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FTA: "The Uber vehicle was reportedly driving early Monday when a woman walking outside of the crosswalk was struck. ... Tempe Police says the vehicle was in

• m3kw9 9y ago
  They will have video for sure if since they are testing, then we will see. Your statement about reaction time is assuming so many things, may as well declare the AI guilty now right?
  • jakeogh 9y ago
    It's not "intelligent", it's a dumb computer that is programmed by humans. The people responsible for putting it on the road must be liable.
    • jobigoud 9y ago
      It's not intelligent but it's also not programmed by humans in the sense that someone painstakingly put explicit logic for the possible cases.
      • jakeogh 9y ago
        It's programmed by humans. Get over it. It's not intelligent, it's not "learning" it's following instructions, saving data, and iterating. Your comment is obvious to the point of meaninglessness. This tendency to buzzword out of obvious truths (NN's are programs for example) derails rational discussion.
        • dang 9y ago
          This comment breaks the HN guidelines by being uncivil as well as by calling names in the sense described here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Doing these things derails discussion much faster than an obvious comment, so would you please (re-)read the rules and abide by the spirit of this site when posting here?
          • jakeogh 9y ago
            Thanks, I appreciate the check. Sorry about that jobigoud.
      • vokep 9y ago
        nope, its trained as a neural network. Nobody ever sits down and programs in 'how to handle an intersection with a bike lane' other than putting that sort of driving experience into its training data. It may have modules designed for general scenarios (i.e. one module is great at freeway driving, another is great at intersections etc) but still trained by experience.
      • catnaroek 9y ago
        It is programmed by humans. Machine learning algorithms are designed and implemented by humans. If machine learning algorithms do not perform well in a way that puts human lives at risk, the humans who designed and implemented them are responsible.
  • dragonwriter 9y ago
    > may as well declare the AI guilty now right? AI (short of AGI) is never guilty; it's creators and operators, OTOH...
• giarc 9y ago
  I imagine these vehicles (especially test vehicles) are also recording regular video and therefore getting a clear picture of what happened should be straight forward.
  • joosters 9y ago
    This is Uber, who designed systems for remotely wiping entire offices when they thought that the data might be called for by the authorities. Perhaps there will be unexpected 'issues' meaning that such data will have been lost in this case.
    • Erlangolem 9y ago
      That kind of thing might fly in some arenas, but judges have literally no sense of humor when evidence is “lost” in a criminal case, or civil wrongful death suit. That’s more or less a quick way to lose in the worst possible way.
      • sangnoir 9y ago
        Judge - you don't understand - the office that's responsible for this remote deletio^w securing of data is in another jurisdiction (Canada!). So Uber USA is absolved[1]. 1. Uber really had a tool that did this IRL: https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/11/16878284/uber-secret-tool-block-data-law-enforcement-ripley https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/11/16878284/uber-secret-tool...
        • Erlangolem 9y ago
          As I said, context matters. In the context of a death, this kind of thing is doom. When someone is killed, there is also a lot of cooperation across jurisdictions.
    • traek 9y ago
      I can guarantee you (at least one) other major tech companies have the same system in place. Companies that operate in multiple jurisdictions don’t want all of their assets compromised because of a raid in one city/state/country. E.g. Brazil was at odds with WhatsApp over their message encryption — Brazil wanted WhatsApp to stop encrypting messages so that it would be possible to subpoena chat logs. If Brazilian police raided a hypothetical WhatsApp Brazil office, would it not be prudent for Facebook to cut off data access from that office? Especially given that the nature of technology means that once police have an employee’s laptop and can compel them to enter their password, they have access to essentially all of the company’s data worldwide.
• jonlucc 9y ago
  I agree completely. One thing that is important to me is that the whole self-driving field will learn from every mistake. In other words, every self-driving car should only make the same mistake once, whereas with humans, each human has to learn only from their own mistakes.
  • babesh 9y ago
    That isn't correct. Culture is learning from other people's mistakes. The only question is whether the human can and is willing to accept the lessons (and whether the lessons are correct).
    • gt_ 9y ago
      Culture is comprised of many things, and some similar things, but not that. By definition, culture is merely a collective persistence, and therefor inherently superficial. Culture cannot capacitate “learning” or even lessons. Culture is limited to memetic abstractions, with a lot of alleged noise. Insofar as culture supports persistence of worthwhile norms, it would be limited to evolutionary adaptation (survival of the fittest). It’s important to distinguish to avoid the fallacy of argumentum ad populum.
