5 ms·

Well maybe not currently safer than human drivers. I don't think any sound-minded person would claim that they will never be.

by ben174 9y ago

spacehome 9y ago
Currently we're losing a million lives a year (about a 9/11 per day) to auto accidents. I think there's a serious argument that it's ethical to push autonomous driving onto the road before they're safer than humans if that would help them debug the software faster and advance to superhuman safety levels even a day sooner.
- mozumder 9y ago
  Why would you want to increase the death rate by pushing more autonomous vehicles onto the road?
  - spacehome 9y ago
    Because doing so will cause issues (like this one) to be found and fixed faster. When enough bugs are fixed that the autonomous drivers are safer than the meatbag drivers, then the death rate will start to decrease. The argument is that you can trade more deaths today for a sooner decrease later. Under certain assumptions, you'll save net lives.
    - jamesgeck0 9y ago
      Why is the FDA so strict about human trials? We could save net lives if we just did drug tests faster to figure out what works. /s
      - tmd83 9y ago
        It's slightly different though. Even if FDA was lax, the participants would be volunteers. This victim though didn't have any say in joining Uber's trial.
      - spacehome 9y ago
        You jest, but the comparison is that we do drug tests at all, which we of course do. It's the same calculus. The math works out more in favor of being more aggressive in our pursuit of driverless vehicles as they kill more prime-age, otherwise healthy people.
    - davidgould 9y ago
      This argument assumes that autonomous drivers will be safer than human drivers. Which is an unproven proposition. It is possible that autonomous driving may never be safer, or that the rate of improvement may be much slower than expected. How many "more deaths today" do you think are reasonable to test this question? One? ten? one thousand? ten thousand?
      - spacehome 9y ago
        Yea, it does assume that. I happen to think that's true, but it's a separate argument, and one worth having. Humans are really quite bad at driving, so I think a conservative estimate is that autonomous vehicles could cut road deaths by at least 90%. Cars are killing by the millions now, so do the math, and I'm willing to tolerate a lot of deaths in the process, contingent on the deaths actually helping researchers and engineers reduce future faults. I would happily take a million deaths right now if it meant driverless tech instantly became available to everyone, but I think there's an upper limit to how many accidents can be realistically examined at once. What's the alternative position? That you're for more road deaths in total? Are you also the kind of person who wouldn't pull the lever in the trolley problem?
        Slartie 9y ago
        > What's the alternative position? Developing and testing the technology in actual test scenarios (build entire testing cities and fill them up with paid stuntmen and -women, if necessary) instead of in public, until you're able to prove that the tech is statistically at least as safe as human drivers. After that, you can continue testing in public, provided that you deal with any changes to your system responsibly and ensure that the public is not exposed to additional danger because of your testing. This is actually very common in the software development world. For production-critical systems, companies go to great length of creating a staging environment as realistically as possible, but fully separated from the production systems. You may get around that effort if the only damage you can potentially do is people not being able to see stupid cat pictures on a social network. But sorry, for life-critical tech, the move-fast-and-break-things approach is irresponsible bullshit. > I would happily take a million deaths right now if it meant driverless tech instantly became available to everyone What if your own death is guaranteed to be among them? Still "happily taking" it?
    - Slartie 9y ago
      You need to have SERIOUS evidence for the claim that autonomous driving will actually be safer than human driving one day to even attempt to make this argument of yours. "Faith in technology" is not "evidence"! If your faith is strong enough, you'll surely be welcome if you sign away all of your rights and serve as irrational traffic participant in a city where self-driving cars are tested. You could run through the city all day and produce difficult safety-critical situations by suddenly walking in front of them. My faith isn't strong enough for doing that, so I expect lawmakers to protect me from companies like Uber who apparently think it's okay to basically make me their guinea pig in their public experiments. But I'll applaud you if you decide to take the risk on yourself for the (potential, unproven) advancement of the human race!
      - spacehome 9y ago
        I'm already doing it all day for human drivers to no benefit at all. I am pretty convinced that computers have the potential to outperform humans in this, but I'm not really interested in hashing out the debate here; the arguments have all been made more elegantly elsewhere. Though I don't know why you keep ascribing 'faith' to me. I never brought that dirty word up. I reasoned my way into my positions.
        Slartie 9y ago
        > Though I don't know why you keep ascribing 'faith' to me. I never brought that dirty word up. I reasoned my way into my positions. In that case, what do you base your assumption on that self-driving cars will be able to deal with the complexities of todays' traffic in a significantly safer way than humans? Because even though you might not bring that word up, if you just assume that to be the case because you expect technology will one day be able to make that wish come true, that IS "faith" in technology. Whether you like that word or not doesn't matter.
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
- stevesimmons 9y ago
  So you're volunteering to be an unpredictable pedestrian or cyclist around large numbers of early-stage driverless cars? Put your ethics into practice! The rationale response for individual cities is to say: "Do your risky testing elsewhere, thank you very much. You may come back here once you are as safe as our average driver."
  - spacehome 9y ago
    I'm already a pedestrian surrounded by unsafe human drivers, and every day I hate what I see. What I'm talking about is making a tradeoff between risk now and risk later such that my total risk is lower. I'd take that tradeoff, and I think it's the ethical thing for society to do. What you're talking about is NIMBY, which certainly makes sense locally -- better for some other locale to perfect the technology -- but on the societal level I think it's wrongheaded. But don't worry; there's no danger anybody will take my stance on it seriously. Autonomous vehicles will not be widely deployed until they're provably drastically better than humans.
  - 05 9y ago
    The rational response is to try passing legislation that prevents companies like Uber from (ever?) testing on public roads while allowing responsible companies like Cruise and Waymo a way to prove their competence and be allowed to test/operate.
oldgradstudent 9y ago
What do you base this claim on? It sounds more like a statement of faith. > I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah; and even though he may tarry, nonetheless, I wait every day for his coming.

