5 ms·

It doesn't have to work perfectly - it just has to work better than humans. Our sensors ain't real great in snow and rain, either.

by beat 7y ago

ben_w 7y ago
It needs slightly more than that: when it fails, it needs to be able to demonstrate that no human would’ve succeeded in its place. This isn’t a moral or a technical issue, just public relations. If a system reduces road deaths from ~30,000 per year to 365 per year, but one of those deaths was it mistaking a grey skirt for an open road [1], there will still be calls for its use to be outlawed — basically what’s happening now with antivaxxers, and they’re hard enough to deal with when all the evidence is against them. [1] just to give a concrete example
- AtlasBarfed 7y ago
  By "fail" you mean crash, or it detects that it's uncertainty gets too large and it pulls over safely, forcing you to wait or take over yourself? Insurance companies will force the adoption once they become proven safe. The added insurance costs for luddites will price them out of the market.
  - Majromax 7y ago
    > The added insurance costs for luddites will price them out of the market. What added insurance costs? It's not like adding self-driving cars to the road will make manual driving more dangerous. No safety technology could make insuring self-driving cars any cheaper than free. Would free car insurance act as enough inducement to drive the fearful away from their steering wheels?
    - bluGill 7y ago
      When people realize the self driving cars are better the damage claims from human accidents can go up. Right now if you kill a kid with your car you get 7 months in jail and your insurance company pays a $150,000 (these are real numbers from a 3 year old that I was really close to). If self driving cars are really that much better courts will start handing out much larger judgments.
  - m463 7y ago
    > Insurance companies Because corporate profit is maximized by their accuracy, actuaries are the factual island in a sea of marketing proclamations, out of control media and silly regulations.
- glitchc 7y ago
  It seems even that is not enough. Most people would prefer it succeeds where the human fails, and is on the whole better than the human in every way.
- beat 7y ago
  And if there are no examples of machine-only failure? Then they will be invented, good ol' fake news. Because our anxiety about AI driving isn't about whether or not the tech will work. edit: Our fear of autonomous driving is akin to fear of flying. Flying is, by any measure, far safer than driving, but people are terrified of flying in a way far different than how they feel about driving.
  - ben_w 7y ago
    Sure, people are scared of lots of things that they shouldn’t be scared of — I’m more worried about politicians being given a high visibility reason to outlaw something which is strictly an improvement, with emphasis on “high visibility“, and thanks to the availability heuristic one per day is all you need.

It doesn't have to work perfectly - it just has to work better than humans. Our sensors ain't real great in snow and rain, either.

by beat 7y ago

It doesn't have to work perfectly - it just has to work better than humans. Our sensors ain't real great in snow and rain, either.

ben_w 7y ago

It needs slightly more than that: when it fails, it needs to be able to demonstrate that no human would’ve succeeded in its place. This isn’t a moral or a technical issue, just public relations. If a system reduces road deaths from ~30,000 per year to 365 per year, but one of those deaths was it mistaking a grey skirt for an open road [1], there will still be calls for its use to be outlawed — basically what’s happening now with antivaxxers, and they’re hard enough to deal with when all the evidence is against them. [1] just to give a concrete example

AtlasBarfed 7y ago
By "fail" you mean crash, or it detects that it's uncertainty gets too large and it pulls over safely, forcing you to wait or take over yourself? Insurance companies will force the adoption once they become proven safe. The added insurance costs for luddites will price them out of the market.
- Majromax 7y ago
  > The added insurance costs for luddites will price them out of the market. What added insurance costs? It's not like adding self-driving cars to the road will make manual driving more dangerous. No safety technology could make insuring self-driving cars any cheaper than free. Would free car insurance act as enough inducement to drive the fearful away from their steering wheels?
  - bluGill 7y ago
    When people realize the self driving cars are better the damage claims from human accidents can go up. Right now if you kill a kid with your car you get 7 months in jail and your insurance company pays a $150,000 (these are real numbers from a 3 year old that I was really close to). If self driving cars are really that much better courts will start handing out much larger judgments.
- m463 7y ago
  > Insurance companies Because corporate profit is maximized by their accuracy, actuaries are the factual island in a sea of marketing proclamations, out of control media and silly regulations.
glitchc 7y ago
It seems even that is not enough. Most people would prefer it succeeds where the human fails, and is on the whole better than the human in every way.
beat 7y ago
And if there are no examples of machine-only failure? Then they will be invented, good ol' fake news. Because our anxiety about AI driving isn't about whether or not the tech will work. edit: Our fear of autonomous driving is akin to fear of flying. Flying is, by any measure, far safer than driving, but people are terrified of flying in a way far different than how they feel about driving.
- ben_w 7y ago
  Sure, people are scared of lots of things that they shouldn’t be scared of — I’m more worried about politicians being given a high visibility reason to outlaw something which is strictly an improvement, with emphasis on “high visibility“, and thanks to the availability heuristic one per day is all you need.