3 ms·

Do better than what? This is a technology news forum, the relevant question is how this affects the technology. People are going to talk about the potential lon

Do better than what? This is a technology news forum, the relevant question is how this affects the technology. People are going to talk about the potential long term trends in self-driving technology. What exactly were you expecting?

emilsedgh 9y ago
I think the relevant question must be how the technology is going to affect lives.
- tree_of_item 9y ago
  Okay, and is that not what is being discussed here? I'm just really confused as to what the OP is complaining about.
  - apeace 9y ago
    I think what bothers me is that the whole story gets dismissed by one idea: that this event doesn't matter, it's only the overall statistics that matter. That this event doesn't necessarily reflect a larger trend is not incorrect--it's just that it's obvious. That self-driving cars could potentially reduce fatalities in the future is not only obvious, it's also somewhat off-topic when the story is that a person just died. So my question is, when a computer kills a person, can't we do better? Better than stating the obvious, and better than being dismissive.
whyleyc 9y ago
"The relevant question is how this affects the technology" Is arguably the whole problem with our industry in a nutshell. The more relevant and largely ignored question should be "how this affects human beings".
- tree_of_item 9y ago
  This just seems like a rhetorical trick to me. Obviously we're talking about humans, it's just through the lens of technology. The website has to be about something in particular besides "aren't humans great??".
  - whyleyc 9y ago
    Actually I think rhetoric matters enormously - how you frame a question affects how you come to think about a situation. If you ask a question "through the lense of technology" ("Can we solve this hard computer-vision problem"?) you arrive at different answers to those you would get if you ask the question through (say) the lense of societal benefits or humanity's relationship to technology ("Is it ok for a badly programmed computer to accidentally kill someone"?). I say this not to criticise the enormous benefit this technology could bring, but rather to provoke us to think about the implications of the technologies that we are creating outside the confines of an IDE.

emilsedgh 9y ago

I think the relevant question must be how the technology is going to affect lives.

tree_of_item 9y ago
Okay, and is that not what is being discussed here? I'm just really confused as to what the OP is complaining about.
- apeace 9y ago
  I think what bothers me is that the whole story gets dismissed by one idea: that this event doesn't matter, it's only the overall statistics that matter. That this event doesn't necessarily reflect a larger trend is not incorrect--it's just that it's obvious. That self-driving cars could potentially reduce fatalities in the future is not only obvious, it's also somewhat off-topic when the story is that a person just died. So my question is, when a computer kills a person, can't we do better? Better than stating the obvious, and better than being dismissive.

whyleyc 9y ago

"The relevant question is how this affects the technology" Is arguably the whole problem with our industry in a nutshell. The more relevant and largely ignored question should be "how this affects human beings".

tree_of_item 9y ago
This just seems like a rhetorical trick to me. Obviously we're talking about humans, it's just through the lens of technology. The website has to be about something in particular besides "aren't humans great??".
- whyleyc 9y ago
  Actually I think rhetoric matters enormously - how you frame a question affects how you come to think about a situation. If you ask a question "through the lense of technology" ("Can we solve this hard computer-vision problem"?) you arrive at different answers to those you would get if you ask the question through (say) the lense of societal benefits or humanity's relationship to technology ("Is it ok for a badly programmed computer to accidentally kill someone"?). I say this not to criticise the enormous benefit this technology could bring, but rather to provoke us to think about the implications of the technologies that we are creating outside the confines of an IDE.