jayjay71 11y agoCadillac/CMU actually spun out into a company called Ottomatika which was acquired by Delphi.
- andy_ppp 11y agoIs each car going to have to pass a driving test - how is the inspector meant to know if a computer is checking it's mirrors and indicating correctly!? ;-)
- dragonwriter 11y agoThis seems to have to do with federal law which underlies NHTSA's regulation on required safety equipment, not laws regarding licensing, etc. Without something like this, regardless of state laws on autonomous vehicles, all US street-legal vehicles, even if fully autonomous, and even if the state had no requirements for human control as an option or backup, would have to be equipped for human control. Who state law governing things like driver responsibility would treat as the driver of a fully autonomous vehicle -- and whether they would allow such a thing at all -- is a separate issue.
- Klasiaster 11y agoSo and if these devices are hacked to injury people nobody can prevent it or is even forced to take responsibility as it's the fault of the device and not those of the owners/creators?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- jonknee 11y agoThat can absolutely happen today and we're not freaking out about it. The bigger concern are the actual hundreds of thousands of people killed and maimed every year by the fault of other humans behind the wheel, not hypothetical evil geniuses.
- kriro 11y agoIssuing and revoking AI licenses (driver's licenses or others) seems like a very good use case for the block chain. You can predefine rules for removal etc. There's a bit of literature about automatically executed contracts on the block chain and this use case seems very similar.
- jjangsangy 11y agoGood to see progress being made on this front! I guess this means that makes the scores US Gov: +1 Google: +1 Tesla: +1 Uber : -1 Robots: 0xffffffff
- dtparr 11y agoIs your robots' score signed or unsigned?
- rawTruthHurts 11y agoLooks like an open door for all kind of legal tricks for companies, the kind of trick corporate personhood achieved.
- khgvljhkb 11y agoWe who browse HN like the idea of self-driving cars, but does anyone have a nuanced perspective on their usefulness? I don't know much about AI compared to many here. It has been said that things which humans learn at very young age are hard to automate (identifying things you see, walking, social things) while things we learn as adults are easy to automate (accounting, telegraphs, file cabinets). Car driving definitely contains elements that we learn as kids (seeing things in motion, identifying what is a human and what is a rock) while some things are learned as adults (what does that sign mean, how to count KM/H, how transmission works). Are we really close to autonomous vehicles on the streets?
- thomasahle 11y agoFor one thing, the truck market seems incredibly ripe for automation. That should be a fairly easy, profit driven decision. Not many feelings involved. Except for protests from truck drivers of course.
- chrischen 11y agoPay off the current generation of truck drivers and tell the next generation to not pursue a career in truck driving. That ways we won't waste millions of dollars arguing with them when what they really want is to be paid (but they'll make up bullshit reasons for about how automated truck driving is bad).
- Spivak 11y agoI really like this idea. Continue paying all your drivers to be ride along with the autonomous car for safety reasons and an emergency override. They'll probably get really low insurance rates for having a human assisting. And when they leave or retire don't replace them. That's about the smoothest structural unemployment transition I've ever heard. It won't happen though because just firing, and fighting the protests/lawsuits is probably cheaper.
- omegaham 11y agoClose as in widespread deployment, coming soon to a parking lot near you? No. Close as in "doing proofs of concept and being adopted for experimental tasks?" Yes.
- lazaroclapp 11y agoWhen Asimov wrote about robots, he imagined them being fully sentient way before getting any legal rights (see e.g. "Evidence"). I don't think before this I would have ever bet on the process going the other way around...
- andy_ppp 11y agoCompanies have more rights than human beings now and have done for a long time; I'd suggest that robots also will be considered more important for the whole of society and will therefore get considerably more rights than you might at first expect. Adam Curtis' documentary becomes ever more relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_of_Loving_Grace_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_o...
- true_religion 11y agoWhat rights do companies have that human beings do not?
- andy_ppp 11y agoThey have a favourable taxation system (I'd love to be able to only pay tax on the money I haven't spent; instead I pay on my revenue...). A quick Google so far reveals: https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/civil-liberties/report/2012/08/13/11974/big-business-taking-over-state-supreme-courts/ https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/civil-liberties/repo... http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/06/19/corporations-over-people-again/ http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/06/19/corporations-over-peo... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood Political contributions and lobbying, things like the TPP, TTIP, the IMF, etc. etc. are all pretty much set up to think about businesses over human lives. EDIT: This is a good one... http://www.npr.org/2014/07/28/335288388/when-did-companies-become-people-excavating-the-legal-evolution http://www.npr.org/2014/07/28/335288388/when-did-companies-b...
- make3 11y ago
- rdxm 11y agoif you spend any real amount of time on a bike interacting with traffic you quickly come to realize that 99.5% of the humans behind the wheel shouldn't be driving, so it's hard to see where there would be any noticeable difference in quality of operations between human and autonomous.......
- dexterdog 11y agoYou get close to the same number by spending any amount of time behind the wheel as well.
- ams6110 11y agoBy the same token many many cyclists should get their own heads out of their asses and obey the traffic laws as they are supposed to do.
- marincounty 11y agoOut of all my years driving, I've never been really concerned over a bicyclist, even when they go through stop signs, or hang on my lumber rack. Yes, a lot don't obey traffic laws to a tee, but it's a bike. They do not have the mass, nor size of a automobile. They just haven't been a concern for myself. I honestly don't get the outrage towards bicyclists. I think it's more psychological? Personally, I have found the most out of shape individuals complain about cyclists the most.
- jefurii 11y agoBack in the 1970s/1980s cyclists had to struggle to carve out their legal place on the roadways. Part of the bargain was that they adopt certain car-like rules of the road, like riding in the same direction as traffic, not weaving in and out, obeying traffic signals, etc. Because of this, cyclists' behavior is more predictable to drivers, thus making the roads safer for cyclists. When I see guys on fixies weaving in and out of traffic and blowing through stop signs I worry that all that progress is going out the window. These cyclists are making the roads more dangerous for themselves.
- 11y ago
- jhbadger 11y ago"It own itself?" "Swiss citizen, but T-A own the basic software and the mainframe." "That's a good one," the construct said. "Like, I own your brain and what you know, but your thoughts have Swiss citizenship. Sure. Lotsa luck, AI." -- From William Gibson's "Neuromancer"
- mizchief2 11y agoDon't go out to the bar with Intel. They are total clock-blockers.
- mrharrison 11y agoI've been following this closely and think we are headed to self driving cars a lot sooner than we think. Obama has been making sure the regulators have been getting the money, GM is working with Lyft to have self driving cars in Austin. http://popsnip.com/topic/882/Selfdriving-cars-race-towards-on-demand http://popsnip.com/topic/882/Selfdriving-cars-race-towards-o...
- conductr 11y agoI agree. I commonly have the debate with friends who don't follow it as much. It's widely known that Google, Uber, etc want this to happen. However, the general perception that I hear is we are still 10-20 years away. My argument is ~2020 is more realistic. Most people I talk to don't realize Google has been working on this for a decade (or more) already and the tech is actually really good. Also, safety is a common point many people mention. When I mention how unsafe human drivers are, it's interesting to see how many people never consider that angle. I'm hoping my current car is the last one that I own. That would require the whole self-driving-Uber thing to come to fruition within next 5 years, but I'm hopeful.