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> "Because these self driving cars aren't being developed to solve a hypothetical problem, they're being developed to solve the very real and current problem of

by mlthoughts2018 8y ago

> "Because these self driving cars aren't being developed to solve a hypothetical problem, they're being developed to solve the very real and current problem of cars killing 40,000 people in the US each year." Yes, exactly. This is the reason you would want the technology to be developed slowly and carefully, incubated in a safer scenario for a long time to ensure it can be effectively audited and deployed when it comes time to use it for the intended, safety-improving commercial traffic use cases. What you sounds sounds like good reason to more strongly favor a lengthy test and prove-out cycle on safer and more limited vehicle types, long before testing on commercial traffic vehicles. The rate of auto-related deaths happening today certainly would not be a reason to hastily rush the technology and jump directly to extensive testing on the final commercial traffic end use cases. Trying to "hurry up" and prevent those deaths could counter-intuitively lead to more deaths because the infrastructure and auditing processes were not proved out and slowly ramped up to real traffic scenarios.

TulliusCicero 8y ago
> Trying to "hurry up" and prevent those deaths could counter-intuitively lead to more deaths because the infrastructure and auditing processes were not proved out and slowly ramped up to real traffic scenarios. You assert this, but provide no reasoning. I mean, the status quo is "hurrying up", since there are no general standards companies are being held to, and yet only one company has killed anyone, and surprise surprise, it's the company with an extensive history of ethical problems, and they screwed up in a way that's really obvious and foreseeable. The status quo is a free for all, and yet we don't have much in the way of deaths and injuries from the millions of miles being driven by computers. It seems like companies are already themselves being fairly safe, so how many deaths would you actually be avoiding by implementing more stringent standards right now?
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  Huh? The status quo is a free for all? You are not describing the world we live in at all. In many industries, from food development to drug development to medical devices to clean energy tech to child car seats to film ratings we have nuanced and highly involved government oversight and regulations to try to ensure levels of safety, ethical and thorough clinical testing, ratings systems that map to outcomes, etc. etc. Yes, of course they are not always perfect, but that is beside the point entirely. The ubiquitous and widespread use of such regulations is a direct statement that companies cannot be trusted, have repeatedly proved through history to be untrustworthy regarding safety over and over across many industries, and that it's a civic need to have independent oversight. We can debate the amounts, regulatory capture, etc., but absolutely could not ever believe something like saying the status quo is just an industry free-for-all. In fact, cases where start-ups try to skirt these issues in under-regulated industries are extremely rare and do not at all represent any type of status quo in any sense. There is absolutely no sense in which that maps to the way things work. It is rare for a industry to come up with its own testing and evaluation strategy where societal outcomes aren't brought up as first-principle constraints on how the innovation has to proceed. > "It seems like companies are already themselves being fairly safe, so how many deaths would you actually be avoiding by implementing more stringent standards right now?" This is just so egregiously unrelated to reality that I do not have the time resources to even start to reply. My mouth is agape that someone would think this. > "You assert this, but provide no reasoning." I agree with this for self-driving cars. I am not an expert of self-driving cars, and feel it's perfectly fair for me to say that in virtually every other industry, regulations are needed to ensure corporations don't actively harm people, falsify