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What to do when your self-driving car decides to drive you to the police
- citizensixteen 11y agoInteresting discussion idea, poorly written article.
- rkangel 11y agoYou aren't going to persude anybody to your point of view if you make a bald statement without any justification. I actually quite enjoyed the writing.
- StavrosK 11y agoTo be fair, you've provided equally little justification for liking the article. I don't see why only negative opinions should need justification.
- EliRivers 11y agoIf anyone can jump in, I liked the Chekov's Gun of how the car decides what counts a person. That was inserted smoothly enough that I didn't wonder at the time of reading it if that information was going to turn out to be relevant towards the end.
- scottishfiction 11y agoYou could argue that grandparent's criticism was presented as the more objective 'poorly written', which suggests a lack of skill on the author's part. Whereas the parent seems to address the style of writing, which is more subjective and less demanding of citation.
- StavrosK 11y agoYes, but that doesn't seem like a very strong point. "I found the article poorly written" would likely also be equally objectionable.
- citizensixteen 11y agoOK, let me rephrase- I find this is a great discussion topic and I personally find the article a bit hard to follow.
- JshWright 11y agoIt's not an article. It's a sci-fi short story.
- taneq 11y ago"If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear." Reassuring thought when new laws can be added at any time to criminalize your past actions...
- sokoloff 11y agoCould you give an example of the latter that's happened?
- mineshaftgap 11y agoOf course not, HN is declining.
- josephcooney 11y agonot quite the same, but http://jacquesmattheij.com/if-you-have-nothing-to-hide http://jacquesmattheij.com/if-you-have-nothing-to-hide
- sokoloff 11y agoAgree with Jacques (and others) who reject the "if you have nothing to hide..." mantra. I was asking specifically for cases where laws were created making behavior that was law-abiding at the time retroactively criminal.
- iand 11y agoThis paper from UK Parliament lists several examples of legislation that was enacted retrospectively, including new criminal liabilities in the War Crimes Act. researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN06454/SN06454.pdf
- pjc50 11y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_post_facto_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_post_facto_law
- mschuster91 11y agoThe Nuremberg Trials, after the 1945 fall of the 3rd Reich. I'm glad they happened, but from a purely legal POV they're highly questionable.
- AstroJetson 11y agoI liked the story. I think it's fiction. I'm trying to keep that fine line between fiction and article, where articles are non-fiction, but with the latest round of adver-articles. If it's one of those adver-articles, I guess it's really advertising the new carbon steel leatherman tool, perfect for cutting your way through pesky car restraint straps. Not often that HN points to some fiction, it was a welcome addition to my early morning routine.
- autopov 11y ago>This is Terraform, our home for future fiction. (The next line after the story's end.)
- AstroJetson 11y agoSorry, my caffeine filled morning brain did a task switch at the end of the story. So anything after the last period (like Terraform and all the footer info) was skipped. I'll make an effort to come back to Terraform if the stories are just as good. Happy Monday!
- AstroJetson 11y agoWow, -5 points of downvotes because I like science fiction and it was a happy change? Some of you are really having a crabby Monday.
- hughsoon 11y agoWhat better way to sell a fictitious article to Hacker News than as a cyberpunk piece?
- ck2 11y agoOh right, like the police would skip on the chance to invade your home. Your house would simply lock you inside until the police arrive. Search-warrant would be robo-signed by the court AI
- pjc50 11y agoI remember Arnold Schwarzenegger having a fight with a self-driving car in Total Recall. Further back we have 2001 and the entire canon of Asimov's three laws stories of computerized morality and how it might be exploited or debugged. And the Paranoia RPG. However, in the successful real semi-automated totalitarianism of China, the secret to keeping the system running is the avoidance of overt confrontations like this. In the future, if your self-driving car doesn't want you to go somewhere, it'll just refuse to understand the address. Or take you somewhere unrelated. Or use whatever the standard euphemism for "that's not allowed, but we're not allowed to say it's not allowed" that polite people use.
- creshal 11y ago> Further back we have 2001 and the entire canon of Asimov's three laws stories of computerized morality and how it might be exploited or debugged. He even has a whole story dedicated to self-driving cars without the three laws (because they're no "true" robots) and how they end up exacting revenge on humanity.
- imglorp 11y agoGood point: is our authoritarian society going to demand a fourth law? 1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2. A robot must obey the orders given it by the government, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3. A robot must obey the orders given it by non-government human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First or Second Laws. 4. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First, Second, or Third Laws.
- zby 11y agoLooks like with cameras we are already there: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/02/this-is-why-people-fear-the-internet-of-things/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/02/this-is-why-people-fear-... "Imagine buying an internet-enabled surveillance camera, network attached storage device, or home automation gizmo, only to find that it secretly and constantly phones home to a vast peer-to-peer (P2P) network run by the Chinese manufacturer of the hardware."
