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> This would mean that the car companies won't invest in improving because they have less accidents then some number, maybe they can put some money into lobby s

by Lewton 9y ago

> This would mean that the car companies won't invest in improving because they have less accidents then some number, maybe they can put some money into lobby so that number is the largest number possible obtained with some statistic gymnastics. I really really doubt that! The car manufacturers will fight tooth and nail to be seen as the company providing the safest cars

jetpacktuxedo 9y ago
Them competing to be the safest means that none of them are as safe as they could be working together, though. If every company has their own secret suite of test cases then different companies can specialize in different aspects of safety, and different AIs will be tuned to watch for different conditions. Imagine if instead of that they all worked together to define a rigorous test suite. Then they would all be striving to excel against all of the tests that the best of them could come up with. Wouldn't that result in more rigorous testing than any individual company would do? Especially if the results of all of the tests were public? To go another step further, imagine an open carAI platform that had the aforementioned test suite and a full simulation platform for testing changes, with different car manufacturers represented on a committee that oversees the carAI platform. Separate the smarts from the base car a bit and have some sort of abstraction layer between the smart bits and the car bits. As long as the abstraction layer is configured properly then different AIs would be interchangeable/upgradeable on the same base hardware. All car companies (and tech companies, and interested individuals) could collaborate on building the best, most efficient, safest car AI possible. People on older hardware would get all the same safety improvements as people on newer hardware (though hardware improvements would obviously improve things like sensor quality and quantity and the like), there wouldn't be fragmentation between ai ecosystems with poorer people trapped on older releases with lower safety standards while the rich get the latests and greatest and safest cars, etc. Obviously competition is better than nothing, but is it really better than an open, collaborative alternative?
- greedo 9y ago
  Yes, competition is better than collaboration. Collaboration gets bogged down in committees, with each shareholder trying to protect their turf. Competition leads to improvements as companies try to find an edge/advantage over their competitors.
- simion314 9y ago
  I agree, I also think this self driving component should be standardized, maybe more then one standard but you should be able when you buy the car to decide if you want the AI or not, and if you want it to chose the AI package from company X,Y or Z. Maybe making the component open source would be the best for the citizens.
greedo 9y ago
The market doesn't bear this out with current cars, so why should autonomous cars be any different? Cars are marketed as powerful, sexy, vehicles that imbue with strength to traverse the harshest conditions in the worst weather. Macho vehicles. The only car maker that seems to have a sterling reputation for safety is Volvo, and they're a niche manufacturer.
- Lewton 9y ago
  Cars now are much much safer than cars fifty years ago. There’s clearly some incentive to improve safety
  - greedo 9y ago
    The incentive hasn't been market forces though, but government regulation.
simion314 9y ago
>I really really doubt that! The car manufacturers will fight tooth and nail to be seen as the company providing the safest cars We seen competition not working in many sectors, like ISPs is US, operating systems for desktops or mobile phones... IF the self driving component in the car could be swapped so you can buy say Tesla but get the self driving package from BMW or from Google then that could help competition, but without this if all companies have a similar failure rate then they can concentrate on competing on marketing,horse power, price, efficiency and not adding some extra safety, at least until some important person or a big number or children get killed by a very stupid issue like a car hit a wall because it did not see it because it got confused by some drawings on the wall.
- Lewton 9y ago
  > We seen competition not working in many sectors Agreed! I don't think car manufacturers is one of those sectors. Even if you take into account the periodic scandals (emission test, having to recall cars because they were literally killing people[0], etc) that pop up, cars have gotten massively safer over the past 50 years [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_ignition_switch_recalls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_ignition_switch... ((hey, wait a minute. Doesn't that mean we already have a legal framework for cars killing people?))

by Lewton 9y ago

jetpacktuxedo 9y ago

Them competing to be the safest means that none of them are as safe as they could be working together, though. If every company has their own secret suite of test cases then different companies can specialize in different aspects of safety, and different AIs will be tuned to watch for different conditions. Imagine if instead of that they all worked together to define a rigorous test suite. Then they would all be striving to excel against all of the tests that the best of them could come up with. Wouldn't that result in more rigorous testing than any individual company would do? Especially if the results of all of the tests were public? To go another step further, imagine an open carAI platform that had the aforementioned test suite and a full simulation platform for testing changes, with different car manufacturers represented on a committee that oversees the carAI platform. Separate the smarts from the base car a bit and have some sort of abstraction layer between the smart bits and the car bits. As long as the abstraction layer is configured properly then different AIs would be interchangeable/upgradeable on the same base hardware. All car companies (and tech companies, and interested individuals) could collaborate on building the best, most efficient, safest car AI possible. People on older hardware would get all the same safety improvements as people on newer hardware (though hardware improvements would obviously improve things like sensor quality and quantity and the like), there wouldn't be fragmentation between ai ecosystems with poorer people trapped on older releases with lower safety standards while the rich get the latests and greatest and safest cars, etc. Obviously competition is better than nothing, but is it really better than an open, collaborative alternative?

greedo 9y ago
Yes, competition is better than collaboration. Collaboration gets bogged down in committees, with each shareholder trying to protect their turf. Competition leads to improvements as companies try to find an edge/advantage over their competitors.
simion314 9y ago
I agree, I also think this self driving component should be standardized, maybe more then one standard but you should be able when you buy the car to decide if you want the AI or not, and if you want it to chose the AI package from company X,Y or Z. Maybe making the component open source would be the best for the citizens.

greedo 9y ago

The market doesn't bear this out with current cars, so why should autonomous cars be any different? Cars are marketed as powerful, sexy, vehicles that imbue with strength to traverse the harshest conditions in the worst weather. Macho vehicles. The only car maker that seems to have a sterling reputation for safety is Volvo, and they're a niche manufacturer.

Lewton 9y ago
Cars now are much much safer than cars fifty years ago. There’s clearly some incentive to improve safety
- greedo 9y ago
  The incentive hasn't been market forces though, but government regulation.

simion314 9y ago

>I really really doubt that! The car manufacturers will fight tooth and nail to be seen as the company providing the safest cars We seen competition not working in many sectors, like ISPs is US, operating systems for desktops or mobile phones... IF the self driving component in the car could be swapped so you can buy say Tesla but get the self driving package from BMW or from Google then that could help competition, but without this if all companies have a similar failure rate then they can concentrate on competing on marketing,horse power, price, efficiency and not adding some extra safety, at least until some important person or a big number or children get killed by a very stupid issue like a car hit a wall because it did not see it because it got confused by some drawings on the wall.

Lewton 9y ago
> We seen competition not working in many sectors Agreed! I don't think car manufacturers is one of those sectors. Even if you take into account the periodic scandals (emission test, having to recall cars because they were literally killing people[0], etc) that pop up, cars have gotten massively safer over the past 50 years [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_ignition_switch_recalls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_ignition_switch... ((hey, wait a minute. Doesn't that mean we already have a legal framework for cars killing people?))