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> “Rather than building AI to solve the pogo stick problem, we should partner with the government to ask people to be lawful and considerate,” he said. “Safety

> “Rather than building AI to solve the pogo stick problem, we should partner with the government to ask people to be lawful and considerate,” he said. “Safety isn’t just about the quality of the AI technology.” Wow. What a goal post move. I don't think this is how successful technology spreads. Governments usually accomodate tech because it proves itself in the market, not vice versa.

microcolonel 8y ago
Also, good luck marketing a product which only works when everyone is lawful and considerate, and otherwise has a considerable chance of killing occupants or pedestrians.
- adrianN 8y ago
  Cars that you can buy today are such a product. As are kitchen knives.
  - vonzeppelin 8y ago
    Kitchen knives don't kill people. People kill people.
  - comesee 8y ago
    Not in the same way, there is accountability when a driver or knife wielder uses them dangerously. He's arguing for putting the accountability on pedestrians, which would be the equivalent of putting accountability on a murder victim. "Hey, it's not the murderers fault, the victim shouldnt walk around in bad neighborhoods."
  - microcolonel 8y ago
    The expectation with cars is not that everyone is lawful and considerate, but that everyone has a decent chance of being held accountable for their actions.
  - Piskvorrr 8y ago
    Quite the opposite. Non-autonomous cars are a product that works despite virtually nobody keeping the rules completely, and most drivers being inconsiderate.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
takk309 8y ago
This statement stood out to me too. If this were truly the way forward, just make the cars inherently unsafe for pedestrians. Then we will all learn that these vehicles mean certain death. That has generally worked well with poisons like cyanide. Don't drink cyanide, it will kill you. We can say the same for autonomous cars, don't step into the road, the AI cars will kill you. To be clear, I am not in favor of building our urban transportation networks with an automotive mode focus. I feel that non-motorized transportation and safety needs to be the main focus, even if that means auto modes become inconvenient.
phyzome 8y ago
Seriously, fuck that guy. > Drive.AI founder Andrew Ng, a former Baidu executive and one of the industry’s most prominent boosters, argues the problem is less about building a perfect driving system than training bystanders to anticipate self-driving behavior. In other words, we can make roads safe for the cars instead of the other way around. I'm not going to give up on crosswalks just so you can make money on your shmancy new cars.
- dang 8y ago
  Please don't post like this to HN. It degrades discussion and encourages worse. Downward-spiraling is the internet default, so effort is needed to avoid it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - phyzome 8y ago
    Can you tell me more about downward-spiraling, and how this relates to the guidelines? The guy in the article seems to be implying that pedestrians don't have the right to be in the road. I think it's pretty OK to be dismissive of that.
    - comesee 8y ago
      I agree with you but it was probably your language. HN isn't a free speech zone.
    - pacala 8y ago
      Skipping the first sentence would be a good step forward.
    - dang 8y ago
      "Seriously fuck that guy" is low-grade internet sludge. We don't need that here. If you post it, others will post more, and we will get all sludgey. That's point #1. Point #2 is more subtle and more important. You picked an uncharitable interpretation in order to get snippy at it. That's a self-referential activity, not the thoughtful engagement we're looking for. This is why the site guidelines say: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize." That applies to articles and quotes as much as to fellow commenters. If people just rail against weak versions of what others say, the only ones interested in reading it will be others in the same mood. Everyone else will get bored and leave, which in the long (or maybe not so long) run amounts to the death of this community. That's a downward spiral we really don't want, so please make an effort not to do that. In short, please follow the rules: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
carapace 8y ago
It was done for automobiles. "Fighting Traffic - The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City" By Peter D. Norton > Summary > The fight for the future of the city street between pedestrians, street railways, and promoters of the automobile between 1915 and 1930. > Before the advent of the automobile, users of city streets were diverse and included children at play and pedestrians at large. By 1930, most streets were primarily a motor thoroughfares where children did not belong and where pedestrians were condemned as “jaywalkers.” In Fighting Traffic, Peter Norton argues that to accommodate automobiles, the American city required not only a physical change but also a social one: before the city could be reconstructed for the sake of motorists, its streets had to be socially reconstructed as places where motorists belonged. It was not an evolution, he writes, but a bloody and sometimes violent revolution. Norton describes how street users struggled to define and redefine what streets were for. He examines developments in the crucial transitional years from the 1910s to the 1930s, uncovering a broad anti-automobile campaign that reviled motorists as “road hogs” or “speed demons” and cars as “juggernauts” or “death cars.” He considers the perspectives of all users—pedestrians, police (who had to become “traffic cops”), street railways, downtown businesses, traffic engineers (who often saw cars as the problem, not the solution), and automobile promoters. He finds that pedestrians and parents campaigned in moral terms, fighting for “justice.” Cities and downtown businesses tried to regulate traffic in the name of “efficiency.” Automotive interest groups, meanwhile, legitimized their claim to the streets by invoking “freedom”—a rhetorical stance of particular power in the United States. Fighting Traffic offers a new look at both the origins of the automotive city in America and how social groups shape technological change. ~ https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/fighting-traffic https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/fighting-traffic
- comesee 8y ago
  There is still accountability when a driver causes harm to someone on the road, pedestrian or otherwise. He's suggesting that AVs shouldn't be accountable when they harm pedestrians under abnormal circumstances. I think that's a lot different than simply making roads amenable to drivers. In regards to my initial point, government made regulations around cars after there was already an overwhelming market demand for them.
randcraw 8y ago
That argument would create an insane precedent. By that standard, it'd be OK for air-to-ground missiles to be wildly inaccurate. As long as you design the missile to be really noisy in flight, you can assume that people will hear them and take cover in bomb shelters before it lands. Collateral damage avoided. Problem solved.

