8 ms·

> Why can a private for profit company "test" their systems on the public roads? The public is at serious risk of getting run over by hacked and buggy guidance

> Why can a private for profit company "test" their systems on the public roads? The public is at serious risk of getting run over by hacked and buggy guidance / decision system. Interesting way of putting it. Kinda echos the "privatize the profits, socialize the losses" sentiment from the financial crisis.

bduerst 9y ago
Theoretically the reputation cost would discourage for-profit organizations from releasing unsafe self-driving vehicles for testing on public roads. The ironic part here is that Uber already has a strong reputation for skirting the law and not caring. Their response and the following audits will be worth following.
- owly 9y ago
  What if you already have a sh*t reputation like UBER?
- LethargicStud 9y ago
  > Theoretically the reputation cost would discourage for-profit organizations from releasing unsafe self-driving vehicles for testing on public roads. This assumes that the reputation costs are comparable in weight to the acts that they commit. Based on the past year and what I hear about Uber's growth[0], I'd argue that their reputation and their valuation are quite uncorrelated, but it's hard to know the truth. 0: https://www.forbes.com/sites/miguelhelft/2017/08/23/despite-massive-turmoil-ubers-growth-remains-strong/#15a98fa3c764 https://www.forbes.com/sites/miguelhelft/2017/08/23/despite-...
  - scotty79 9y ago
    > This assumes that the reputation costs are comparable in weight to the acts that they commit. Rather this assumes reputation costs times risk of having those costs while undertaking some action is comparable to gain from this action.
    - hndamien 9y ago
      The problem for Uber is that if they lose this race, then there is no Uber. The outcome of this is that they will be willing to risk a lot in order to succeed. This seems to be collateral damage for them. Completely unsurprising as it seems they lied about running the red light in autonomous mode and the ran their program without proper licensing (and reporting). Nobody should be surprised that Uber was the first company to rack up an autonomous driving death.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- zeth___ 9y ago
  >Theoretically the reputation cost would discourage for-profit organizations from releasing unsafe self-driving vehicles for testing on public roads. And theoretically the only people who can regulate banks are the banks themselves. Funny how you hear that argument every time a horrible industry is trying to keep profits high by eternalizing costs: meat packers in 1900, tobacco in 1950, oil and gas till today.
- ant6n 9y ago
  > Theoretically the reputation cost would discourage for-profit organizations from releasing unsafe (...) I wonder whether food companies (like the meat packing industry in Chicago) said the same thing before the FDA was created in 1906; i.e. that reputation will just regulate the industry to not sell mislabeled products, or spoiled or adulaterated food.
- squiggleblaz 9y ago
  I doubt it. If you exclusively kill people outside the vehicle who are walking or riding bikes, you encourage people who don't have a car to hire the vehicle. The only possible costs would be if they're made to pay a price in a court of law, which seems unlikely since the woman who was killed had a bike with her, and it's unknown if she was on the bike at the time, but she's been described as a pedestrian outside of a crosswalk. Clearly Arizona authorities just don't care about safety.
treis 9y ago
Self driving cars could potentially save tens of thousands of lives a year not to mention all of the other social benefits and quality of life improvements. No doubt whoever gets it working first will make a ton of money, but society will see a massive benefit as well.
- _RPM 9y ago
  Based on what? Where does your conjecture hold evidence that “society will see a massive benefit”?
  - rileymat2 9y ago
    I presume saving tens of thousands of lives is a benefit to society?
    - kpil 9y ago
      It's a bit of a wishful thinking now is it? We don't really know if there will be any safety benefits at all, and while I believe we might get to that point, it's a bit farther away than some tech-giants would like us to believe. If you listen closely to who say what, you'll notice that a lot of entrepreneurs claim that we will have full AI within a couple of years, while a lot of boring engineers huff and puff and are generally pessimistic. I'm sure the there are great savings involved in self-driving transport - especially long-haul , so it will happen sooner than later, but this will initially mean more death - not less.
      - treis 9y ago
        I'm not sure how wishful thinking it is. AFAIK no self driving car has been at fault in an accident. They have always been caused by a human driver and, at worst, the self driving car failed to avoid the collision. For better or worse, I don't think a self driving car will be commercially successful until it shows it is at least as safe as a human driver. More likely it will have to demonstrate that it is significantly safer. It might be the case that whichever company first launches doesn't correctly gauge the safety of their car, but I definitely think the goal is to be safer from day one.
abalone 9y ago
Really it's "socialize the costs" as well, considering that autonomous vehicle development was funded by taxpayers.[1] Like most high tech. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge
- jessriedel 9y ago
  The public spent a few million dollars on the Grand Challenge, while Waymo alone is worth 10's of billions of dollars. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/23/alphabets-self-driving-waymo-unit-could-be-worth-70-billion-more-than-gm-morgan-stanley-says.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/23/alphabets-self-driving-waymo... Self-driving car companies will have massive net positive externalities on the public, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars per year when fully deployed.
  - zeth___ 9y ago
    Not if they are gasoline cars, particulate pollution alone kills tens of thousands. An electric rail network on the other hand would have real positive externalities, but isn't as easily privitazable so won't be built.
    - ant6n 9y ago
      Even electric cars aren't pollution free, and there are still other negative externalities (like health costs associated with car-centric life styles).
    - nradov 9y ago
      The latest EPA Tier 3 gasoline vehicles have extremely low particulate emissions. If we're talking about building new vehicles anyway then your fatality estimate is way too high.
  - nradov 9y ago
    You have no reliable basis for quantifying the net positive impact. The technology looks promising but at this point we don't even know whether it can be made to work reliably outside of a few limited areas.
jessriedel 9y ago
We already have a system for privatizing negative externalities in traffic accidents (and in 95% of the rest of life). It's called tort law, and it will certainly be used in this case if Uber was at fault. There are of course situations were externalities fail to be privatized (e.g., traffic congestion), but I don't think auto accidents is one of them.
- drb91 9y ago
  Manslaughter doesn’t fall under tort law, IIRC.
  - Tloewald 9y ago
    Tort law covers death. Manslaughter is a criminal charge but wrongful death, etc. are how tort law handles the situation. You may recall O.J. Simpson was sued for wrongful death and lost. http://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/11/us/jury-decides-simpson-must-pay-25-million-in-punitive-award.html http://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/11/us/jury-decides-simpson-mu...
    - drb91 9y ago
      Wouldn't one typically press both charges? Wrongful death to allow the family to be compensated, corporate manslaughter to punish the company and incentivize not killing people tomorrow. It doesn't seem like it's necessary to choose the non-criminal case. To state the obvious, I am not a lawyer.
      - azernik 9y ago
        Civil suits are intended to serve both purposes - compensation and deterrent (punitive vs compensatory damages). E.g. if you sue a company for doing you damage, the compensatory damages are based only on the injury you suffered, but punitive damages' presence and severity is affected by things like the level of negligence of the company. The theoretical difference with criminal charges is that criminal charges deal with harms to the difference sovereign (ie the state and the public) that need to be punished regardless of the wishes of the immediate victim. e.g. you're not allowed to settle a murder charge out of court.

