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I’m very skeptical of this authoritarian market logic whereby we are told we must sacrifice others lives for the sake of “progress,” which is almost exclusively

I’m very skeptical of this authoritarian market logic whereby we are told we must sacrifice others lives for the sake of “progress,” which is almost exclusively tied up with one person or business’ individual profit. While I don’t think autonomous cars are a particularly good investment for the future of transportation, does anyone doubt that with massive, publicly-funded investment we could not achieve them? And what’s more on terms where whatever “costs” were associated with them were subject to democratic checks and debate?

Bud 7y ago
1. We have democratic checks and debate now, regarding this issue. 2. I see no evidence that "massive, publicly-funded investment" would achieve this technological goal faster or better than via capitalistic means. Do you have any? 3. Lives will be lost regardless of how the tech is developed. Surely this is obvious. So what are you even talking about?
- sverige 7y ago
  Re: 1. above, who do we sue when the autopilot kills someone? The owner of the vehicle? The manufacturer? The driver behind the wheel (if there is one and it's not the same as the owner)?
  - revscat 7y ago
    That is an area that is still being debated. I suspect it will depend on the level of autonomy the car claims to provide. If it is level 5, and perhaps doesn't even include a steering wheel or other means of controlling the vehicle, then there would be no rational basis to hold anyone inside liable for failure. If, on the other hand, it is level 3 or 4, and does provide a steering wheel, and prominently informs the user that they are ultimately responsible for the vehicle, then the driver would be liable in this case. This technology is still evolving, though, and the law will need to be adjusted accordingly.
  - fizx 7y ago
    Ideally, every self-driving car would have secondary insurance baked into its price. If someone dies, it's an insurance payout of a standardized amount.
    - sverige 7y ago
      I don't think the plaintiff's bar is going to allow standardized payouts on deaths or injuries. That would ruin their business model, and they have a lot of influence. The question will be whether the inevitable losses due to jury awards can be sustained by any of the manufacturers.
- untog 7y ago
  I don't think anyone is suggesting that publicly-funded investment would make this happen faster. Just safer. It's an inherent characteristic of capitalism that the primary driver is profit. I mean, it's the whole point of the system. What is the value of one human life within this system? Historically that value has not been high. Now, when people saying "publicly-funded investment" it's a popular conception that this means a vast amount of government waste, because everything the government does is wasteful, right? How is three or four companies spending huge amounts of money to pursue the exact same goal not wasteful? Look at things like the internet itself. Public funding of technology can work.
  - isostatic 7y ago
    If * capitalistic automatic cars mean 2000 deaths per year, reducing linearly to zero after 10 years * socialist automatic cars eventually mean 1200 deaths per year, reducing to zero after 30 years * manual cars mean 1000 deaths per year, not reducing Then after 11 years total deaths will be the same in all 3 cases (11,000), but after 30 years it will be 11k capital, 18k socialist, and 30k and growing with no changes. However that's of no comfort to the families of who died in the start, especially the ones who didn't opt in (as was typical with flying when it was more dangerous).
    - untog 7y ago
      Is there any real point in debating numbers like this that are just plucked from the air?
      - isostatic 7y ago
        The relevant point is > I don't think anyone is suggesting that publicly-funded investment would make this happen faster. Just safer. The point is that while it could be safer per year, being slower means that it's not safer.
- simion314 7y ago
  Maybe OP is referring that some billionaire appears with some bad statistics that if we let him kill 1000 people he assures us that he will probably invent something to save double. Putting those billions in removing the drunk or tired drivers from the roads, enforcing the laws and rules would save more people.
- crististm 7y ago
  So are you volunteering?
- claudeganon 7y ago
  >1. We have democratic checks and debate now, regarding this issue. Not functionally, consistently, or meaningfully. Many of these companies have learned to how to ingratiate themselves to party machines in the markets where they operate, such that this decision-making is almost entirely excluded from public check or debate. Others, like Uber, willfully break laws with little consequence, for much of the same reason as the above. >2. I see no evidence that "massive, publicly-funded investment" would achieve this technological goal faster or better than via capitalistic means. Do you have any? As someone else pointed out, its not about faster but more safely. But the whole technology that these companies are building on top of was arrived at by this kind of public research to begin with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-driving_car#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-driving_car#History >3. Lives will be lost regardless of how the tech is developed. Surely this is obvious. So what are you even talking about? That private companies not be the nearly sole arbiters of what lives are worth sacrificing.
pjc50 7y ago
> does anyone doubt that with massive, publicly-funded investment we could not achieve them? Possibly, but the far harder thing to achieve is massive publicly-funded investment in the first place.
Wowfunhappy 7y ago
Humans are bad drivers, and countless people die in car crashes every year as a result. The question shouldn’t be whether autonomous cars will kill people, but whether they’ll kill more people than human drivers. If they'll kill fewer people, then on net they're saving lives, not "sacrificing" them.
- LIV2 7y ago
  If your wife or child got mowed down by an autonomous car would you be thinking "Oh well, that's progress!" Is it ethical to build something knowing it will definitely kill random people until you perfect the technology? Will auto makers be held accountable for any wrongful deaths caused by bugs?
  - ryandvm 7y ago
    Probably not, but are emotional responses the correct criteria for rational decision-making?
  - stagger87 7y ago
    Is there a name for this type of argument? I've seen it a lot with certain types of people, one that ignores any logic from the discussion and uses a sort of trap that makes you appear insensitive if you try to argue it? Is it appeal to pity?
    - MPetitt 7y ago
      Feels like a combo? https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-emotion https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-emotion https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/loaded-question https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/loaded-question
    - beerandt 7y ago
      The good place makes me think it's a version of the trolly problem. IANATOMP.
      - 7y ago
kolbe 7y ago
"does anyone doubt that with massive, publicly-funded investment we could not achieve them?" Yes, I very much doubt it in the US at least. We are many generations deep into an extremely nepotistic and corrupt bureaucracy. I have no faith that the US Federal Government is capable of handling even mundane projects at this point. We would require a serious shift in patriotism, education and accountability before I could believe the USA of 2020 is capable of doing something like the moon landing again.
- claudeganon 7y ago
  I'm confused by this sentiment as the technology was invented using this means to begin with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-driving_car#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-driving_car#History Why does government research always seem to become a corrupt, inefficient bureaucracy the moment that private industry runs off with its solutions to profit from?
  - kolbe 7y ago