results, rush to market, etc., and that it logically and obviously extends to self-driving cars without any need for some onerous debate. The idea that companies are just trustworthy to rush this stuff to commercial markets does not need to be taken seriously. It's just obviously not so. Beyond that, I completely agree I am not the expert on it, and would defer to e.g. the NTSB to decide how companies are behaving with regard to proper testing. The only part I would add is that as a citizen, my strong preference is for the testing to be gradual with a high emphasis on validation and a gradual proof of concept moving from simpler vehicles and situations to more complex ones. Regardless of what the raw machine learning capabilities are in terms of self-driving, this is needed to prove out the evaluation and auditing infrastructure as much as anything else -- essentially to prove that we have a framework for holding the companies accountable in the right ways.
  - TulliusCicero 8y ago
    > Huh? The status quo is a free for all? You are not describing the world we live in at all. I'm specifically talking about the current development of self-driving cars. I'm not sure why you thought I was generalizing to all activity among all industries. > This is just so egregiously unrelated to reality that I do not have the time resources to even start to reply. My mouth is agape that someone would think this. What's weird about it? Again, we're not talking about solving some hypothetical future problem, in which case I would agree with you about being hyper-cautious and safe. Tens of thousands of people die every year right now. Where is your mouth-agape-level concern for those people? When a disease like Ebola breaks out, sometimes an experimental drug is used, earlier than would normally happen. This is not because we are collectively giving in to greedy companies wanting to destroy all government regulation, it's because we recognize that the dire need for a solution sometimes outstrips the need for caution. Here is a recent example: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05205-x https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05205-x Do you disagree with this kind of response for serious disease breakouts, or does 40,000 deaths a year just not count as sufficiently dire? Would 100,000 breach that threshold? 500,000? If the choice is between getting self-driving cars more quickly with minimal regulation -- which is what's happening right now -- versus much more regulation that will slow their development and introduction, it seems straightforwardly obvious that more people are likely to die in the status quo environment in the latter scenario than people die from testing in the former scenario. Companies would really have to go full Mad Max to kill even close to as many people as our current infrastructure and design kill. > it logically and obviously extends to self-driving cars without any need for some onerous debate. That's what I'm challenging, and I'm doing so on the basis that right now, things seem to be going fairly well. One person has died, which is very regrettable, but compared to the absolute mountain of corpses our usage of cars has created in general? It's obvious to me what's more important.
    - mlthoughts2018 8y ago
      > "If the choice is between getting self-driving cars more quickly with minimal regulation -- which is what's happening right now -- versus much more regulation that will slow their development and introduction, it seems straightforwardly obvious that more people are likely to die in the status quo environment in the latter scenario than people die from testing in the former scenario. Companies would really have to go full Mad Max to kill even close to as many people as our current infrastructure and design kill." I guess I am saying this seems to be straightforwardly false to me, to a huge huge degree, and it worries me that people would naively use the rate of auto deaths under current circumstances as a justification to allow self-driving technology development to proceed unregulated. It seems we just believe very strongly in positions that are completely and diametrically opposite to each other, so we are unlikely to find productive communication on a message board about it.