bduerst 9y ago

Theoretically the reputation cost would discourage for-profit organizations from releasing unsafe self-driving vehicles for testing on public roads. The ironic part here is that Uber already has a strong reputation for skirting the law and not caring. Their response and the following audits will be worth following.

owly 9y ago
What if you already have a sh*t reputation like UBER?
LethargicStud 9y ago
> Theoretically the reputation cost would discourage for-profit organizations from releasing unsafe self-driving vehicles for testing on public roads. This assumes that the reputation costs are comparable in weight to the acts that they commit. Based on the past year and what I hear about Uber's growth[0], I'd argue that their reputation and their valuation are quite uncorrelated, but it's hard to know the truth. 0: https://www.forbes.com/sites/miguelhelft/2017/08/23/despite-massive-turmoil-ubers-growth-remains-strong/#15a98fa3c764 https://www.forbes.com/sites/miguelhelft/2017/08/23/despite-...
- scotty79 9y ago
  > This assumes that the reputation costs are comparable in weight to the acts that they commit. Rather this assumes reputation costs times risk of having those costs while undertaking some action is comparable to gain from this action.
  - hndamien 9y ago
    The problem for Uber is that if they lose this race, then there is no Uber. The outcome of this is that they will be willing to risk a lot in order to succeed. This seems to be collateral damage for them. Completely unsurprising as it seems they lied about running the red light in autonomous mode and the ran their program without proper licensing (and reporting). Nobody should be surprised that Uber was the first company to rack up an autonomous driving death.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
zeth___ 9y ago
>Theoretically the reputation cost would discourage for-profit organizations from releasing unsafe self-driving vehicles for testing on public roads. And theoretically the only people who can regulate banks are the banks themselves. Funny how you hear that argument every time a horrible industry is trying to keep profits high by eternalizing costs: meat packers in 1900, tobacco in 1950, oil and gas till today.
ant6n 9y ago
> Theoretically the reputation cost would discourage for-profit organizations from releasing unsafe (...) I wonder whether food companies (like the meat packing industry in Chicago) said the same thing before the FDA was created in 1906; i.e. that reputation will just regulate the industry to not sell mislabeled products, or spoiled or adulaterated food.
squiggleblaz 9y ago
I doubt it. If you exclusively kill people outside the vehicle who are walking or riding bikes, you encourage people who don't have a car to hire the vehicle. The only possible costs would be if they're made to pay a price in a court of law, which seems unlikely since the woman who was killed had a bike with her, and it's unknown if she was on the bike at the time, but she's been described as a pedestrian outside of a crosswalk. Clearly Arizona authorities just don't care about safety.

