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I was told that driverless cars would not be in my lifetime, and that a machine would not beat a human at Go in my lifetime. We'll see.
by visakanv 11y ago
I was told that driverless cars would not be in my lifetime, and that a machine would not beat a human at Go in my lifetime. We'll see.
- Havoc 11y agoYeah think things will go faster than people expect. Just takes one unexpected key breakthrough and BAM way more progress than forecast.
- jobigoud 11y agoA lot of people fail to even consider the consequences of possible breakthroughs in disciplines that helps discover more breakthroughs. Cascading discoveries are already hard to think through very far, but discoveries that accelerate the pace at which we make discoveries make the whole thing very chaotic.
- LesZedCB 11y agoThis is described in The Singularity is Near (edit: or How to Create a Brain. I dont' remember which) as the Law of Accelerating Returns, and is exactly what this journalist falls prey to. Human brains are accustomed to viewing the world linearly, not exponentially. Cascading technological breakthroughs are exponential, and therefore highly unlikely to be able to be predicted correctly without accounting for that bias.
- melling 11y agoNo, what you are saying is inaccurate. There are plenty of people who've taken both sides of the predictions. Some people have been optimistic about beating the best players in the Go world: http://www.wired.com/2014/05/the-world-of-computer-go/ http://www.wired.com/2014/05/the-world-of-computer-go/ As for self-driving cars, they do work under good conditions but we still are at least a decade away. Plenty of people became optimistic about self-driving cars after the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge 11 years ago. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge_(2005) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge_(2005)
- andreashansen 11y agoAgreed. I remember attending a presentation by Google regarding their self-driving cars. What they told us fascinated me. Their last main hurdle is ethics, and they used to following scenario to illustrate: Two motorcycles are coming towards the self-driving car, and the car is forced to crash into one of them. One of the motorcyclists is not wearing his helmet, and there's a definite chance of fatal injury if crashed into by a car. By not wearing his helmet, he is also breaking the law. The other motorcyclist is wearing her helmet, and there's less of a chance of fatal injuries. Should the self-driving car crash into the law-abiding motorcyclist who is doing everything right but with a less chance of fatal injuries, or into the irresponsible non-helmet wearing motorcyclist where injuries could be fatal? That's the kind of scenarios they have to deal with. The technology however, works.
- anonymousDan 11y agoCrash into both of them, problem solved. Or just pick one at random.
- treehau5 11y agoOr should the Self driving car take into account that the passenger of the self driving car is, hypothetically, a male in his 60s who has raised his children already, and crash himself into the wall or drive off the cliff avoiding both of them, who are younger men with young children to raise?
- yann63 11y agoThis is called the "trolley problem". Here's a good read about that: https://backchannel.com/reinventing-the-trolley-problem-85f3d1730756 https://backchannel.com/reinventing-the-trolley-problem-85f3... TLDR: such a scenario will NOT happen. A computer is not likely at all to find itself in such a situation. My opinion: study of such scenario is there just to give more confidence into self driving cars. Just to show people "See? We thought hard about this. Trust autonomous vehicules".
- Aleman360 11y agoPresumably it would plug into legal data to estimate which option would be less financially risky to the car company.
- romaniv 11y agoI was told that driverless cars and household androids would be commonplace by the year 2000. Different people predicted different things depending on the decade you're looking at.