- rayiner 11y agoYesterday, Google Maps got stuck in a loop in DC because it didn't realize a road was one-way. Refuses to reroute, kept demanding we loop around and try again. This sort of thing happens frequently. So I really wonder how far we are from self-driving cars even being able to find the police station to drive you to.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- dooptroop 11y agoAll it would take is a button that says NO! More useful is perhaps a function to "cut" the proposed route. I cannot pass this point kind of deal.
- teps 11y agoThat's a good story about authoritarian state, but I'm not sure about the self driving car. In such state, a today taxi driver would report you to the police with the press of a button and the police would be waiting at your destination.
- jensen123 11y agoI don't think most people would have a problem with this kind of thing, just like they don't have any problem with giving up their privacy since "they have nothing to hide". I hope I'm wrong.
- crusso 11y agoI'm more worried about what you do when your self-driving car takes you through a shady neighborhood late at night and a couple of robbers step out in front of you. If you're in a Google car and they have their way about "no manual controls", what do you do? I guess you're trapped.
- maxerickson 11y agoWouldn't that just be a weird corner case though? If the cars were frequently getting vandalized in shady neighborhoods, they probably wouldn't be frequently routed that way anymore.
- kevingadd 11y agoWhat about people who have no choice but to live in a shady neighborhood? In that case, the car really just needs to handle dangerous situations properly. The alternative is not being able to get a car ride in the self-driving-only future unless you live in a nice neighborhood, which is exciting...
- maxerickson 11y agoIf people in a neighborhood are using the cars, the nasty people planning on obstructing the vehicle to detain the passenger probably won't target the cars in that neighborhood.
- a3n 11y agoNot sure, but I've accreted the idea that it's against the law for a taxi company to not serve certain neighborhoods. That doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
- hodwik 11y agoFor some people who live near the ghetto, that's not really an option. If I'm coming from the South I either have to go through the ghetto, or add another 30 minutes to my ride to avoid it.
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- venomsnake 11y agoIf we ever get there - it is the fault of every person that didn't mind walled gardens initially. And endorsed everything in the cloud. And who could have guessed that having root is important. I guess Steve Jobs did - that is why he wanted to keep it for himself. Once you give control over something important - wrestling it back is hard to impossible.
- hellbanner 11y agoOr is it our fault for not educating them? Most consumers just want "something that works".
- gexla 11y agoI wonder if a GPS jammer could disable navigation to a location. The car relies on other systems for driving, but I imagine the GPS would still be used for locating the destination. Though in the future there would likely be other systems by which the cars could navigate. This could just lead to more trouble though. If the car could take you to the police station, then it would probably take you other places in other emergency situations. For example, in this scenario, I wonder if faking a medical emergency to go to the hospital would override a police flag. Why fear the police? They don't put you in prison, the courts do that. The police still have to operate under certain rules. If they don't follow those rules then they are wasting their efforts. What you would need to fear is a jacked up system behind the police. This article doesn't have to be about the future. The police already have access to tools to intercept your cell phone conversations. If I were operating outside the law, I would be more worried about cell phone conversations than a taxi dropping me off at the front door of the station (unless I had a warrant for my arrest.) For criminals, self driving cars would probably be safer than driving yourself assuming you aren't creating an alert by jumping in a car. The police would have less of an excuse to pull you over, potentially leading to a search of the vehicle if you are in a self driving car. I'm sure the police could come up with whatever excuse they like, but you would be less likely to attract attention. Any why would the police operate like this? I'm sure they would be much more interested in allowing the person to go to the destination while collecting video and audio. It's not what we know which is scary, it's what we don't know.
- hawleyal 11y ago> Why fear the police? Are you being sarcastic?
- e40 11y agoWhy fear the police? They don't put you in prison, the courts do that. Someone hasn't been paying attention lately. Sandra Bland, arrested for no good reason when she was starting a new job became so depressed she took her own life, after being left in a cell all weekend (on a trivial traffic stop violation). The police are not your friend and the more interactions you are forced to have with them the worse off you will be.
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- ilostmykeys 11y agoThere is so much fear in pop culture of human-sized robots (I, Robot), giant ones (Transformers) and ones in charge of nukes (WarGames) but the 500 Years War is going to be with nano-molecular-bots that infiltrate our blood stream and spread like wild viruses. How do we combat human engineered nano invaders? No, seriously. How? Any ideas? ...
- burkaman 11y agoFriendly nanobots to fight them? The same way we fight normal viruses, I guess.
- iron_ball 11y agoSee The Diamond Age, where the poor areas were covered in "toner", the remains of nanobots killed in an endless self-perpetuating war.
- ilostmykeys 11y agowe fight normal viruses mostly one at a time like Ebola, Zika etc. Imagine a million variants invade the human and live stock species at once. How would we deal with that? It's terrifying.
- burkaman 11y agoThat just doesn't feel very realistic to me. Weapons like that don't just appear out of nowhere. I imagine countermeasures could be developed at roughly the same pace as nanobot threats. And if not, we'll deal with it the same way we dealt with nukes. Hopefully it would go a little better this time, since we have a little apocalyptic experience to learn from. And why is this limited to nanobots? Wouldn't it be easier to develop a million variations of existing biological viruses, rather than creating a million "species" of nanobots from scratch?
