5 ms·

Let's say there are two cars with two drivers. The first, with a human driver, is deadly under traditional human scenarios-- the driver could be drunk, texting

Let's say there are two cars with two drivers. The first, with a human driver, is deadly under traditional human scenarios-- the driver could be drunk, texting or eating or distracted. They could make a slow decision, be looking the wrong way, stomp on the wrong pedal, etc. The second driver is a machine. It sees all around it at all times and never gets drunk. But when it fails it does so in a way that to a human looks incredibly stupid. A way that is unthinkable for a human to screw up- making an obviously bad decision that would be trivial for a human to avoid. Now let's say that statistically it can be proven that the first type of driver (human) is ten times more likely to be at fault for killing their passengers than the second in real world driving. So if you die, and it's the machine's fault, it will be in a easily avoidable and probably embarrassingly stupid way. But it's far less likely to happen. Which type of driver do you choose?

rohit2412 8y ago
If that were the only options, we could choose the second. But you have the option of assistive technologies. Have the human drive and the machine supervise it. The mistakes made when the human falls asleep can be prevented. The mistakes that the machine makes, well those won't be made at all as human is the active driver.
sorokod 8y ago
I would choose the "machine" driver if it is two ( not one ) orders of magnitude safer. By the way, your examples are not very good as the drunk/texting driver makes a choice and to some extent her passengers too. No such choice is given with the car is autonomous.
- magduf 8y ago
  Drunk drivers don't just kill their passengers; they kill other drivers and pedestrians. You have no control over that.
  - Piskvorrr 8y ago
    As opposed to...well. RIP EH.
JackFr 8y ago
> Which type of driver do you choose? Being able to explain the mistake (eating, texting) vs. (???) makes things qualitatively different. I think any reasonable level of risk for the computers can be acceptable, if glitches are explainable, able to be recreated and provably remediable.
- fattire 8y ago
  Yeah-- they are qualitatively different. I didn't want to cloud the question with this point, but data from a machine driver mistake can be used to train every other machine driver and make it better. While much can till be learned from the mistake made by a human driver, the error is not as likely to be minimized across the 'fleet' in the same way as it is for a machine driver, if that makes sense. Also it's probably important to keep in mind-- if my undestanding is correct-- companies like Tesla are only using neural nets for situational awareness-- to understand the car's position in space and in relation to the identified objects, paths, and obstacles around it. The actual logic related to the car's operation/behavior within that space is via traditional programming. So it's not quite a black box in terms of understanding why the car decided to act in a particular way-- it may be that something in the world was miscategorized or otherwise sensed incorrectly, which could be addressed (via better training/validation, etc.). Or it could be that it understood the world around it but took the wrong action, which could also be addressed (via traditional programming). If I'm wrong about that, I'm sure someone will chime in. (please do!)
  - magduf 8y ago
    >While much can till be learned from the mistake made by a human driver, the error is not as likely to be minimized across the 'fleet' in the same way as it is for a machine driver, if that makes sense. This is some serious whitewashing here. It's not "unlikely", it's simply not going to happen at all. People have been killing innocents by drunk driving for decades now, so they obviously still haven't learned. They continually make the same mistakes, over and over. No, human drivers do not learn at all from each other's mistakes in any significant fashion. This could be changed, if we as a society wanted it to. We could mandate serious driver training (like what they do in Germany), and also periodic retraining. Putting people in simulators and test tracks and teaching them how to handle various situations, using the latest findings, would save a lot of lives. But we choose not to do this because it's expensive and we just don't care that much; we think that driving is some kind of inherent human right and it's very hard for people to lose that privilege in this country. And it doesn't help that not being able to drive equates to being very difficult to survive in much of the US thanks to a lack of public transit options.
