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Having highly trained autonomous vehicles will keep us out of car crashes, currently we just sort of lie down and take it. As though we had 10 9/11 scale traged

Having highly trained autonomous vehicles will keep us out of car crashes, currently we just sort of lie down and take it. As though we had 10 9/11 scale tragedies every year and just kind of threw our arms up and said "whatever, nuthin' we can do" And for the record I don't drive either, haven't since I was a young man.

DoreenMichele 8y ago
I don't personally see that as justification for accepting training deaths here. I'm not talking about stopping the development of driverless vehicles. I'm just telling you that your argument seems like a non sequitur to me. There are training deaths in the military precisely because humans are being trained to do dangerous things. Why can't driverless vehicles be trained without killing people? That's the thing you aren't actually answering.
- Fricken 8y ago
  I'm not defending Tesla or Uber, they're the ones that have killed people, and I think they both were (and in Tesla's case still are) behaving irresponsibly. Cruise and Waymo have both done tons of closed course testing, that's where they validate their respective systems against mission critical stuff like knowing when to slam on the brakes. But eventually they've got to go out into the real world and learn to deal with real traffic on real roads. I wish I could tell you the risk was zero, but it isn't and never will be.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > Cruise and Waymo have both done tons of closed course testing, that's where they validate their respective systems against mission critical stuff. But eventually they've got to go out into the real world and learn to deal with real traffic on real roads. Waymo has been doing that longer than anyone, though.
    - Fricken 8y ago
      Technically Waymo has been acting like cowboys longer than anyone. They smartened up and got serious about safety around 2015, but before that they were winging it. It was just a goofy science experiment back then. The Google self-drivng car project was under the leadership of Sebastien Thrun and Anthony Levandowski, and as hardcore engineering types their thinking was 'We'll save more people than we kill', and it was as simple as that.
      - tigershark 8y ago
        And though there is no fatality for waymo, while we already one for Uber just at the beginning of their program.
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    Well, to my ear that sounds like "People will still die in car wrecks and I don't even have data substantiating my assumption that fewer people will die than is true currently, but I somehow feel that if robotic vehicles are killing people, that's automatically better than if a human is behind the wheel."
    - Fricken 8y ago
      We wouldn't be doing our due diligence if we didn't try. Otherwise it's pretty much a guarantee that 30-40,000 people will die on America's roads next year and every year after that.
      - DoreenMichele 8y ago
        That still in no way answers the question I have posed concerning why developing driverless vehicles must involve training deaths. I have already said I am not against their development per se.
        UncleEntity 8y ago
        There's no way to possibly guarantee 100% safety so proposing it as the standard is as good as killing off the program. What's that classic example, robocar has to make a choice between (potentially) killing a bus full of school kids or a bunch of adults standing around on the sidewalk.
        solipsism 8y ago
        It's an almost nonsensical question, that's why you're having trouble getting people to answer it. People are saying "a small number of people might die and no one wants that, but it's impractical-to-impossible to guarantee that zero people will die." And you are asking, "but why? But why?" Now and then there at washing machine deaths. Society accepts these because they're so rare and because it would be impractical to completely prevent them. Compared to the number of road deaths most experts believe will be prevented over time, the few deaths we may encounter from training deaths seems completely inconsequential.
- vasilipupkin 8y ago
