4 ms·

What a crock of shit. Would we accept the same reasoning for some barely-tested miracle drug? "If we do the testing, and the drug turns out to actually be mirac

What a crock of shit. Would we accept the same reasoning for some barely-tested miracle drug? "If we do the testing, and the drug turns out to actually be miraculous, then lives were needlessly lost during the testing period". Indeed ... but what if the drug is not miraculous, or has dangerous side effects? Hands up who wants to trust their health to the untested assertions of a pharmaceutical company

Turing_Machine 10y ago
"Hands up who wants to trust their health to the untested assertions of a pharmaceutical company" Well, that depends. Do I have a mild case of acne, or am I dying of cancer? My willingness to try an untested drug is likely to be very different in those two scenarios.
- AstralStorm 10y ago
  Drugs are rated against state of the art treatments. In driverless cars, this would be against human drivers.
  - brokenmachine 10y ago
    Except you also have the liability issues. Car companies will be unwilling to accept the liability that drivers currently assume. When cancer kills someone, you can't sue cancer.
    - Turing_Machine 10y ago
      "Willing" won't really enter into it. It depends on what the jury decides, and the car companies don't really have any say in that.
      - brokenmachine 10y ago
        That's my point exactly. It's not simply a question of whether driverless cars are better drivers than humans or not... If a driverless car kills someone, the car maker is the only one I can think of who would be responsible. A passenger who wasn't driving can't be responsible. So legally the insurance needs to cover this. If they can't be insured, they can't be on the road. I'm not sure if I expressed that point well, but what I was meaning was that the car makers will have to accept the blame if they're going to be selling cars that do the driving (or more precisely, take the burden of the blame for bad driving). As an aside, to muddy the waters even more, I'd say even if the car gets hacked and made to kill someone, the car maker might still be legally responsible. It's a minefield for sure.
- legolas2412 10y ago
  But what if you taking the drug for your cancer kills me? (I mean the self driving car you bought for your inability to drive kills me).
  - Turing_Machine 10y ago
    Well, you hire a lawyer and convince a jury that's the case. If the car's software is defective, the company should clearly be held accountable.
eridius 10y ago
This is a bad analogy. I don't think there's really any question as to whether driverless cars in the long term are going to be good. The only question is when they'll be good enough to start using en mass. And the point the article is making is that, unlike wonder drugs, driverless cars will be constantly improving themselves while being used. So if you start using driverless cars at the point where they're expected to be marginally safer than the average driver, then in a very short amount of time they should become significantly better than the average driver (and should still keep improving).
- brokenmachine 10y ago
  You can't just go updating critical safety software on a driverless car remotely all the time. Each update will need to be tested and approved for safety for every vehicle it needs to run on. Also companies will understandably be unwilling to share their data with competitors, and the data is probably not translatable between companies anyway.
- legolas2412 10y ago
  This is actually a good analogy. Driverless cars will be good, but what one company claims as driverless car technology might not ever be good. For example you need complex machine learning algorithms (Well I guess even a naive bayes will do) for facial recognition. But facial recognition cannot be solved by some hardcoded logic like checking the relative sizes of two circles and a cylinder you assumed as eyes and nose. Like this example, it's possible self driving car is far difficult than just adaptive cruise control, or Tesla's radar looking two cars ahead etc. These are minor hardcoded logic and is no guarantee of solving the problem. Plus, a bad pharmaceutical drug only harms the user, a dangerous car on the road is dangerous to people who don't want them.

Turing_Machine 10y ago

"Hands up who wants to trust their health to the untested assertions of a pharmaceutical company" Well, that depends. Do I have a mild case of acne, or am I dying of cancer? My willingness to try an untested drug is likely to be very different in those two scenarios.

AstralStorm 10y ago
Drugs are rated against state of the art treatments. In driverless cars, this would be against human drivers.
- brokenmachine 10y ago
  Except you also have the liability issues. Car companies will be unwilling to accept the liability that drivers currently assume. When cancer kills someone, you can't sue cancer.
  - Turing_Machine 10y ago
    "Willing" won't really enter into it. It depends on what the jury decides, and the car companies don't really have any say in that.
    - brokenmachine 10y ago
      That's my point exactly. It's not simply a question of whether driverless cars are better drivers than humans or not... If a driverless car kills someone, the car maker is the only one I can think of who would be responsible. A passenger who wasn't driving can't be responsible. So legally the insurance needs to cover this. If they can't be insured, they can't be on the road. I'm not sure if I expressed that point well, but what I was meaning was that the car makers will have to accept the blame if they're going to be selling cars that do the driving (or more precisely, take the burden of the blame for bad driving). As an aside, to muddy the waters even more, I'd say even if the car gets hacked and made to kill someone, the car maker might still be legally responsible. It's a minefield for sure.
legolas2412 10y ago
But what if you taking the drug for your cancer kills me? (I mean the self driving car you bought for your inability to drive kills me).
- Turing_Machine 10y ago
  Well, you hire a lawyer and convince a jury that's the case. If the car's software is defective, the company should clearly be held accountable.

eridius 10y ago

This is a bad analogy. I don't think there's really any question as to whether driverless cars in the long term are going to be good. The only question is when they'll be good enough to start using en mass. And the point the article is making is that, unlike wonder drugs, driverless cars will be constantly improving themselves while being used. So if you start using driverless cars at the point where they're expected to be marginally safer than the average driver, then in a very short amount of time they should become significantly better than the average driver (and should still keep improving).

brokenmachine 10y ago
You can't just go updating critical safety software on a driverless car remotely all the time. Each update will need to be tested and approved for safety for every vehicle it needs to run on. Also companies will understandably be unwilling to share their data with competitors, and the data is probably not translatable between companies anyway.
legolas2412 10y ago
This is actually a good analogy. Driverless cars will be good, but what one company claims as driverless car technology might not ever be good. For example you need complex machine learning algorithms (Well I guess even a naive bayes will do) for facial recognition. But facial recognition cannot be solved by some hardcoded logic like checking the relative sizes of two circles and a cylinder you assumed as eyes and nose. Like this example, it's possible self driving car is far difficult than just adaptive cruise control, or Tesla's radar looking two cars ahead etc. These are minor hardcoded logic and is no guarantee of solving the problem. Plus, a bad pharmaceutical drug only harms the user, a dangerous car on the road is dangerous to people who don't want them.