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If you hold developers responsible, you can kiss self driving cars goodbye. What should be passed (but I can't see how) is a percentage of allowed deaths, at l

If you hold developers responsible, you can kiss self driving cars goodbye. What should be passed (but I can't see how) is a percentage of allowed deaths, at least in the early years, and set it to something like 5-10% of the current rate, reducing downwards to 1% after 20 years. People will die from self driving cars, and undoubtably their will eventually be a case that is 100% the self driving car's fault. The benefit of self driving cars comes from the mistake being permanently fixed, while with human drivers it can be committed over and over again. There needs to be some kind of protection on the companies (and obviously the developers, I've never heard someone try to say they should be held responsible before) from lawsuits. Otherwise all it'll take a is a small handful beefore companies will just let it die.

jonathanyc 9y ago
An act doesn’t become okay because two people (the executive and developer) and a robot are now responsible instead of one. What is your justification for the sort of utilitarian calculation you’ve made here? Why do you assume self-driving cars will be safer without any evidence? If we are going to be arguing from a utilitarian standpoint, suppose we hold the executives of self-driving car companies as responsible as if they were themselves drivers. Then if self-driving cars truly are safer as you optimistically claim, both fewer people will die from accidents involving them and fewer people will go to jail for those same accidents. Seems like a win to me.
- ApolloFortyNine 9y ago
  It's quite obvious that self-driving cars will at the very least eventually be safer than human beings. There's plenty of things humans do that a machine simply can't do for starters (drink, lose focus, drive aggressively). Add in that a machine can react instantaneously in a defined manner (versus panicking, or just not reacting fast enough), this becomes such a stupid argument it's really just not worth anyones time to entertain.
  - jonathanyc 9y ago
    Why is it at all quite obvious? How is arguing for being careful “such a stupid argument it’s really just not worth anyone’s time to entertain”? Someone in this discussion has an insane amount of blind faith in technology which here literally killed a pedestrian, and it’s not the people who are arguing for just consequences.
    - ApolloFortyNine 9y ago
      Are you arguing that a machine does not have better reaction times than a human being? Are you arguing that a machine can fall asleep, drink and drive, panic in a high stress situation? Aren't you the same person who called for holding the developer liable for writing software with a bug? Are you accusing the developer of promising something that is impossible (not hitting a pedestrian in a crosswalk?) or simply implementing it wrong? It's worth pointing out that we have no idea yet who is at fault in this accident. It could easily be someone who simply walked out in front of traffic when they weren't paying attention.
      - Erlangolem 9y ago
        The answer to your first “question” of course is that it depends on the machine, how it’s built, programmed, and the context of operation. Machines can have much faster reflexes, or they can freeze.
      - Sholmesy 9y ago
        "Are you saying X" is a pretty aggressive way to frame your argument. The above poster seems pretty clear that it is NOT obvious that cars will necessarily drive safer than humans on average, in the same way it is NOT obvious that we will ever have General Artificial Intelligence. These are very complicated problems, and the machines are currently (significantly) worse than human drivers, so I think it's fair to question the argument that "everything will work out eventually"
        rout39574 9y ago
JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> If you hold developers responsible, you can kiss self driving cars goodbye Civil engineering and medical device manufacturing seems to be doing fine, despite having similar principles of engineers' liability.
- chimeracoder 9y ago
  > Civil engineering and medical device manufacturing seems to be doing fine, despite having similar principles of engineers' liability. The idea that software engineers should be held responsible for something that (as far as we can tell so far) was an accident and not the result of negligence or malice is several orders of magnitude beyond the level of liability that civil engineers and medical device manufacturers have.
  - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
    > that software engineers should be held responsible for something that (as far as we can tell so far) was an accident and not the result of negligence or malice Nobody said that. The original comment said developers should be held "accountable for a crime that if committed directly by a person would almost certainly result in jail time" [1]. The standards from medical devices and/or civil engineering, with the associated licensing requirements and verification processes, make sense. Even in the case of a careless mistake or strategic oversight, individuals who could have known but nevertheless signed off should be identified, if not explicitly punished. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jonathanyc https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jonathanyc
    - chimeracoder 9y ago
      > > that software engineers should be held responsible for something that (as far as we can tell so far) was an accident and not the result of negligence or malice > Nobody said that. Well, they quite literally did, because the original comment in this thread was: > We need to discuss how the developers self-driving cars will be held accountable for the crimes they commit. There is no reason the person who programs or the person who makes money from a self-driving car should be held less accountable for a crime that if committed directly by a person would almost certainly result in jail time. You can’t replace yourself with a computer program and then choose to take only the benefits and not the responsibilities. I guess you can quibble about the difference between "accountable" and "liable", but that's not a discussion that's particularly interesting to have here, especially given OP's other comments in this thread which make it quite clear that this is what they had in mind.
kartan 9y ago
> What should be passed (but I can't see how) is a percentage of allowed deaths, at least in the early years, and set it to something like 5-10% of the current rate, reducing downwards to 1% after 20 years. Whith so few self driving cars that number sold be zero. If you can't assure safety with a few cars whith a human as backup, you should not be in the streets. And it's not the first dangerous accident of an Uber self driving car where Uber was at fault.

