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>It makes me a bit sad that the political zeitgeist in the tech community is leaning towards "acceptable losses" when it comes to accidents in automated cars W

by xoa 10y ago

>It makes me a bit sad that the political zeitgeist in the tech community is leaning towards "acceptable losses" when it comes to accidents in automated cars What. "Acceptable losses" is, and has always been the rule when it comes to accidents in all cars, ever. We've made absolutely massive safety improvements in the last few decades, cutting the death rate to around 1/3 of its historical maximum, yet even so tens of thousands of people will die in America alone this year (probably in the neighborhood of ~30k). And next year. And the year after. According to the World Health Organization, there were 1.25 million road traffic deaths in 2013, and if anything I'd expect that to have continued to rise as more and more people worldwide gain access to vehicles. Yet we will absolutely continue to support car use, because flexible mechanized point-to-point personal transportation is insanely valuable to us (and in fact American society at least simply could not function without it at all at this point). You can dress it up however you like, but the objective fact of the matter is that literally millions of deaths are considered "acceptable losses" here. Full automation represents our absolutely best shot to reduce the horrendous, annual loss of human life. So personally, I find your appeal to emotion and thinly veiled "what about the children" shtick disgusting and immoral. You've invented imaginary "rights" that absolutely do not and should not exist. Your so called >"blind push forward at the expense of human lives" is literally the opposite of what automation aims to accomplish. And I will freely assert will accomplish, because humans are awful drivers. Really, automation is merely filling in the missing piece of personalized transport that we should have had from the start, except that our mechanical technological development was far ahead of our information gathering and processing technological development. Having a human handling that has always been a hack, and getting rid of it has such vast positives that it absolutely justifies a very strong push forward as soon as possible. Every year without driverless vehicles when we could have had them is literally hundreds of thousands more people dead. This tech does not exist in a vacuum, and context absolutely matters.

archagon 10y ago
> So personally, I find your appeal to emotion and thinly veiled "what about the children" shtick disgusting and immoral. How do you counter a utilitarian argument without humanizing the situation? If my friend or loved one were killed by an ill-considered and poorly-implemented automated driving algorithm, no amount of statistics would convince me that the tradeoff was worth it. Who bears responsibility in that case? No one? I suspect that ordinary people won't accept that for a long time to come. At least with human drivers, the courts can decide culpability. At least with a human in the mix, we're all still operating within the same social and legal order.
- xoa 10y ago
  >How do you counter a utilitarian argument without humanizing the situation? Have you considered that perhaps there is no argument to be countered? That your entire foundation of "humanizing" the situation is foolish and off base? Alternatively, you yourself blithely dismissed the fact that your "humanizing" easily works both ways, in fact more easily works the other way: many of us have had friends or loved ones killed by driver error, tiredness, drunkeness/distraction, or in simple accidents, deaths that would not have happened if a computer had been in control. I don't need any "what ifs" because one of my friends was killed by a drunk driver right near her school. Those millions who are going to die have friends and loved ones too you know. It is in fact a statistics game, and one of economic tradeoffs. That's human life, in fact life in general. >no amount of statistics would convince me that the tradeoff was worth it Which is why we do not leave societal decisions to you, but instead have a system that attempts (with varying success in some cases) to put significant distance between the moment-to-moment emotions of specific individuals and enactment of law governing all. You may not care about this imaginary tradeoff of your loved one vs thousands of other people's loved ones, but those other thousands of people certainly would. So you can and should be outvoted. >Who bears responsibility in that case? It would depend. If it was just an honest mistake that could not have been reasonably caught, then the answer is "no one" and it'd just be covered by insurance, or even the government, so you could say that "society itself chooses to take responsibility for the greater good". We already have a model for this in many, many other scenarios because the basic issue here is very much not a new one. A big, successful example would be vaccines, where we all have to take on a small risk for a very great general good and there is government provided compensation in the rare case that something goes wrong. However as far as individuals go, sometimes there is in fact no one "at fault" or responsible. It's human to always want something to blame but part of maturing is accepting that freak risk is a fact of existence. >I suspect that ordinary people won't accept that for a long time to come. We literally do accept it, and have accepted it for all of recorded history. Much of mythology comes out of the basic recognition that there are forces beyond humanity. >At least with a human in the mix, we're all still operating within the same social and legal order. Debatable, but also beside the point and it doesn't change the objective fact that a human in the mix is a proven recipe for failure. Your philosophy is cold comfort in the face of tens of millions of deaths. You are also ignoring the large percentage of deaths that are purely down to things such as animals crossing the road, or poor driving conditions that are not reacted to appropriately, or where a driver kills themselves (and perhaps passengers) due to human failure but involves no 3rd parties, which automation could also positively effect. You're also ignoring positive utility, which is a critical component to the economic and societal equation just as the car itself is. Self-driving cars change the dynamics for city space usage, for people who are unable to drive due to age or medical conditions, for the poor who cannot afford the capital outlay of a full car, for those who are discriminated against by human drivers, for the environment (long charging times for electric vehicles become significantly less of an issue when the vehicles can simply go take care of it themselves while you're doing something else), and on and on. It's hard to overstate how central this is to society up and down the stack. Your viewing lens is entirely too narrow, which is precisely why individual emotional response is a terrible basis for governance.
YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago
>> And I will freely assert will accomplish, because humans are awful drivers. If humans are such awful drivers and replacing them with automation is the moral thing to do, why is it not the moral thing to do to stop them from driving altogether, right now and for the time being, until we have automation that is better than "awful"? If we're such rubbish drivers that we'll always kill others if we're driving, why are we allow ourselves to drive?