  • guelo 9y ago
    Uber's algorithms might learn from this. None of the other self driving car companies will.
    • dawnerd 9y ago
      That’s where the ntsb steps in and regulations created.
      • guelo 9y ago
        I'm having a hard time imagining that kind of regulation of ML algorithms.
        • 9y ago
• aetherson 9y ago
  I have seen no evidence that any autonomous vehicle currently deployed can react faster than an alert and aware human. The commentariat tends to imagine that they can, and it's certainly plausible that they may eventually be. But I've never seen anyone official claim it, and the cars certainly don't drive as though they can quickly understand and respond to situations.
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  • jessriedel 9y ago
    > I have seen no evidence that any autonomous vehicle currently deployed can react faster than an alert and aware human. The argument I've always heard is that an autonomous systems will outperform humans mostly by being more vigilant (not getting distracted, sleepy, etc.) rather than using detectors with superhuman reaction times. Obviously, whether or not this outweighs the frequency of situations where the autonomous system gets confused when a human would not is an empirical question that will change as the tech improves.
    • aetherson 9y ago
      Lots of people imagine both: that the system will never be distracted and also that it will have superhuman reaction time. And, like, once the systems are mature and hardware has evolved and so forth, I think that's right. It will. It might today under certain circumstances, like if it gets a really unambiguous sensor input (or it might not). But I've never heard anyone actually associated with a driverless car program assert that their vehicles have superhuman reaction times today, and the vehicles drive extremely cautiously. I think it's likely that due to their difficulty in understanding their sensor readings, if you look at total time necessary to make a course correction from the point when an obstruction first could be noticed by an alert human driver, driverless cars are not winning and may be substantially losing in at least some cases.
  • wongarsu 9y ago
    "Alert and aware human" is already a high standard, given how most humans drive in routine mode, which is well understood to be much worse than "alert and aware". From what I've seen I wouldn't trust autonomous cars to "understand" all situations. I would trust Waymo cars to understand enough to avoid hitting anything (at a level better than a human), at the risk of being rear-ended more often. Everything I've seen from Tesla and Uber has given me significantly less confidence than that.
• kerkeslager 9y ago
  > That's a very bad look; the whole point of self-driving cars is that they can react to unexpected circumstances much more quickly than a human operator, such as someone walking out into the road. Sounds like Uber's platform may not be up to that standard yet, which makes me wonder why they're on public roads. That's an invalid conclusion to draw from this accident. There were 34,439 fatal motor vehicle crashes in the United States in 2016 in which 37,461 deaths occurred. This resulted in 11.6 deaths per 100,000 people and 1.16 deaths per 100 million miles traveled.[1] As far as I know, the instance this article is about is the first death in an autonomous vehicle accident, meaning that all the 2016 accidents were humans driving. Why is it that you see one death from an autonomous car and conclude that autonomous cars aren't ready to be driving, but you see 37,461 deaths from human drivers and don't conclude that humans aren't ready to be driving? I admit that there just aren't enough autonomous cars on the road to prove conclusively that autonomous cars are safer than human-operated cars at this point. But there's absolutely no statistical evidence I know of that indicates the opposite. [1] http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general-statistics/fatalityfacts/state-by-state-overview http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general-statistics/fatalit... EDIT: Let's be clear here: I'm not saying autonomous cars are safer than human drivers. I'm saying that one can't simply look at one death caused by an autonomous car and conclude that autonomous cars are less safe.
  • cryptoz 9y ago
    > don't conclude that humans aren't ready to be driving? I'm not sure I see anyone here making that conclusion. I think you're the only one who's brought it up. For one, I personally sure as fuck do not think humans are ready to be driving. > That's an invalid conclusion to draw from this accident. The conclusion was not invalid at all. Other self-driving car companies have driven more miles than Uber has and they have done so safely. Uber has even taken its cars off the road, so even Uber agrees that their self-driving cars are not ready for the roads yet. It is also important to take into account what Uber is like when it comes to safety and responsibility. They have knowingly hired convicted rapists for drivers, they have ridiculed and mocked and attempted to discredit their paying customers who have been raped by their employees/drivers, they have spied on journalists, they have completely disregarded human safety on numerous accounts. A company with a track record like Uber's probably not should be granted a license to experiment with technology like these self-driving cars on public roads. They just aren't responsible enough.
