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It's not the machine that killed you - it's the person who programmed the machine. If a pedestrian dies when a person is behind the wheel, there are any number

It's not the machine that killed you - it's the person who programmed the machine. If a pedestrian dies when a person is behind the wheel, there are any number of reasons: inattentiveness, drunkenness, anger - all very human states of being and emotion. That exact combination of influences will never happen again. And it could also be just an unfortunate accident. But with an AI driving the car, some faceless person ran the numbers and decided that your life is worth some statistical amount. Not only yours, but all the people ever who will stand in front of that machine. And that is murder. We could give the AI's free will if we ever figure out how to encode that concept in terms a computer would understand. But that opens up a different can of worms because we are then enslaving a being with free will. We could absolve the original programmers of blame - after all they were doing it for humanity or for the children or some other excuse. But then we have to decide how limited that absolution is. Those are the kinds of issues we must address before we can fully trust an autonomous vehicle.

j88439h84 8y ago
Can you define murder as you use it here?
- drivingmenuts 8y ago
  I'm using the simple definition that murder is killing with intent, barring modifiers such as a state of war or emotional modifiers, which machines are incapable of. Computer systems are deterministic - if we give it A, we expect to get B, not C or D in some unpredictable pattern. If we do somehow get C, that is an error, not an insight. If we allow that the machine is correct 90% of the time, it's still in error but furthermore we have now codified an acceptable error rate. A human or group of humans had to make that decision, because computers are incapable of deciding what is acceptable or not acceptable. Ergo, when you step off the curb into the path of that self-driving car, someone has already made a decision that 10% of the time, you die. The stated intent might be to maximise the preservation of the lives of the vehicle's occupants or that group of schoolchildren or a dog or whatever, but the unstated intent is that someone has to die. Which means it is codified killing, or murder. It is not a happy (or unhappy) accident of the universe.
  - IanCal 8y ago
    By this logic doctors are murderers whenever they perform an operation and the patient dies, all equipment manufacturers that make something that's ever resulted in a death are murderers, all engineers of bridges that collapse under extreme conditions are murderers. Really widens the net for the concept of murder.
    - drivingmenuts 8y ago
      If they ever formally codified the acceptable risk resulting in death and operated accordingly, then yes, they might be. However, a doctor is not a machine - there isn't some piece of code that says 10% of all appendicitis cases die. Equipment deaths are usually operator error or perhaps component failure, etc. Bridges? Who knows? The point is that an autonomous vehicle has a programmed decision tree where the others do not and at some point, someone has to have, or should have, taken into account vehicle operation under catastrophic circumstances. Go read up on the trolley problem and tell me if I'm wrong in bringing this up.

j88439h84 8y ago

Can you define murder as you use it here?

drivingmenuts 8y ago
I'm using the simple definition that murder is killing with intent, barring modifiers such as a state of war or emotional modifiers, which machines are incapable of. Computer systems are deterministic - if we give it A, we expect to get B, not C or D in some unpredictable pattern. If we do somehow get C, that is an error, not an insight. If we allow that the machine is correct 90% of the time, it's still in error but furthermore we have now codified an acceptable error rate. A human or group of humans had to make that decision, because computers are incapable of deciding what is acceptable or not acceptable. Ergo, when you step off the curb into the path of that self-driving car, someone has already made a decision that 10% of the time, you die. The stated intent might be to maximise the preservation of the lives of the vehicle's occupants or that group of schoolchildren or a dog or whatever, but the unstated intent is that someone has to die. Which means it is codified killing, or murder. It is not a happy (or unhappy) accident of the universe.
- IanCal 8y ago
  By this logic doctors are murderers whenever they perform an operation and the patient dies, all equipment manufacturers that make something that's ever resulted in a death are murderers, all engineers of bridges that collapse under extreme conditions are murderers. Really widens the net for the concept of murder.
  - drivingmenuts 8y ago
    If they ever formally codified the acceptable risk resulting in death and operated accordingly, then yes, they might be. However, a doctor is not a machine - there isn't some piece of code that says 10% of all appendicitis cases die. Equipment deaths are usually operator error or perhaps component failure, etc. Bridges? Who knows? The point is that an autonomous vehicle has a programmed decision tree where the others do not and at some point, someone has to have, or should have, taken into account vehicle operation under catastrophic circumstances. Go read up on the trolley problem and tell me if I'm wrong in bringing this up.