by xoa 10y ago

archagon 10y ago

> So personally, I find your appeal to emotion and thinly veiled "what about the children" shtick disgusting and immoral. How do you counter a utilitarian argument without humanizing the situation? If my friend or loved one were killed by an ill-considered and poorly-implemented automated driving algorithm, no amount of statistics would convince me that the tradeoff was worth it. Who bears responsibility in that case? No one? I suspect that ordinary people won't accept that for a long time to come. At least with human drivers, the courts can decide culpability. At least with a human in the mix, we're all still operating within the same social and legal order.

xoa 10y ago
>How do you counter a utilitarian argument without humanizing the situation? Have you considered that perhaps there is no argument to be countered? That your entire foundation of "humanizing" the situation is foolish and off base? Alternatively, you yourself blithely dismissed the fact that your "humanizing" easily works both ways, in fact more easily works the other way: many of us have had friends or loved ones killed by driver error, tiredness, drunkeness/distraction, or in simple accidents, deaths that would not have happened if a computer had been in control. I don't need any "what ifs" because one of my friends was killed by a drunk driver right near her school. Those millions who are going to die have friends and loved ones too you know. It is in fact a statistics game, and one of economic tradeoffs. That's human life, in fact life in general. >no amount of statistics would convince me that the tradeoff was worth it Which is why we do not leave societal decisions to you, but instead have a system that attempts (with varying success in some cases) to put significant distance between the moment-to-moment emotions of specific individuals and enactment of law governing all. You may not care about this imaginary tradeoff of your loved one vs thousands of other people's loved ones, but those other thousands of people certainly would. So you can and should be outvoted. >Who bears responsibility in that case? It would depend. If it was just an honest mistake that could not have been reasonably caught, then the answer is "no one" and it'd just be covered by insurance, or even the government, so you could say that "society itself chooses to take responsibility for the greater good". We already have a model for this in many, many other scenarios because the basic issue here is very much not a new one. A big, successful example would be vaccines, where we all have to take on a small risk for a very great general good and there is government provided compensation in the rare case that something goes wrong. However as far as individuals go, sometimes there is in fact no one "at fault" or responsible. It's human to always want something to blame but part of maturing is accepting that freak risk is a fact of existence. >I suspect that ordinary people won't accept that for a long time to come. We literally do accept it, and have accepted it for all of recorded history. Much of mythology comes out of the basic recognition that there are forces beyond humanity. >At least with a human in the mix, we're all still operating within the same social and legal order. Debatable, but also beside the point and it doesn't change the objective fact that a human in the mix is a proven recipe for failure. Your philosophy is cold comfort in the face of tens of millions of deaths. You are also ignoring the large percentage of deaths that are purely down to things such as animals crossing the road, or poor driving conditions that are not reacted to appropriately, or where a driver kills themselves (and perhaps passengers) due to human failure but involves no 3rd parties, which automation could also positively effect. You're also ignoring positive utility, which is a critical component to the economic and societal equation just as the car itself is. Self-driving cars change the dynamics for city space usage, for people who are unable to drive due to age or medical conditions, for the poor who cannot afford the capital outlay of a full car, for those who are discriminated against by human drivers, for the environment (long charging times for electric vehicles become significantly less of an issue when the vehicles can simply go take care of it themselves while you're doing something else), and on and on. It's hard to overstate how central this is to society up and down the stack. Your viewing lens is entirely too narrow, which is precisely why individual emotional response is a terrible basis for governance.

YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago

>> And I will freely assert will accomplish, because humans are awful drivers. If humans are such awful drivers and replacing them with automation is the moral thing to do, why is it not the moral thing to do to stop them from driving altogether, right now and for the time being, until we have automation that is better than "awful"? If we're such rubbish drivers that we'll always kill others if we're driving, why are we allow ourselves to drive?