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In isolation, you're right. Why on earth should giant robots be tested on public roads, especially when they can kill people? When we actually look at safety o

In isolation, you're right. Why on earth should giant robots be tested on public roads, especially when they can kill people? When we actually look at safety on public roads, you know what kills more people? Other people. We don't need the robots to be perfect to get them on the road. We just need them to be safer than human drivers. That is a much lower bar to meet.

carapace 7y ago
> We don't need the robots to be perfect to get them on the road. We just need them to be safer than human drivers. > That is a much lower bar to meet. First, maybe. I don't doubt that auto-autos will be able to handle anything that's "in the book", and that, if we set it up right, "the book" will be constantly expanding and becoming more comprehensive as each machine in the fleet shares its history in near-realtime and offline processors integrate the data into new stimulus-response patterns or whatever. Etc. Handwave. But I also suspect that driving safely IRL requires GAI. (After all, we evolved GAI to deal with the world, eh? If the world were simpler we would be dumber, no?) Anyhow, let's grant the point for the sake of discussion: > We just need them to be safer than human drivers. Okay, fine... How do you know when they pass that point? Until we are sure that's the case, don't test them on the public roads with moms and dads and kids and old people and cats and dogs, eh? eh? - - - - And what about the nerf golf cart? I would love to have a machine into which I could confidently place my mother, who is suffering from dementia and can no longer drive or even ride the bus by herself, and have it transport her safely to and from, say, an appointment with her doctor. That machine doesn't have to travel more than 5-10 kph. One of the basic principles of safe auto-autos is that they should never travel faster than they can stop. Meaning, whatever the conditions, the aa should be 100% "confident" that it could stop before a collision, even if that means traveling at a walking pace. (If this isn't the case then you have built a killer robot whatever else it is. And it won't even protect you from the Terrible Secret of Space.) That's what I mean about self-driving cars being a techno-fetish. We could build something tomorrow that wouldn't be able to kill people and sell it, but we're obsessed with speed and don't even realize it. We're blinded by visions of driving Knight Industries Two Thousand.

carapace 7y ago

> We don't need the robots to be perfect to get them on the road. We just need them to be safer than human drivers. > That is a much lower bar to meet. First, maybe. I don't doubt that auto-autos will be able to handle anything that's "in the book", and that, if we set it up right, "the book" will be constantly expanding and becoming more comprehensive as each machine in the fleet shares its history in near-realtime and offline processors integrate the data into new stimulus-response patterns or whatever. Etc. Handwave. But I also suspect that driving safely IRL requires GAI. (After all, we evolved GAI to deal with the world, eh? If the world were simpler we would be dumber, no?) Anyhow, let's grant the point for the sake of discussion: > We just need them to be safer than human drivers. Okay, fine... How do you know when they pass that point? Until we are sure that's the case, don't test them on the public roads with moms and dads and kids and old people and cats and dogs, eh? eh? - - - - And what about the nerf golf cart? I would love to have a machine into which I could confidently place my mother, who is suffering from dementia and can no longer drive or even ride the bus by herself, and have it transport her safely to and from, say, an appointment with her doctor. That machine doesn't have to travel more than 5-10 kph. One of the basic principles of safe auto-autos is that they should never travel faster than they can stop. Meaning, whatever the conditions, the aa should be 100% "confident" that it could stop before a collision, even if that means traveling at a walking pace. (If this isn't the case then you have built a killer robot whatever else it is. And it won't even protect you from the Terrible Secret of Space.) That's what I mean about self-driving cars being a techno-fetish. We could build something tomorrow that wouldn't be able to kill people and sell it, but we're obsessed with speed and don't even realize it. We're blinded by visions of driving Knight Industries Two Thousand.