6 ms·

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 s

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
        I think the idea that self driving cars "may not ever be" safer than human drivers is ludicrous, even fatuous. We set an abysmally low bar for safety. I think that is why the very assertive "Are you saying..." is appropriate.
        Sholmesy 9y ago
        Maybe you're right, progress is inevitable. But humans always overestimate the rate of progress, and think we will be living in some amazing futurescape in the next 10 years.
- burfog 9y ago
  Machines will have slower reaction times. Theoretically it could be otherwise, perhaps, though the human brain has an extremely parallel pattern-matching engine honed by about half a billion years of evolution. Realistically, the self-driving system will be made of layered distinct components that all add latency. This is how we build both hardware and software. An image is sensed, it gets compressed, it gets passed along the CAN bus, it gets queued up, it gets decompressed, it gets queued up again, object detection runs, the result of that gets queued up for the next stage... and before long you're lucky if you haven't burned a whole second of time. Machines can drive aggressively. There was a university that had self-driving cars do parallel parking... by drifting. Driving along, the car would find a parking spot on the other side of the road. It would steer hard to that side, break traction, swing the rear of the vehicle around sideways through a 180-degree turn, and finally skid sideways into the spot. The car did this perfectly. That kind of ability is something that I personally don't have. I would consider a self-driving car that could do this. If I'm paying, and that kind of driving is my preference, I expect to get it.
  - munk-a 9y ago
    I really don't want you to get your wish. We have no need to invest in flashy self-driving car stuntmen, building a car that can get you from A to B safely and in a reasonable time frame is all that we should be aiming for. That sort of drifting parallel park might work most or nearly all of the time, but if the road conditions are poor and the car loses handling then it will be a lot more risky.
  - 282883392 9y ago
    The camera feed going straight to the neural network will not have a lot of latency. The neural net will not take very long to process the image and make a decision. Humans need at best half a second and at worst several seconds to recognize, process, and act. These systems are designed to be fast to responds. They do not have a second of latency.

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
      I think the idea that self driving cars "may not ever be" safer than human drivers is ludicrous, even fatuous. We set an abysmally low bar for safety. I think that is why the very assertive "Are you saying..." is appropriate.
      - Sholmesy 9y ago
        Maybe you're right, progress is inevitable. But humans always overestimate the rate of progress, and think we will be living in some amazing futurescape in the next 10 years.
burfog 9y ago
Machines will have slower reaction times. Theoretically it could be otherwise, perhaps, though the human brain has an extremely parallel pattern-matching engine honed by about half a billion years of evolution. Realistically, the self-driving system will be made of layered distinct components that all add latency. This is how we build both hardware and software. An image is sensed, it gets compressed, it gets passed along the CAN bus, it gets queued up, it gets decompressed, it gets queued up again, object detection runs, the result of that gets queued up for the next stage... and before long you're lucky if you haven't burned a whole second of time. Machines can drive aggressively. There was a university that had self-driving cars do parallel parking... by drifting. Driving along, the car would find a parking spot on the other side of the road. It would steer hard to that side, break traction, swing the rear of the vehicle around sideways through a 180-degree turn, and finally skid sideways into the spot. The car did this perfectly. That kind of ability is something that I personally don't have. I would consider a self-driving car that could do this. If I'm paying, and that kind of driving is my preference, I expect to get it.
- munk-a 9y ago
  I really don't want you to get your wish. We have no need to invest in flashy self-driving car stuntmen, building a car that can get you from A to B safely and in a reasonable time frame is all that we should be aiming for. That sort of drifting parallel park might work most or nearly all of the time, but if the road conditions are poor and the car loses handling then it will be a lot more risky.
- 282883392 9y ago
  The camera feed going straight to the neural network will not have a lot of latency. The neural net will not take very long to process the image and make a decision. Humans need at best half a second and at worst several seconds to recognize, process, and act. These systems are designed to be fast to responds. They do not have a second of latency.