• randyrand 9y ago
  Not bad even a self driving car can stop in time for deer jumping out from behind tree/bush cover. People still need to look both ways when coming out from behind cars. I want more details.
  • notheguyouthink 9y ago
    That's a really good point that many (myself included) aren't mentioning. Stopping distance is a universal, reaction times be damned. Would be curious to see if that played a part.
    • kardos 9y ago
      Perhaps (self driving) cars can be redesigned to mitigate the outcome of pedestrian collisions, eg, like cowcatchers on trains [1], except something more appropriate for the situation. External airbags? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilot_(locomotive) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilot_(locomotive)
    • c22 9y ago
      Sometimes the best reaction in this situation is not to stop, but to swerve around the obstacle, perhaps even accelerating slightly to do so quickly. Deer can be pretty unpredictable here, but most on foot humans will not put themselves into the new path of your vehicle.
• jdietrich 9y ago
  > That's a very bad look; the whole point of self-driving cars is that they can react to unexpected circumstances much more quickly than a human operator, such as when someone walks out into the road. Some of these accidents are unpreventable by the (autonomous) driver. If a pedestrian suddenly rushes out into the street or a cyclist swerves into your path, the deciding factor is often simply the coefficient of friction between your tyres and the road. The autonomous vehicle and the human attendant might have made a glaring error, or they might have done everything correctly and still failed to prevent a fatality. It's far too early to say. It's undoubtedly a dent to the public image of autonomous vehicles, but hopefully the car's telemetry data will reveal whether this was a case of error, negligence or unavoidable tragedy.
  • Twisell 9y ago
    Yet this tragic accident will now set a precedent and finally start to scratch the delicate unspoken question: Who is responsible now?
    • pishpash 9y ago
      Obviously Uber in this case, but as mentioned in response to a separate article, AI's must be like pets or children and have a liable guardian.
      • birdmanjeremy 9y ago
        Not obviously. Let's wait to judge until we have the facts. The pedestrian was outside of the crosswalk. There's not a whole lot of information about the events that lead up to the accident. It is possible that a pedestrian is at fault if they stepped in the way of moving traffic outside of a crosswalk. It's also possible Uber's cars are not up to the task of driving on public roadways.
        • bluetwo 9y ago
          The penalty for walking outside a crosswalk is not death.
• pishpash 9y ago
  The first martyr of the AI age, I suppose.
• olympus 9y ago
  Could a human have reacted fast enough to stop for someone jumping out in front of them? If the person jumped out so fast that nobody could have possibly reacted in time, then it's not a stain on the technology- even with an instantaneous application of brakes, a car still takes a while to come to a stop. If the human jumped out ten seconds earlier and was waving her hands for help, then it's an issue. "the whole point of self-driving cars is that they can react to unexpected circumstances much more quickly than a human" This statement isn't really true. Do you think Uber is investing in this because it makes their passengers safer? No, they are pretty much immune to any car crashes with a human driver, the risk and insurance hit is assumed by the driver. They are doing this to save money. They don't have to pay a driver for each trip. The safety aspect is just a perk, but Uber will be pushing this full force as long as the self-driving cars are good enough. I'm more concerned that Uber will "lose" the video evidence showing what kind of situation it was, and we'll never be able to know if a human would have had ample time to react.
  • pm24601 9y ago
    The bicyclist did not "suddenly" jump out in front. The Uber car did not sense the bicyclist.
    • olympus 9y ago
      Video says bicyclist, written article says pedestrian. Video says they don't know if a person was behind the wheel, written article says there was a person behind the wheel. There's enough discrepancy here that I'm not sure what happened until we see the onboard data (unlikely to be released to the public) or a statement from a trusted public official like the Tempe police chief.
      • yohui 9y ago
        Police have clarified that the victim was walking her bike across the street: https://twitter.com/AngieKoehle/status/975824484409077760 https://twitter.com/AngieKoehle/status/975824484409077760
  • 9y ago
• ingsoc79 9y ago
  The main problem with self-driving cars is that they can't "read" humans' body language. A human driver can see pedestrians and cyclists (and other cars) and have a rough idea of what they're likely to do in the next few seconds, i.e. the pedestrian leaning out on the crosswalk curb is likely to step into the road soon. Even a reaction time of milliseconds can't make up for the (currently exclusive) human ability to read other humans and prepare accordingly.