RaceWon 8y ago
Here's the thing--they hand out drivers licenses to anyone. You need virtually no skills whatsoever to pass a road test here in the States. If I asked everyone on HN what steers the rear of a motor vehicle; I'd guess only 10% would guess correctly, and we're talking about some of the smartest most well read people on the Planet here. If I asked everyone on HN how many times they have practiced stopping their car from high speed in the shortest time possible, and were competent braking at high speed; I'd round that guess to virtually 0. Let's talk about the wet; can you control the car when it fishtails? Can you stop quickly in the rain? No and no. You simply can not be competent in a life and death situation without training, nor without a basic understanding of vehicle dynamics. You just can't. Now I'm not saying Everyone must be able to toss the car into a corner, get it sideways and clip the apex while whistling a happy tune; but for god's sakes can we at least mandate 2 days of training at a closed course by an instructor who has a clue about how to drive? That would absolutely save lives... lots and lots of lives. Which brings me to my favorite feature of some of these "self driving" cars: all of a sudden, with No warning whatsoever the computer says hey I'm fucked here --you have to drive now and save us all from certain disaster. I probably could not do that, and I sure as hell can toss a street car sideways into the corner while whistling a happy tune.
- taneq 8y ago
  > If I asked everyone on HN what steers the rear of a motor vehicle; What does this even mean? I'm guessing you're going for 'the throttle' but it's a pretty ambiguous question. Totally agree on advanced driver training though. If you don't know the limits of your vehicle then you shouldn't be driving it. As for the last point, I think we need to ditch the "level X" designations and describe automated vehicles in terms of time that they can operate autonomously without human intervention. A normal car is rated maybe 0.5s. Autopilot would be 0.5s - 1s. Waymo would be much more depending on how rarely they need a nudge from the remote operators.
  - RaceWon 8y ago
    > What does this even mean? I'm guessing you're going for 'the throttle' but it's a pretty ambiguous question. I am going for the throttle (you know, to stop the car from rotating too much after I threw into that corner), and yes you are correct it (the throttle) does "steer" the rear of the car. Plus 1 btw. Ambiguous... maybe. Anyway; see you on the wet skidpad ;) .
base698 8y ago
I'd pick the distracted driver's currently and for two good reasons: 1) Computer has bugs that will kill the driver 100/100 times if they encounter that case. Driving at the guard rail, the truck decapitation and whatever bugs have yet to be discovered. 2) A distracted driver nay encounter one of those situations and see and avoid, even if drunk or looking down. The likely case is the current crop of self driving cars are much more dangerous and will remain that until some magical breakthrough happens that was mentioned above.
matz1 8y ago
The machine, of course
- cf498 8y ago
  Do you think your choice is representative of the population?
  - matz1 8y ago
    I hope so. Even if it not, at least I'm contributing to make it the representation.
ForHackernews 8y ago
In this hypothetical, I'd rather ride in a car driven by the human--I can see if my driver is drunk, texting, or otherwise distracted and yell at him or demand to get out of the car. With the computer, I'm just completely in the dark and then maybe I die in some stupid way.