TulliusCicero 8y ago

> Trying to "hurry up" and prevent those deaths could counter-intuitively lead to more deaths because the infrastructure and auditing processes were not proved out and slowly ramped up to real traffic scenarios. You assert this, but provide no reasoning. I mean, the status quo is "hurrying up", since there are no general standards companies are being held to, and yet only one company has killed anyone, and surprise surprise, it's the company with an extensive history of ethical problems, and they screwed up in a way that's really obvious and foreseeable. The status quo is a free for all, and yet we don't have much in the way of deaths and injuries from the millions of miles being driven by computers. It seems like companies are already themselves being fairly safe, so how many deaths would you actually be avoiding by implementing more stringent standards right now?

mlthoughts2018 8y ago
Huh? The status quo is a free for all? You are not describing the world we live in at all. In many industries, from food development to drug development to medical devices to clean energy tech to child car seats to film ratings we have nuanced and highly involved government oversight and regulations to try to ensure levels of safety, ethical and thorough clinical testing, ratings systems that map to outcomes, etc. etc. Yes, of course they are not always perfect, but that is beside the point entirely. The ubiquitous and widespread use of such regulations is a direct statement that companies cannot be trusted, have repeatedly proved through history to be untrustworthy regarding safety over and over across many industries, and that it's a civic need to have independent oversight. We can debate the amounts, regulatory capture, etc., but absolutely could not ever believe something like saying the status quo is just an industry free-for-all. In fact, cases where start-ups try to skirt these issues in under-regulated industries are extremely rare and do not at all represent any type of status quo in any sense. There is absolutely no sense in which that maps to the way things work. It is rare for a industry to come up with its own testing and evaluation strategy where societal outcomes aren't brought up as first-principle constraints on how the innovation has to proceed. > "It seems like companies are already themselves being fairly safe, so how many deaths would you actually be avoiding by implementing more stringent standards right now?" This is just so egregiously unrelated to reality that I do not have the time resources to even start to reply. My mouth is agape that someone would think this. > "You assert this, but provide no reasoning." I agree with this for self-driving cars. I am not an expert of self-driving cars, and feel it's perfectly fair for me to say that in virtually every other industry, regulations are needed to ensure corporations don't actively harm people, falsify results, rush to market, etc., and that it logically and obviously extends to self-driving cars without any need for some onerous debate. The idea that companies are just trustworthy to rush this stuff to commercial markets does not need to be taken seriously. It's just obviously not so. Beyond that, I completely agree I am not the expert on it, and would defer to e.g. the NTSB to decide how companies are behaving with regard to proper testing. The only part I would add is that as a citizen, my strong preference is for the testing to be gradual with a high emphasis on validation and a gradual proof of concept moving from simpler vehicles and situations to more complex ones. Regardless of what the raw machine learning capabilities are in terms of self-driving, this is needed to prove out the evaluation and auditing infrastructure as much as anything else -- essentially to prove that we have a framework for holding the companies accountable in the right ways.
- TulliusCicero 8y ago
  > Huh? The status quo is a free for all? You are not describing the world we live in at all. I'm specifically talking about the current development of self-driving cars. I'm not sure why you thought I was generalizing to all activity among all industries. > This is just so egregiously unrelated to reality that I do not have the time resources to even start to reply. My mouth is agape that someone would think this. What's weird about it? Again, we're not talking about solving some hypothetical future problem, in which case I would agree with you about being hyper-cautious and safe. Tens of thousands of people die every year right now. Where is your mouth-agape-level concern for those people? When a disease like Ebola breaks out, sometimes an experimental drug is used, earlier than would normally happen. This is not because we are collectively giving in to greedy companies wanting to destroy all government regulation, it's because we recognize that the dire need for a solution sometimes outstrips the need for caution. Here is a recent example: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05205-x https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05205-x Do you disagree with this kind of response for serious disease breakouts, or does 40,000 deaths a year just not count as sufficiently dire? Would 100,000 breach that threshold? 500,000? If the choice is between getting self-driving cars more quickly with minimal regulation -- which is what's happening right now -- versus much more regulation that will slow their development and introduction, it seems straightforwardly obvious that more people are likely to die in the status quo environment in the latter scenario than people die from testing in the former scenario. Companies would really have to go full Mad Max to kill even close to as many people as our current infrastructure and design kill. > it logically and obviously extends to self-driving cars without any need for some onerous debate. That's what I'm challenging, and I'm doing so on the basis that right now, things seem to be going fairly well. One person has died, which is very regrettable, but compared to the absolute mountain of corpses our usage of cars has created in general? It's obvious to me what's more important.
  - mlthoughts2018 8y ago
    > "If the choice is between getting self-driving cars more quickly with minimal regulation -- which is what's happening right now -- versus much more regulation that will slow their development and introduction, it seems straightforwardly obvious that more people are likely to die in the status quo environment in the latter scenario than people die from testing in the former scenario. Companies would really have to go full Mad Max to kill even close to as many people as our current infrastructure and design kill." I guess I am saying this seems to be straightforwardly false to me, to a huge huge degree, and it worries me that people would naively use the rate of auto deaths under current circumstances as a justification to allow self-driving technology development to proceed unregulated. It seems we just believe very strongly in positions that are completely and diametrically opposite to each other, so we are unlikely to find productive communication on a message board about it.