treis 9y ago

Self driving cars could potentially save tens of thousands of lives a year not to mention all of the other social benefits and quality of life improvements. No doubt whoever gets it working first will make a ton of money, but society will see a massive benefit as well.

_RPM 9y ago
Based on what? Where does your conjecture hold evidence that “society will see a massive benefit”?
- rileymat2 9y ago
  I presume saving tens of thousands of lives is a benefit to society?
  - kpil 9y ago
    It's a bit of a wishful thinking now is it? We don't really know if there will be any safety benefits at all, and while I believe we might get to that point, it's a bit farther away than some tech-giants would like us to believe. If you listen closely to who say what, you'll notice that a lot of entrepreneurs claim that we will have full AI within a couple of years, while a lot of boring engineers huff and puff and are generally pessimistic. I'm sure the there are great savings involved in self-driving transport - especially long-haul , so it will happen sooner than later, but this will initially mean more death - not less.
    - treis 9y ago
      I'm not sure how wishful thinking it is. AFAIK no self driving car has been at fault in an accident. They have always been caused by a human driver and, at worst, the self driving car failed to avoid the collision. For better or worse, I don't think a self driving car will be commercially successful until it shows it is at least as safe as a human driver. More likely it will have to demonstrate that it is significantly safer. It might be the case that whichever company first launches doesn't correctly gauge the safety of their car, but I definitely think the goal is to be safer from day one.

abalone 9y ago

Really it's "socialize the costs" as well, considering that autonomous vehicle development was funded by taxpayers.[1] Like most high tech. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge

jessriedel 9y ago
The public spent a few million dollars on the Grand Challenge, while Waymo alone is worth 10's of billions of dollars. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/23/alphabets-self-driving-waymo-unit-could-be-worth-70-billion-more-than-gm-morgan-stanley-says.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/23/alphabets-self-driving-waymo... Self-driving car companies will have massive net positive externalities on the public, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars per year when fully deployed.
- zeth___ 9y ago
  Not if they are gasoline cars, particulate pollution alone kills tens of thousands. An electric rail network on the other hand would have real positive externalities, but isn't as easily privitazable so won't be built.
  - ant6n 9y ago
    Even electric cars aren't pollution free, and there are still other negative externalities (like health costs associated with car-centric life styles).
  - nradov 9y ago
    The latest EPA Tier 3 gasoline vehicles have extremely low particulate emissions. If we're talking about building new vehicles anyway then your fatality estimate is way too high.
- nradov 9y ago
  You have no reliable basis for quantifying the net positive impact. The technology looks promising but at this point we don't even know whether it can be made to work reliably outside of a few limited areas.

jessriedel 9y ago

We already have a system for privatizing negative externalities in traffic accidents (and in 95% of the rest of life). It's called tort law, and it will certainly be used in this case if Uber was at fault. There are of course situations were externalities fail to be privatized (e.g., traffic congestion), but I don't think auto accidents is one of them.

drb91 9y ago
Manslaughter doesn’t fall under tort law, IIRC.
- Tloewald 9y ago
  Tort law covers death. Manslaughter is a criminal charge but wrongful death, etc. are how tort law handles the situation. You may recall O.J. Simpson was sued for wrongful death and lost. http://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/11/us/jury-decides-simpson-must-pay-25-million-in-punitive-award.html http://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/11/us/jury-decides-simpson-mu...
  - drb91 9y ago
    Wouldn't one typically press both charges? Wrongful death to allow the family to be compensated, corporate manslaughter to punish the company and incentivize not killing people tomorrow. It doesn't seem like it's necessary to choose the non-criminal case. To state the obvious, I am not a lawyer.
    - azernik 9y ago
      Civil suits are intended to serve both purposes - compensation and deterrent (punitive vs compensatory damages). E.g. if you sue a company for doing you damage, the compensatory damages are based only on the injury you suffered, but punitive damages' presence and severity is affected by things like the level of negligence of the company. The theoretical difference with criminal charges is that criminal charges deal with harms to the difference sovereign (ie the state and the public) that need to be punished regardless of the wishes of the immediate victim. e.g. you're not allowed to settle a murder charge out of court.