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I wonder if that is actually going to happen. Since going to school I'm aware that autonomous systems that "take over responsibility" are an unsolved ethical pr

I wonder if that is actually going to happen. Since going to school I'm aware that autonomous systems that "take over responsibility" are an unsolved ethical problem. Delegating this away to the manufacturer or maybe even the 3rd party who delivered the code doesn't make it better. Adding many layers to responsibility usually s*cks. At least for me it's also why I don't like corporates, it's not only that you have less control over your work - you don't even know who pushes the buttons. As it turns out, in many cases it's nobody concrete. It's some kind of weird group dynamic that is oftentimes in control. In case autonomous cars become common, analysing this kind of complexity will be an awesome kind of busywork.

CraigRood 10y ago
Kind of a silly question but in the case of a "normal" car accident, don't they just come down to compensation costs. Either for repairs and damages, the individual involved or even medical costs. Couldn't the likes of Uber simply underwrite their own insurance and fight their own cases in court where appropriate?. If self-driven Ubers are as safe as we expect all self-driven cars then wouldn't this be a "cheap" option anyway?. I don't know where you would start with more serious accidents, if Uber is at fault.
- blablabla123 10y ago
  If everybody sticked more or less to the rules and if there are no severe injuries/very costly damages, then it's really just compensation costs. I don't know the exact situation in the US (also I'm no lawyer or something), but in Germany when some kind of Negligence is involved people can lose their drivers licence temporarily or forever, may have to pay fines (on top of compensations) or even have to go to jail. (Edit: also a costly Medical-psychological assessment may be needed afterwards to be able to drive again in the future.) Coming back to the costs, it's also interesting to say that insurances usually cover sums 1 - 20 millions. That's how much damage a single person can easily do with a car. It's said that it's a plus that self-driving cars are somehow interconnected and learning from each other. You may argue they are thus one entity and may have to be insured like that. Ok, but that's maybe a bit too esoteric now... ;)
yk 10y ago
I think that a car accident is the wrong example to reason about autonomous cars and their accidents. A better example would be a toaster that starts a fire, in that case the important questions are, was the manufacturer negligent and was the owner negligent. If neither, then the insurance company will just regulate the damages and nobody goes to jail. That is also a model that works well for autonomous cars, probably with some kind of licensing of the car and a mandatory insurance. The thing is, we do not need to deter a autonomous vehicle from speeding or driving under the influence, we can directly program it to respect speed limits and not drink.
- ghaff 10y ago
  >was the manufacturer negligent and was the owner negligent Yes, but in the case of the toaster, it's pretty much the case of some sort of human error on the part of the owner (the cord was damaged, they jammed something in and it got stuck) or it's product liability on the part of the manufacturer. It's an interesting aspect to these sorts of autonomous systems that you can expect to have accidents, even fatal ones, at some rate and that may have to be considered acceptable because "stuff happens" sometimes. There aren't a lot of examples where this is the norm in consumer-facing products. Pharmaceuticals probably come closest.
- blablabla123 10y ago
  The main thing is the "risk", which in insurance speak means something like probability times costs of bad things happening. For a toaster this is less than 1 cent per year. For a human-driven car that's 1000 $ a year. To be more concrete: the probability that a car owner gets involved in an accident at some point is actually really high. I've already been involved in 2 car accidents, not driving myself though, one of them was very serious. On the other hand I've never heard of someone having a toaster catching fire. And even if it would catch fire, you are probably watching the toaster and can put it out easily - maybe even by throwing the toaster out of the window.

CraigRood 10y ago

Kind of a silly question but in the case of a "normal" car accident, don't they just come down to compensation costs. Either for repairs and damages, the individual involved or even medical costs. Couldn't the likes of Uber simply underwrite their own insurance and fight their own cases in court where appropriate?. If self-driven Ubers are as safe as we expect all self-driven cars then wouldn't this be a "cheap" option anyway?. I don't know where you would start with more serious accidents, if Uber is at fault.

blablabla123 10y ago
If everybody sticked more or less to the rules and if there are no severe injuries/very costly damages, then it's really just compensation costs. I don't know the exact situation in the US (also I'm no lawyer or something), but in Germany when some kind of Negligence is involved people can lose their drivers licence temporarily or forever, may have to pay fines (on top of compensations) or even have to go to jail. (Edit: also a costly Medical-psychological assessment may be needed afterwards to be able to drive again in the future.) Coming back to the costs, it's also interesting to say that insurances usually cover sums 1 - 20 millions. That's how much damage a single person can easily do with a car. It's said that it's a plus that self-driving cars are somehow interconnected and learning from each other. You may argue they are thus one entity and may have to be insured like that. Ok, but that's maybe a bit too esoteric now... ;)

yk 10y ago

I think that a car accident is the wrong example to reason about autonomous cars and their accidents. A better example would be a toaster that starts a fire, in that case the important questions are, was the manufacturer negligent and was the owner negligent. If neither, then the insurance company will just regulate the damages and nobody goes to jail. That is also a model that works well for autonomous cars, probably with some kind of licensing of the car and a mandatory insurance. The thing is, we do not need to deter a autonomous vehicle from speeding or driving under the influence, we can directly program it to respect speed limits and not drink.

ghaff 10y ago
>was the manufacturer negligent and was the owner negligent Yes, but in the case of the toaster, it's pretty much the case of some sort of human error on the part of the owner (the cord was damaged, they jammed something in and it got stuck) or it's product liability on the part of the manufacturer. It's an interesting aspect to these sorts of autonomous systems that you can expect to have accidents, even fatal ones, at some rate and that may have to be considered acceptable because "stuff happens" sometimes. There aren't a lot of examples where this is the norm in consumer-facing products. Pharmaceuticals probably come closest.
blablabla123 10y ago
The main thing is the "risk", which in insurance speak means something like probability times costs of bad things happening. For a toaster this is less than 1 cent per year. For a human-driven car that's 1000 $ a year. To be more concrete: the probability that a car owner gets involved in an accident at some point is actually really high. I've already been involved in 2 car accidents, not driving myself though, one of them was very serious. On the other hand I've never heard of someone having a toaster catching fire. And even if it would catch fire, you are probably watching the toaster and can put it out easily - maybe even by throwing the toaster out of the window.