Well maybe not currently safer than human drivers. I don't think any sound-minded person would claim that they will never be.

by ben174 9y ago

Well maybe not currently safer than human drivers. I don't think any sound-minded person would claim that they will never be.

spacehome 9y ago

Currently we're losing a million lives a year (about a 9/11 per day) to auto accidents. I think there's a serious argument that it's ethical to push autonomous driving onto the road before they're safer than humans if that would help them debug the software faster and advance to superhuman safety levels even a day sooner.

mozumder 9y ago
Why would you want to increase the death rate by pushing more autonomous vehicles onto the road?
- spacehome 9y ago
  Because doing so will cause issues (like this one) to be found and fixed faster. When enough bugs are fixed that the autonomous drivers are safer than the meatbag drivers, then the death rate will start to decrease. The argument is that you can trade more deaths today for a sooner decrease later. Under certain assumptions, you'll save net lives.
  - jamesgeck0 9y ago
    Why is the FDA so strict about human trials? We could save net lives if we just did drug tests faster to figure out what works. /s
    - tmd83 9y ago
      It's slightly different though. Even if FDA was lax, the participants would be volunteers. This victim though didn't have any say in joining Uber's trial.
    - spacehome 9y ago
      You jest, but the comparison is that we do drug tests at all, which we of course do. It's the same calculus. The math works out more in favor of being more aggressive in our pursuit of driverless vehicles as they kill more prime-age, otherwise healthy people.
  - davidgould 9y ago
    This argument assumes that autonomous drivers will be safer than human drivers. Which is an unproven proposition. It is possible that autonomous driving may never be safer, or that the rate of improvement may be much slower than expected. How many "more deaths today" do you think are reasonable to test this question? One? ten? one thousand? ten thousand?
    - spacehome 9y ago
      Yea, it does assume that. I happen to think that's true, but it's a separate argument, and one worth having. Humans are really quite bad at driving, so I think a conservative estimate is that autonomous vehicles could cut road deaths by at least 90%. Cars are killing by the millions now, so do the math, and I'm willing to tolerate a lot of deaths in the process, contingent on the deaths actually helping researchers and engineers reduce future faults. I would happily take a million deaths right now if it meant driverless tech instantly became available to everyone, but I think there's an upper limit to how many accidents can be realistically examined at once. What's the alternative position? That you're for more road deaths in total? Are you also the kind of person who wouldn't pull the lever in the trolley problem?
      - Slartie 9y ago
        > What's the alternative position? Developing and testing the technology in actual test scenarios (build entire testing cities and fill them up with paid stuntmen and -women, if necessary) instead of in public, until you're able to prove that the tech is statistically at least as safe as human drivers. After that, you can continue testing in public, provided that you deal with any changes to your system responsibly and ensure that the public is not exposed to additional danger because of your testing. This is actually very common in the software development world. For production-critical systems, companies go to great length of creating a staging environment as realistically as possible, but fully separated from the production systems. You may get around that effort if the only damage you can potentially do is people not being able to see stupid cat pictures on a social network. But sorry, for life-critical tech, the move-fast-and-break-things approach is irresponsible bullshit. > I would happily take a million deaths right now if it meant driverless tech instantly became available to everyone What if your own death is guaranteed to be among them? Still "happily taking" it?