  Because it’s impossible to guarantee that an algorithm will be 100% effective in preventing deaths. So, you either are for driverless vehicles and are willing to accept some risk, or you are against driverless vehicles driving on roads. It has to be one or the other.
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    You can fail to be against something without being for it. I find it strange that people seem to have a problem with my question but no one but me seems to have a problem with someone simultaneously claiming that we need to treat training deaths as shrug-worthy while assuming that driverless vehicles will clearly eliminate huge numbers of deaths annually once they are out there. This is the first suggestion I have heard that human drivers actively need to be eliminated instead of driverless vehicles being yet one more option in an increasingly diverse transportation ecosystem. Although I no longer have a driver's license, the implication that someone might desire to outlaw human drivers someday for supposed safety reasons while simultaneously justifying accepting death by driverless vehicle seems somewhat disturbing.
    - vasilipupkin 8y ago
      “You can fail to be against something without being for it.” Not sure what that means, but testing autonomous vehicles will result in deaths. So, you either decide zero deaths are acceptable and don’t test, or allow some deaths and test. There is no third option in this case
      - DoreenMichele 8y ago
        FYI: All caps on the internet is generally considered to be yelling and is a violation of HN guidelines.
        vasilipupkin 8y ago
        I changed it to comply with guidelines. Feel free to respond to substance.
- thereisnospork 8y ago
  Its simple: opportunity cost. If a testing plan was going to accelerate the adoption of autonomous cars which are twice as safe as human drivers by one month it would save the lives of approximately 40,000/2 / 12 = 1,666.6 people. To stop the aforementioned testing plan because it is expected to kill 1, 10, or even 100 people will increase the expected number of premature deaths. There is of course an optimum between training deaths vs. future lives saved, accounting for uncertainty, and etc. but the number of expected training deaths will never be zero and considering the large number of future deaths currently expected, the optimum is likely to be much higher than zero.
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    Good answer. Have an upvote. But, your answer implicitly assumes the total elimination of human drivers and their replacement by autonomous vehicles. This strikes me as unlikely.
    - DennisAleynikov 8y ago
      it's not unreasonable given the same opportunity cost argument that most people will switch to and prefer autonomous vehicles if they are shown to be inherently safer more predictable drivers. This is a huge risk to long haul truck drivers since those jobs are already long and grueling as it is. Their livelihood is threatened by the fact that robot truck drivers don't sleep. It's not a matter of if it will be replaced but when, since logistics are a huge business and nothing to mess around with.
      - DoreenMichele 8y ago
        I have no doubt that truck drivers jobs are under threat. But you are justifying this assumption with yet more assumptions, not hard data. For example: If they are proven to be inherently safer. I'm literally just rather tired at the moment and also finding this argument wearying. But actual reality has a really long track record of failing to conform to human predictions of that sort. When antibiotics were discovered, it was predicted to be the end of human disease. Fast forward to today and the articles we routinely read are about the crisis of antibiotic shortages, antibiotic resistant infections and whatever will do now? When the first air planes came out, they had square windows. So did the first jets -- until they began falling from the sky as if some Cthulhoid horror had ripped then to pieces in the sky. Then they changed the windows to rounded designs. Human ability to accurately predict the future is notoriously lousy.
darpa_escapee 8y ago
> Having highly trained autonomous vehicles will keep us out of car crashes I hate to be the guy who says, "Citation please," but yours is an assumption without evidence. For all we know, autonomous driving safety might plateau at a rate that's lower than that of human drivers.