    The US government has done some of the greatest technological accomplishments in history. The people who did them are largely the Jews who had immense gratitude and pride for being a part of the nation that halted Nazi Germany. It's the children of the soldiers who stormed Normandy. It's the citizens of a nation riding the most impressive economic wave in history. As a result, in the 50s and 60s, there was no better job to be had than working for the government. Astronauts were like the modern day equivalent of rock stars who also started Google. It wasn't the money, but the pride of being a part of yet another great accomplishment that the greatest nation in history was embarking on. But that's gone today. We still had some of this going into the early 90s, and DARPA and the NSA I'm sure could attract and underpay enough talent to make up for other government bloat. But in 2019, we have lost this national opinion (or delusion).
SideburnsOfDoom 7y ago
> I’m very skeptical of this authoritarian market logic whereby we are told we must sacrifice others lives for the sake of “progress,” Then you should be _very_ sceptical of the current state of affairs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in... https://www.newscientist.com/article/2196238-does-air-pollution-really-kill-nearly-9-million-people-each-year/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2196238-does-air-pollut...
- claudeganon 7y ago
  I am very skeptical of the place of the personal car in American life and the massive subsidies that automotive industry receives in terms of things like infrastructure and military defense of fossil fuels. But I also don't believe that autonomous cars are a good solution to these concerns relative to proven solutions like various forms of mass public transportation.
  - standyro 7y ago
    They may not be a perfect solution but people already waste hours of their lives stuck in traffic and clearly hate riding the bus. Look at the stats for declines in mass transportation ridership since Lyft/Uber took the US by storm. I love rail and subways, particularly high speed rail, but currently because of so many reasons, it's expensive to build per mile in major cities. Affordable mass produced semi-autonomous vehicles will quickly improve lives. We're already on the cusp of it. I own two them. Tesla and Comma.ai are the functional autonomous vehicle equivalent of the Apple iPhone and the Android T-Mobile G1. And there's no reason these sorts of industries won't be massively subsidized by a future (perhaps more liberal) American government, once we move on from subsidizing companies who barely innovate (General Motors, etc)
- twic 7y ago
  Air pollution is completely orthogonal to the deployment of autonomous cars.
sathackr 7y ago
People's lives are being sacrificed now, teaching us how to build safer cars. Some large percentage of the time, seatbelts prevent death or reduce the injury. Some small percentage of the time, they induce further injury or death. Do we stop using seatbelts until they are 100% effective? Was it a mistake to start putting seatbelts in cars before it could be proven that they absolutely wouldn't kill anyone?
- LanceH 7y ago
  Also look at what regulations have done to seat belts. They are almost all identical and the tech hasn't changed much in quite a while. Are they completely optimal, or are they merely sufficient for liability by meeting government standards?
  - volkl48 7y ago
    There is the question of what we are trying to optimize for. If you are trying to attain maximum safety for a belted passenger, then no, current passenger seatbelts are not optimal. This is clearly evident from the far better seatbelts and driver safety devices used in motorsport. Current seatbelts represent a tradeoff between safety if you use it, and how annoying they are to use (and therefore, how likely people are to get annoyed and not use them).
  - sathackr 7y ago
    It's a liability issue. Say someone gets hurt from a seatbelt. If it's designed exactly as required by regulation, there is an immunity for the company (IANAL so I don't know the legal term for this) IF you try to make it better, and do make it better for most cases, but worse for some edge case, then you have a liability issue in that your 'negligence' caused injury that wouldn't have happened otherwise. The stance on civil liability in America often stifles innovation in many areas regarding life safety. Tesla is learning this quickly.
Aunche 7y ago
> I’m very skeptical of this authoritarian market logic whereby we are told we must sacrifice others lives for the sake of “progress,” which is almost exclusively tied up with one person or business’ individual profit. This is a fairly nuanced Bloomberg article. You're making it sound like Elon himself is proclaiming that some sacrifices must be made for the sake of his self-driving Teslas.
- Piskvorrr 7y ago
  Of course. Even the article mentions Elon Musk never ever saying anything even slightly off: "uh, now I took my hands off the wheel and it still drives well, but that would be illegal, don't do it, wink wink, nod nod". Far better to have someone else do the job. Independently, of course: it's definitely NOT Elon Musk saying that, no no no. Nod, nod, wink, wink.
shafyy 7y ago
It's not like we are sacrificing lives to get there. Data shows that, at the margin, Autopilot prevents more accident than it causes. So, the headline of the article is wrong IMO, but in the article the author makes the correct points.
- semi-extrinsic 7y ago
  What data shows this? Has there been a public release of sufficient amount of data to support your claim? Tesla Autopilot has driven in total 1.6 billion miles on highways, in clear conditions, in modern high-crash-safety cars. There have been 3 fatalities. The equivalent number for 1.6 billion miles across all road types, all weather conditions and all types of vehicles would be 22 deaths in the US. But in the UK that number would only be 8, illustrating that safety is tightly linked with road conditions and vehicle demographics. As the Autopilot is only used in the easiest conditions and safest cars, there is simply not enough statistics to say whether they are safer or not. You would have to collect data on a single version of the system for half a decade before you could say anything certain.
  - shafyy 7y ago
    Exactly the data you cited. I agree that we need more data, but it does seem that we're not "sacrificing lives" to get autonomous driving to work, does it?
    - czzr 7y ago
      It does not. The expected number of deaths for 1.6bn miles in expensive cars in perfect driving conditions is probably 0, Tesla had 3.
  - dpcx 7y ago
    I asked a question on Twitter a few weeks/months ago, and didn't receive a very good answer: At what point do we have enough data?
    - 7y ago
mark-r 7y ago
> does anyone doubt that with massive, publicly-funded investment we could not achieve them? Yes, I doubt it. The scale of the problem is massively bigger than anybody will admit right now. To get to the point where an automated car will kill fewer people than human drivers, the car must have an understanding of its environment. Machine learning isn't going to get us there.
- beerandt 7y ago
  I say variations of this all the time. I don't get why people just assume AI will be better. It's like questioning the existence of their God.
  - jakeogh 7y ago
    Sci-fi conditioning mixed with a hefty assumption that people are computers.
- thfuran 7y ago
  > To get to the point where an automated car will kill fewer people than human drivers, the car must have an understanding of its environment. Are you sure about that? > Machine learning isn't going to get us there Do you mean ANNs aren't going to get us there?
  - jakeogh 7y ago
    Binary computing is never going to emulate wetware on a reasonable scale. A few neurons? Sure. It's going to take a different pardigm, likely biological. Evolving FPGA's (by ignoring the digital abstraction) is a window into why.
    - aeternum 7y ago
      Citation needed. Let's look at the scale. A brain neuron is 4 microns to 100 microns in size. Whereas a transistor sizes are now pushing 3nm. That's a lot of free space to work with, why can't we easily simulate many neurons within the space of a biological neuron?
traderjane 7y ago
If you choose traditional vehicles you are also sacrificing lives... is that not clear?
GaryNumanVevo 7y ago
It plays perfectly into the neoliberal ideal of expansive personal freedoms, enabled through technology, purchased by capital. Why don't we see any fully autonomous buses? You could run buses 24 / 7 without worrying about drivers. The difference, people aren't going to pay 50k for a bus seat.