- daveloyall 11y agoGrey goo has frightened me since I was a child. Now this. Thanks!
- joshuaheard 11y agoSwitch to manual mode and drive it with the joystick. Self-driving cars will have to come with a manual override for unusual situations. For instance, suppose I am parking in a vacant lot for the ball game. Where in the lot does the autopilot park? Or how about parking in my garage which has inches clearance on each side?
- rtkwe 11y agoPersonal self driving cars will have some form of override for a long time if they ever get rid of it completely. I could see them being locked into a slower supervised manual mode once it's well established though. The control-less versions will be Uber/taxi replacements that will drive much more constrained environment. They'll be dropping you off and moving to the next fare not parking in your tight garage or unimproved lot. Also in the fictional semi-authoritarian scenario where the police can redirect your car they've probably been given a lock out on the manual controls too.
- agentgt 11y agoI seriously wonder if self driving cars will really ever happen given how little new car technology is absorbed particularly in less wealthy countries (ie countries in Africa). Given Africa's rate of population growth a random person picked in the future is probably going to be from that continent. I have serious doubts poor countries will have the infrastructure and/or resources needed to support self driving machines. That is future less than law abiding hacker (the author's term.. not mine) could probably avoid problems like this by moving to less wealthy nations.
- sideshowb 11y agohave you got a source for the Africa population growth vs rest of world? intuitively your stats seem unlikely.
- agentgt 11y agoI'm not sure about your intuition. Intuitively for me it seemed likely (Africa population growing fast) but for a long time I was educated falsely that population would flatten out for developing countries. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/world-population-will-soar-higher-than-predicted/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/world-population-w... A recent one here (just read this a week ago): http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/africa-s-population-will-soar-dangerously-unless-women-are-more-empowered/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/africa-s-populatio... Population is a serious problem and for some reason people avoid and eschew it more than global warming or the phosphorus crisis (another one most people don't know about).
- sideshowb 11y agoInteresting links, thank you.
- xixi77 11y ago(1) I'm not sure self-driving machines will actually need that much more infrastructure. For one, driver training would be less necessary, and car utilization could go up. (2) assuming they did require infrastructure, what does Africa's future population has to do with it? Random person does not matter (taking "random" as "uniform"), random car buyer does -- either they have enough cars which would make the infrastructure worthwhile, or they don't, in which case they can be safely ignored for all car-related purposes. It could be that (i) things like bad roads make things difficult for self-driving cars, while (ii) labor is very cheap and everyone who can afford a car can afford a personal driver. It would still mean a fairly small ratio of cars per capita, but I don't think anyone predicts that self-driving cars will ever completely replace human drivers :)
- CapitalistCartr 11y agoWhat about when the police are smart enough to not detain/reroute you, rather track everyone. Everyone. To every address. So going to a single address isn't sufficient, but your cumulative travels are worthy of a full "investigation". All your phone records, including call speech converted to text for automatic analysis by AI. By the time the cops come for you, they'll have a mountain of "evidence".
- nitrogen 11y agoThe main problem with this, and to a lesser extent our current legal system, is how it's impossible to know you've upset the authority until it's too late. There's no way to know in advance what you can and cannot do to live an interesting life without metaphorically poking the sleeping giant.
- pbreit 11y agoOne reason why Apple is stepping up on this now?
- foobar166 11y agoI'd have enjoyed it more if this weren't some veiled transgender identity Socratic conversation was dropped entirely because it serves no purpose for the main narrative.
- ddingus 11y agoIt does emphasize fear of jail / prison, as well as that treatment "non normal" people often get at the hands of authority who may not be equipped to deal with, or understand them. Many more people fall into this scenario than we may think at first glance. The angry, defiant tagger, rightfully worries over how petty crime charges can escalate into something much more ugly. This drives the urgency needed for the hack to escape plot elements. Today, women, non ordinary white people, tatted up people, gay, etc... all have concerns related to law enforcement. This character kind of sums them all up in a brief future looking way.
- mibrah 11y agoThis story is so dumb, the character "Jae" was right -- don't call a cab when you're carrying illegal things in your purse. The character in the story destroyed the Taxy by causing it to swerve off a bridge. If graffiti supplies gets you 1 year in prison in this version of the future, I'm sure the penalty for destroying a car in an attempt to evade the police is maybe just a little bit higher. This is not really dystopian or futuristic so much as it is realistic - if you do illegal things, then engage in suspicious behavior that attracts the attention of the police, you get arrested. Big surprise. I could easily write a short story about withdrawing $300 from an ATM, driving to my drug dealer's house, parking outside of his house, waiting there for 15 minutes, then he climbs inside my car and the police light us up. At that point I could A. Plead the 5th and hire a lawyer when I get out of jail or B. Slip past the police and slash their tires before running into the woods and making my way back to my place - how heroic - before just getting arrested on way worse charges as soon as the police can get to my house