microcolonel 8y ago

Also, good luck marketing a product which only works when everyone is lawful and considerate, and otherwise has a considerable chance of killing occupants or pedestrians.

adrianN 8y ago
Cars that you can buy today are such a product. As are kitchen knives.
- vonzeppelin 8y ago
  Kitchen knives don't kill people. People kill people.
- comesee 8y ago
  Not in the same way, there is accountability when a driver or knife wielder uses them dangerously. He's arguing for putting the accountability on pedestrians, which would be the equivalent of putting accountability on a murder victim. "Hey, it's not the murderers fault, the victim shouldnt walk around in bad neighborhoods."
- microcolonel 8y ago
  The expectation with cars is not that everyone is lawful and considerate, but that everyone has a decent chance of being held accountable for their actions.
- Piskvorrr 8y ago
  Quite the opposite. Non-autonomous cars are a product that works despite virtually nobody keeping the rules completely, and most drivers being inconsiderate.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

takk309 8y ago

This statement stood out to me too. If this were truly the way forward, just make the cars inherently unsafe for pedestrians. Then we will all learn that these vehicles mean certain death. That has generally worked well with poisons like cyanide. Don't drink cyanide, it will kill you. We can say the same for autonomous cars, don't step into the road, the AI cars will kill you. To be clear, I am not in favor of building our urban transportation networks with an automotive mode focus. I feel that non-motorized transportation and safety needs to be the main focus, even if that means auto modes become inconvenient.

phyzome 8y ago

Seriously, fuck that guy. > Drive.AI founder Andrew Ng, a former Baidu executive and one of the industry’s most prominent boosters, argues the problem is less about building a perfect driving system than training bystanders to anticipate self-driving behavior. In other words, we can make roads safe for the cars instead of the other way around. I'm not going to give up on crosswalks just so you can make money on your shmancy new cars.

dang 8y ago
Please don't post like this to HN. It degrades discussion and encourages worse. Downward-spiraling is the internet default, so effort is needed to avoid it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- phyzome 8y ago
  Can you tell me more about downward-spiraling, and how this relates to the guidelines? The guy in the article seems to be implying that pedestrians don't have the right to be in the road. I think it's pretty OK to be dismissive of that.
  - comesee 8y ago
    I agree with you but it was probably your language. HN isn't a free speech zone.
  - pacala 8y ago
    Skipping the first sentence would be a good step forward.
  - dang 8y ago
    "Seriously fuck that guy" is low-grade internet sludge. We don't need that here. If you post it, others will post more, and we will get all sludgey. That's point #1. Point #2 is more subtle and more important. You picked an uncharitable interpretation in order to get snippy at it. That's a self-referential activity, not the thoughtful engagement we're looking for. This is why the site guidelines say: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize." That applies to articles and quotes as much as to fellow commenters. If people just rail against weak versions of what others say, the only ones interested in reading it will be others in the same mood. Everyone else will get bored and leave, which in the long (or maybe not so long) run amounts to the death of this community. That's a downward spiral we really don't want, so please make an effort not to do that. In short, please follow the rules: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

carapace 8y ago

It was done for automobiles. "Fighting Traffic - The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City" By Peter D. Norton > Summary > The fight for the future of the city street between pedestrians, street railways, and promoters of the automobile between 1915 and 1930. > Before the advent of the automobile, users of city streets were diverse and included children at play and pedestrians at large. By 1930, most streets were primarily a motor thoroughfares where children did not belong and where pedestrians were condemned as “jaywalkers.” In Fighting Traffic, Peter Norton argues that to accommodate automobiles, the American city required not only a physical change but also a social one: before the city could be reconstructed for the sake of motorists, its streets had to be socially reconstructed as places where motorists belonged. It was not an evolution, he writes, but a bloody and sometimes violent revolution. Norton describes how street users struggled to define and redefine what streets were for. He examines developments in the crucial transitional years from the 1910s to the 1930s, uncovering a broad anti-automobile campaign that reviled motorists as “road hogs” or “speed demons” and cars as “juggernauts” or “death cars.” He considers the perspectives of all users—pedestrians, police (who had to become “traffic cops”), street railways, downtown businesses, traffic engineers (who often saw cars as the problem, not the solution), and automobile promoters. He finds that pedestrians and parents campaigned in moral terms, fighting for “justice.” Cities and downtown businesses tried to regulate traffic in the name of “efficiency.” Automotive interest groups, meanwhile, legitimized their claim to the streets by invoking “freedom”—a rhetorical stance of particular power in the United States. Fighting Traffic offers a new look at both the origins of the automotive city in America and how social groups shape technological change. ~ https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/fighting-traffic https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/fighting-traffic

comesee 8y ago
There is still accountability when a driver causes harm to someone on the road, pedestrian or otherwise. He's suggesting that AVs shouldn't be accountable when they harm pedestrians under abnormal circumstances. I think that's a lot different than simply making roads amenable to drivers. In regards to my initial point, government made regulations around cars after there was already an overwhelming market demand for them.

randcraw 8y ago

That argument would create an insane precedent. By that standard, it'd be OK for air-to-ground missiles to be wildly inaccurate. As long as you design the missile to be really noisy in flight, you can assume that people will hear them and take cover in bomb shelters before it lands. Collateral damage avoided. Problem solved.