rohit2412 8y ago

If that were the only options, we could choose the second. But you have the option of assistive technologies. Have the human drive and the machine supervise it. The mistakes made when the human falls asleep can be prevented. The mistakes that the machine makes, well those won't be made at all as human is the active driver.

sorokod 8y ago

I would choose the "machine" driver if it is two ( not one ) orders of magnitude safer. By the way, your examples are not very good as the drunk/texting driver makes a choice and to some extent her passengers too. No such choice is given with the car is autonomous.

magduf 8y ago
Drunk drivers don't just kill their passengers; they kill other drivers and pedestrians. You have no control over that.
- Piskvorrr 8y ago
  As opposed to...well. RIP EH.

JackFr 8y ago

> Which type of driver do you choose? Being able to explain the mistake (eating, texting) vs. (???) makes things qualitatively different. I think any reasonable level of risk for the computers can be acceptable, if glitches are explainable, able to be recreated and provably remediable.

fattire 8y ago
Yeah-- they are qualitatively different. I didn't want to cloud the question with this point, but data from a machine driver mistake can be used to train every other machine driver and make it better. While much can till be learned from the mistake made by a human driver, the error is not as likely to be minimized across the 'fleet' in the same way as it is for a machine driver, if that makes sense. Also it's probably important to keep in mind-- if my undestanding is correct-- companies like Tesla are only using neural nets for situational awareness-- to understand the car's position in space and in relation to the identified objects, paths, and obstacles around it. The actual logic related to the car's operation/behavior within that space is via traditional programming. So it's not quite a black box in terms of understanding why the car decided to act in a particular way-- it may be that something in the world was miscategorized or otherwise sensed incorrectly, which could be addressed (via better training/validation, etc.). Or it could be that it understood the world around it but took the wrong action, which could also be addressed (via traditional programming). If I'm wrong about that, I'm sure someone will chime in. (please do!)
- magduf 8y ago
  >While much can till be learned from the mistake made by a human driver, the error is not as likely to be minimized across the 'fleet' in the same way as it is for a machine driver, if that makes sense. This is some serious whitewashing here. It's not "unlikely", it's simply not going to happen at all. People have been killing innocents by drunk driving for decades now, so they obviously still haven't learned. They continually make the same mistakes, over and over. No, human drivers do not learn at all from each other's mistakes in any significant fashion. This could be changed, if we as a society wanted it to. We could mandate serious driver training (like what they do in Germany), and also periodic retraining. Putting people in simulators and test tracks and teaching them how to handle various situations, using the latest findings, would save a lot of lives. But we choose not to do this because it's expensive and we just don't care that much; we think that driving is some kind of inherent human right and it's very hard for people to lose that privilege in this country. And it doesn't help that not being able to drive equates to being very difficult to survive in much of the US thanks to a lack of public transit options.

RaceWon 8y ago

Here's the thing--they hand out drivers licenses to anyone. You need virtually no skills whatsoever to pass a road test here in the States. If I asked everyone on HN what steers the rear of a motor vehicle; I'd guess only 10% would guess correctly, and we're talking about some of the smartest most well read people on the Planet here. If I asked everyone on HN how many times they have practiced stopping their car from high speed in the shortest time possible, and were competent braking at high speed; I'd round that guess to virtually 0. Let's talk about the wet; can you control the car when it fishtails? Can you stop quickly in the rain? No and no. You simply can not be competent in a life and death situation without training, nor without a basic understanding of vehicle dynamics. You just can't. Now I'm not saying Everyone must be able to toss the car into a corner, get it sideways and clip the apex while whistling a happy tune; but for god's sakes can we at least mandate 2 days of training at a closed course by an instructor who has a clue about how to drive? That would absolutely save lives... lots and lots of lives. Which brings me to my favorite feature of some of these "self driving" cars: all of a sudden, with No warning whatsoever the computer says hey I'm fucked here --you have to drive now and save us all from certain disaster. I probably could not do that, and I sure as hell can toss a street car sideways into the corner while whistling a happy tune.

taneq 8y ago
> If I asked everyone on HN what steers the rear of a motor vehicle; What does this even mean? I'm guessing you're going for 'the throttle' but it's a pretty ambiguous question. Totally agree on advanced driver training though. If you don't know the limits of your vehicle then you shouldn't be driving it. As for the last point, I think we need to ditch the "level X" designations and describe automated vehicles in terms of time that they can operate autonomously without human intervention. A normal car is rated maybe 0.5s. Autopilot would be 0.5s - 1s. Waymo would be much more depending on how rarely they need a nudge from the remote operators.
- RaceWon 8y ago
  > What does this even mean? I'm guessing you're going for 'the throttle' but it's a pretty ambiguous question. I am going for the throttle (you know, to stop the car from rotating too much after I threw into that corner), and yes you are correct it (the throttle) does "steer" the rear of the car. Plus 1 btw. Ambiguous... maybe. Anyway; see you on the wet skidpad ;) .

base698 8y ago

I'd pick the distracted driver's currently and for two good reasons: 1) Computer has bugs that will kill the driver 100/100 times if they encounter that case. Driving at the guard rail, the truck decapitation and whatever bugs have yet to be discovered. 2) A distracted driver nay encounter one of those situations and see and avoid, even if drunk or looking down. The likely case is the current crop of self driving cars are much more dangerous and will remain that until some magical breakthrough happens that was mentioned above.

matz1 8y ago

The machine, of course

cf498 8y ago
Do you think your choice is representative of the population?
- matz1 8y ago
  I hope so. Even if it not, at least I'm contributing to make it the representation.

ForHackernews 8y ago

In this hypothetical, I'd rather ride in a car driven by the human--I can see if my driver is drunk, texting, or otherwise distracted and yell at him or demand to get out of the car. With the computer, I'm just completely in the dark and then maybe I die in some stupid way.