  • sinatra 9y ago
    With sufficient data, I'd expect self-driving cars to be better at predicting what such leans mean. Moreover, for every one human driver who notices such a lean, there may be another human driver that doesn't even notice a pedestrian who has already started walking.
    • dogecoinbase 9y ago
      For someone so confident in the application of data, you sure just made up some data to support your point.
      • 0xfeba 9y ago
        True, but commuting daily for the past 30 years sure seems to validate it.
      • sinatra 9y ago
        This comment seems unnecessarily hostile. But, still, I'll change my previous comment from "there is" to "there may be" so that it's clear that I'm not claiming any data. Just guessing (reasonably, based on experience).
  • jupp0r 9y ago
    Are you sure that supervised learning does not create the same classification capabilities in self driving car AIs?
    • 9y ago
• methehack 9y ago
  Here's a times article you reminded me of that mentions Saab engineers putting on crash helmets and running the 9-5 into a concrete moose. http://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/05/automobiles/behind-the-wheel-1999-saab-9-5-flagship-s-new-thrust-hot-turbo-cool-seats.html http://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/05/automobiles/behind-the-whe...
• ohazi 9y ago
  > Sounds like Uber's platform may not be up to that standard yet, which makes me wonder why they're on public roads. Who exactly do you think is granting Google, Uber, etc. approval for trials like this on public roads? It's going to be some bureocrat with zero ability to gauge what sort of safety standard these companies' projects have reached. There are no standards here... what were you expecting would happen?
• duxup 9y ago
  It's an interesting dynamic. We want this tech to be much better than us terrible humans before we deploy it and anything like us terrible humans is not acceptable.
• adamsea 9y ago
  I'd also add the goal of self-driving cars is to decrease costs for ride-sharing, home-delivery companies, etc, and also to decrease congestion via coordination amongst autonomous vehicles.
• ForHackernews 9y ago
  > Sounds like Uber's platform may not be up to that standard yet, which makes me wonder why they're on public roads. Uber cutting corners and playing fast and loose with legislation? Unheard of! Here's hoping they get hit with a massive, massive wrongful death lawsuit.
• YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
  >> Sounds like Uber's platform may not be up to that standard yet, which makes me wonder why they're on public roads. They're on public roads because they've decided that deploying their tech is more important than safety. I don't see any other explanation. We know that it's pretty much impossible to prove the safety of autonomous vehicles by driving them, so Uber (and almost everyone else) have decided that, well, they don't care. They'll deploy them anyway. How do we know that? The report by RAND corporation: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1478.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1478.html Key Findings * Autonomous vehicles would have to be driven hundreds of millions of miles and sometimes hundreds of billions of miles to demonstrate their reliability in terms of fatalities and injuries. * Under even aggressive testing assumptions, existing fleets would take tens and sometimes hundreds of years to drive these miles — an impossible proposition if the aim is to demonstrate their performance prior to releasing them on the roads for consumer use. * Therefore, at least for fatalities and injuries, test- driving alone cannot provide sufficient evidence for demonstrating autonomous vehicle safety.
  • dpark 9y ago
    That report ends by saying essentially, "it may not be possible to prove the safety of self-driving cars". [1] So the value here is questionable and the same logic could apply to anything with a low frequency of occurrence. The value of air bags by this measure was not proven until they were already mandated. [1] "even with these methods, it may not be possible to establish the safety of autonomous vehicles prior to making them available for public use"
    • YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
      The difference, of course, is that an airbag can't take control of a car and run someone over. More to the point, the report notes that new methods to determine the safety of self-driving cars are required. Which the industry is not exactly falling head over heels trying to develop.
      • dpark 9y ago
• dragonwriter 9y ago
  > That's a very bad look; the whole point of self-driving cars is that they can react to unexpected circumstances much more quickly than a human operator, such as when someone walks out into the road. No, the whole point of self-driving vehicles is that firms operating them can pay the cheaper capital and maintenance costs of the self-driving system rather than the labor cost of a driver.