jonathanyc 9y ago

An act doesn’t become okay because two people (the executive and developer) and a robot are now responsible instead of one. What is your justification for the sort of utilitarian calculation you’ve made here? Why do you assume self-driving cars will be safer without any evidence? If we are going to be arguing from a utilitarian standpoint, suppose we hold the executives of self-driving car companies as responsible as if they were themselves drivers. Then if self-driving cars truly are safer as you optimistically claim, both fewer people will die from accidents involving them and fewer people will go to jail for those same accidents. Seems like a win to me.

ApolloFortyNine 9y ago
It's quite obvious that self-driving cars will at the very least eventually be safer than human beings. There's plenty of things humans do that a machine simply can't do for starters (drink, lose focus, drive aggressively). Add in that a machine can react instantaneously in a defined manner (versus panicking, or just not reacting fast enough), this becomes such a stupid argument it's really just not worth anyones time to entertain.
- jonathanyc 9y ago
  Why is it at all quite obvious? How is arguing for being careful “such a stupid argument it’s really just not worth anyone’s time to entertain”? Someone in this discussion has an insane amount of blind faith in technology which here literally killed a pedestrian, and it’s not the people who are arguing for just consequences.
  - ApolloFortyNine 9y ago
    Are you arguing that a machine does not have better reaction times than a human being? Are you arguing that a machine can fall asleep, drink and drive, panic in a high stress situation? Aren't you the same person who called for holding the developer liable for writing software with a bug? Are you accusing the developer of promising something that is impossible (not hitting a pedestrian in a crosswalk?) or simply implementing it wrong? It's worth pointing out that we have no idea yet who is at fault in this accident. It could easily be someone who simply walked out in front of traffic when they weren't paying attention.
    - Erlangolem 9y ago
      The answer to your first “question” of course is that it depends on the machine, how it’s built, programmed, and the context of operation. Machines can have much faster reflexes, or they can freeze.
    - Sholmesy 9y ago
      "Are you saying X" is a pretty aggressive way to frame your argument. The above poster seems pretty clear that it is NOT obvious that cars will necessarily drive safer than humans on average, in the same way it is NOT obvious that we will ever have General Artificial Intelligence. These are very complicated problems, and the machines are currently (significantly) worse than human drivers, so I think it's fair to question the argument that "everything will work out eventually"
      - rout39574 9y ago

JumpCrisscross 9y ago

> If you hold developers responsible, you can kiss self driving cars goodbye Civil engineering and medical device manufacturing seems to be doing fine, despite having similar principles of engineers' liability.

chimeracoder 9y ago
> Civil engineering and medical device manufacturing seems to be doing fine, despite having similar principles of engineers' liability. The idea that software engineers should be held responsible for something that (as far as we can tell so far) was an accident and not the result of negligence or malice is several orders of magnitude beyond the level of liability that civil engineers and medical device manufacturers have.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > that software engineers should be held responsible for something that (as far as we can tell so far) was an accident and not the result of negligence or malice Nobody said that. The original comment said developers should be held "accountable for a crime that if committed directly by a person would almost certainly result in jail time" [1]. The standards from medical devices and/or civil engineering, with the associated licensing requirements and verification processes, make sense. Even in the case of a careless mistake or strategic oversight, individuals who could have known but nevertheless signed off should be identified, if not explicitly punished. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jonathanyc https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jonathanyc
  - chimeracoder 9y ago
    > > that software engineers should be held responsible for something that (as far as we can tell so far) was an accident and not the result of negligence or malice > Nobody said that. Well, they quite literally did, because the original comment in this thread was: > We need to discuss how the developers self-driving cars will be held accountable for the crimes they commit. There is no reason the person who programs or the person who makes money from a self-driving car should be held less accountable for a crime that if committed directly by a person would almost certainly result in jail time. You can’t replace yourself with a computer program and then choose to take only the benefits and not the responsibilities. I guess you can quibble about the difference between "accountable" and "liable", but that's not a discussion that's particularly interesting to have here, especially given OP's other comments in this thread which make it quite clear that this is what they had in mind.

kartan 9y ago

> What should be passed (but I can't see how) is a percentage of allowed deaths, at least in the early years, and set it to something like 5-10% of the current rate, reducing downwards to 1% after 20 years. Whith so few self driving cars that number sold be zero. If you can't assure safety with a few cars whith a human as backup, you should not be in the streets. And it's not the first dangerous accident of an Uber self driving car where Uber was at fault.