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Driver 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
by Flammy 11y ago
Driver 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."