  - Slartie 9y ago
    You need to have SERIOUS evidence for the claim that autonomous driving will actually be safer than human driving one day to even attempt to make this argument of yours. "Faith in technology" is not "evidence"! If your faith is strong enough, you'll surely be welcome if you sign away all of your rights and serve as irrational traffic participant in a city where self-driving cars are tested. You could run through the city all day and produce difficult safety-critical situations by suddenly walking in front of them. My faith isn't strong enough for doing that, so I expect lawmakers to protect me from companies like Uber who apparently think it's okay to basically make me their guinea pig in their public experiments. But I'll applaud you if you decide to take the risk on yourself for the (potential, unproven) advancement of the human race!
    - spacehome 9y ago
      I'm already doing it all day for human drivers to no benefit at all. I am pretty convinced that computers have the potential to outperform humans in this, but I'm not really interested in hashing out the debate here; the arguments have all been made more elegantly elsewhere. Though I don't know why you keep ascribing 'faith' to me. I never brought that dirty word up. I reasoned my way into my positions.
      - Slartie 9y ago
        > Though I don't know why you keep ascribing 'faith' to me. I never brought that dirty word up. I reasoned my way into my positions. In that case, what do you base your assumption on that self-driving cars will be able to deal with the complexities of todays' traffic in a significantly safer way than humans? Because even though you might not bring that word up, if you just assume that to be the case because you expect technology will one day be able to make that wish come true, that IS "faith" in technology. Whether you like that word or not doesn't matter.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
stevesimmons 9y ago
So you're volunteering to be an unpredictable pedestrian or cyclist around large numbers of early-stage driverless cars? Put your ethics into practice! The rationale response for individual cities is to say: "Do your risky testing elsewhere, thank you very much. You may come back here once you are as safe as our average driver."
- spacehome 9y ago
  I'm already a pedestrian surrounded by unsafe human drivers, and every day I hate what I see. What I'm talking about is making a tradeoff between risk now and risk later such that my total risk is lower. I'd take that tradeoff, and I think it's the ethical thing for society to do. What you're talking about is NIMBY, which certainly makes sense locally -- better for some other locale to perfect the technology -- but on the societal level I think it's wrongheaded. But don't worry; there's no danger anybody will take my stance on it seriously. Autonomous vehicles will not be widely deployed until they're provably drastically better than humans.
- 05 9y ago
  The rational response is to try passing legislation that prevents companies like Uber from (ever?) testing on public roads while allowing responsible companies like Cruise and Waymo a way to prove their competence and be allowed to test/operate.

oldgradstudent 9y ago

What do you base this claim on? It sounds more like a statement of faith. > I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah; and even though he may tarry, nonetheless, I wait every day for his coming.