DoreenMichele 8y ago

I don't personally see that as justification for accepting training deaths here. I'm not talking about stopping the development of driverless vehicles. I'm just telling you that your argument seems like a non sequitur to me. There are training deaths in the military precisely because humans are being trained to do dangerous things. Why can't driverless vehicles be trained without killing people? That's the thing you aren't actually answering.

Fricken 8y ago
I'm not defending Tesla or Uber, they're the ones that have killed people, and I think they both were (and in Tesla's case still are) behaving irresponsibly. Cruise and Waymo have both done tons of closed course testing, that's where they validate their respective systems against mission critical stuff like knowing when to slam on the brakes. But eventually they've got to go out into the real world and learn to deal with real traffic on real roads. I wish I could tell you the risk was zero, but it isn't and never will be.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Cruise and Waymo have both done tons of closed course testing, that's where they validate their respective systems against mission critical stuff. But eventually they've got to go out into the real world and learn to deal with real traffic on real roads. Waymo has been doing that longer than anyone, though.
  - Fricken 8y ago
    Technically Waymo has been acting like cowboys longer than anyone. They smartened up and got serious about safety around 2015, but before that they were winging it. It was just a goofy science experiment back then. The Google self-drivng car project was under the leadership of Sebastien Thrun and Anthony Levandowski, and as hardcore engineering types their thinking was 'We'll save more people than we kill', and it was as simple as that.
    - tigershark 8y ago
      And though there is no fatality for waymo, while we already one for Uber just at the beginning of their program.
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  Well, to my ear that sounds like "People will still die in car wrecks and I don't even have data substantiating my assumption that fewer people will die than is true currently, but I somehow feel that if robotic vehicles are killing people, that's automatically better than if a human is behind the wheel."
  - Fricken 8y ago
    We wouldn't be doing our due diligence if we didn't try. Otherwise it's pretty much a guarantee that 30-40,000 people will die on America's roads next year and every year after that.
    - DoreenMichele 8y ago
      That still in no way answers the question I have posed concerning why developing driverless vehicles must involve training deaths. I have already said I am not against their development per se.
      - UncleEntity 8y ago
        There's no way to possibly guarantee 100% safety so proposing it as the standard is as good as killing off the program. What's that classic example, robocar has to make a choice between (potentially) killing a bus full of school kids or a bunch of adults standing around on the sidewalk.
      - solipsism 8y ago
        It's an almost nonsensical question, that's why you're having trouble getting people to answer it. People are saying "a small number of people might die and no one wants that, but it's impractical-to-impossible to guarantee that zero people will die." And you are asking, "but why? But why?" Now and then there at washing machine deaths. Society accepts these because they're so rare and because it would be impractical to completely prevent them. Compared to the number of road deaths most experts believe will be prevented over time, the few deaths we may encounter from training deaths seems completely inconsequential.
vasilipupkin 8y ago
Because it’s impossible to guarantee that an algorithm will be 100% effective in preventing deaths. So, you either are for driverless vehicles and are willing to accept some risk, or you are against driverless vehicles driving on roads. It has to be one or the other.
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  You can fail to be against something without being for it. I find it strange that people seem to have a problem with my question but no one but me seems to have a problem with someone simultaneously claiming that we need to treat training deaths as shrug-worthy while assuming that driverless vehicles will clearly eliminate huge numbers of deaths annually once they are out there. This is the first suggestion I have heard that human drivers actively need to be eliminated instead of driverless vehicles being yet one more option in an increasingly diverse transportation ecosystem. Although I no longer have a driver's license, the implication that someone might desire to outlaw human drivers someday for supposed safety reasons while simultaneously justifying accepting death by driverless vehicle seems somewhat disturbing.
  - vasilipupkin 8y ago
    “You can fail to be against something without being for it.” Not sure what that means, but testing autonomous vehicles will result in deaths. So, you either decide zero deaths are acceptable and don’t test, or allow some deaths and test. There is no third option in this case
    - DoreenMichele 8y ago
      FYI: All caps on the internet is generally considered to be yelling and is a violation of HN guidelines.
      - vasilipupkin 8y ago
        I changed it to comply with guidelines. Feel free to respond to substance.
thereisnospork 8y ago
Its simple: opportunity cost. If a testing plan was going to accelerate the adoption of autonomous cars which are twice as safe as human drivers by one month it would save the lives of approximately 40,000/2 / 12 = 1,666.6 people. To stop the aforementioned testing plan because it is expected to kill 1, 10, or even 100 people will increase the expected number of premature deaths. There is of course an optimum between training deaths vs. future lives saved, accounting for uncertainty, and etc. but the number of expected training deaths will never be zero and considering the large number of future deaths currently expected, the optimum is likely to be much higher than zero.
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  Good answer. Have an upvote. But, your answer implicitly assumes the total elimination of human drivers and their replacement by autonomous vehicles. This strikes me as unlikely.
  - DennisAleynikov 8y ago
    it's not unreasonable given the same opportunity cost argument that most people will switch to and prefer autonomous vehicles if they are shown to be inherently safer more predictable drivers. This is a huge risk to long haul truck drivers since those jobs are already long and grueling as it is. Their livelihood is threatened by the fact that robot truck drivers don't sleep. It's not a matter of if it will be replaced but when, since logistics are a huge business and nothing to mess around with.
    - DoreenMichele 8y ago
      I have no doubt that truck drivers jobs are under threat. But you are justifying this assumption with yet more assumptions, not hard data. For example: If they are proven to be inherently safer. I'm literally just rather tired at the moment and also finding this argument wearying. But actual reality has a really long track record of failing to conform to human predictions of that sort. When antibiotics were discovered, it was predicted to be the end of human disease. Fast forward to today and the articles we routinely read are about the crisis of antibiotic shortages, antibiotic resistant infections and whatever will do now? When the first air planes came out, they had square windows. So did the first jets -- until they began falling from the sky as if some Cthulhoid horror had ripped then to pieces in the sky. Then they changed the windows to rounded designs. Human ability to accurately predict the future is notoriously lousy.

darpa_escapee 8y ago

> Having highly trained autonomous vehicles will keep us out of car crashes I hate to be the guy who says, "Citation please," but yours is an assumption without evidence. For all we know, autonomous driving safety might plateau at a rate that's lower than that of human drivers.