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I think that might merely be because self driving cars are in the future, and Therac-25 is in the past. Also, it's easy to imagine self driving cars that are p
by galdosdi 10y ago
I think that might merely be because self driving cars are in the future, and Therac-25 is in the past.
Also, it's easy to imagine self driving cars that are pretty good, but still occasionally kill people, yet at a rate much lower than human drivers.
For the Therac-25 on the other hand, it's not so complicated. Why it failed and how to fix it is already well known.
- vkou 10y agoIt is indeed in the past - unlike the claims about how self-driving technology is currently safer then human drivers (Which is not at all clear yet), we can definitely say that Therac-25 saved more lives then it ended. Yet, it is also a case study in how not to build systems. It's easy to imagine a medical device that's pretty good, but still occasionally kills people because of flaws in its design. The image is fairly terrifying, actually. We could also say the same about the fatal Tesla accident - we know why it failed, and how to fix it... And observe how quickly large parts of the tech community (I would expect no less of the vendor) was to blame the human.