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Why on earth should society allow (i.e. license) a randomly-modified software agent to operate a motor vehicle? The idea that any "hacker" has the right to arb

Why on earth should society allow (i.e. license) a randomly-modified software agent to operate a motor vehicle? The idea that any "hacker" has the right to arbitrarily change vehicular self-control software and deploy that on a public roadway is laughable.

Karunamon 10y ago
Like the steering wheel that's deployed on all public roadways right now? I'm struggling to see the substantial difference between "self driving car with modified software should be disallowed because safety" and "manually driven car should be disallowed because safety". The former is still strictly safer.
- saidajigumi 10y ago
  > The former is still strictly safer. I find this to be an absolutely ridiculous statement. Software as we know it today is incredibly brittle. What will eventually be put on the road as fully autonomous vehicular control software will have been HEAVILY QA'ed, and will be continuously QAed by telemetry. Random people modifying that software invalidate any proof-of-safety from the upstream QA and monitoring processes.
  - tomswartz07 10y ago
    Random people manually driving their cars are "modifying" their input as well. You have drunk drivers, texting drivers, distracted drivers.... The human attention span is incredibly brittle as well. In terms of QA'ing a manual driver in the US? You take a 10 minute driving test when you're 16 and you're licensed to drive for the rest of your life.
    - jolux 10y ago
      > The human attention span is incredibly brittle as well. I think that's sort of proving their point? Like the point should be to replace brittleness with reliability, not replicate it with software.
- jolux 10y ago
  I thought the entire point of computer driven cars was to reduce the dangers of driving. What exactly is the point if we give everyone with a self driving car a steering wheel like they have now?
  - pessimizer 10y ago
    If that is the entire point, I'd rather they be illegal altogether, and we could avoid the debate by saying that we only license human drivers. I thought the entire point was to lower the costs of transportation and lower the number of cars on the road. The dangers of driving are not great enough to give up individual agency to that degree.
    - jolux 10y ago
      Oh yeah they only kill over 30,000 people a year needlessly. Those lives don't matter I guess. Licensure doesn't stop drunk drivers and cost cutting isn't nearly a good enough incentive. Plus if you're lowering the number of cars on the road that suggests a certain level of centralization for the purposes of routing optimization. At that point, why not? Is your individual agency worth multiple other peoples' lives? You seem to be privileging fate over human life. And I'm not saying your agency isn't worth other peoples' lives, but the argument that this doesn't matter because it would be rare is silly. It's still a decision that will have to be made and it's an interesting question nonetheless.

Karunamon 10y ago

Like the steering wheel that's deployed on all public roadways right now? I'm struggling to see the substantial difference between "self driving car with modified software should be disallowed because safety" and "manually driven car should be disallowed because safety". The former is still strictly safer.

saidajigumi 10y ago
> The former is still strictly safer. I find this to be an absolutely ridiculous statement. Software as we know it today is incredibly brittle. What will eventually be put on the road as fully autonomous vehicular control software will have been HEAVILY QA'ed, and will be continuously QAed by telemetry. Random people modifying that software invalidate any proof-of-safety from the upstream QA and monitoring processes.
- tomswartz07 10y ago
  Random people manually driving their cars are "modifying" their input as well. You have drunk drivers, texting drivers, distracted drivers.... The human attention span is incredibly brittle as well. In terms of QA'ing a manual driver in the US? You take a 10 minute driving test when you're 16 and you're licensed to drive for the rest of your life.
  - jolux 10y ago
    > The human attention span is incredibly brittle as well. I think that's sort of proving their point? Like the point should be to replace brittleness with reliability, not replicate it with software.
jolux 10y ago
I thought the entire point of computer driven cars was to reduce the dangers of driving. What exactly is the point if we give everyone with a self driving car a steering wheel like they have now?
- pessimizer 10y ago
  If that is the entire point, I'd rather they be illegal altogether, and we could avoid the debate by saying that we only license human drivers. I thought the entire point was to lower the costs of transportation and lower the number of cars on the road. The dangers of driving are not great enough to give up individual agency to that degree.
  - jolux 10y ago
    Oh yeah they only kill over 30,000 people a year needlessly. Those lives don't matter I guess. Licensure doesn't stop drunk drivers and cost cutting isn't nearly a good enough incentive. Plus if you're lowering the number of cars on the road that suggests a certain level of centralization for the purposes of routing optimization. At that point, why not? Is your individual agency worth multiple other peoples' lives? You seem to be privileging fate over human life. And I'm not saying your agency isn't worth other peoples' lives, but the argument that this doesn't matter because it would be rare is silly. It's still a decision that will have to be made and it's an interesting question nonetheless.