Bud 7y ago

1. We have democratic checks and debate now, regarding this issue. 2. I see no evidence that "massive, publicly-funded investment" would achieve this technological goal faster or better than via capitalistic means. Do you have any? 3. Lives will be lost regardless of how the tech is developed. Surely this is obvious. So what are you even talking about?

sverige 7y ago
Re: 1. above, who do we sue when the autopilot kills someone? The owner of the vehicle? The manufacturer? The driver behind the wheel (if there is one and it's not the same as the owner)?
- revscat 7y ago
  That is an area that is still being debated. I suspect it will depend on the level of autonomy the car claims to provide. If it is level 5, and perhaps doesn't even include a steering wheel or other means of controlling the vehicle, then there would be no rational basis to hold anyone inside liable for failure. If, on the other hand, it is level 3 or 4, and does provide a steering wheel, and prominently informs the user that they are ultimately responsible for the vehicle, then the driver would be liable in this case. This technology is still evolving, though, and the law will need to be adjusted accordingly.
- fizx 7y ago
  Ideally, every self-driving car would have secondary insurance baked into its price. If someone dies, it's an insurance payout of a standardized amount.
  - sverige 7y ago
    I don't think the plaintiff's bar is going to allow standardized payouts on deaths or injuries. That would ruin their business model, and they have a lot of influence. The question will be whether the inevitable losses due to jury awards can be sustained by any of the manufacturers.
untog 7y ago
I don't think anyone is suggesting that publicly-funded investment would make this happen faster. Just safer. It's an inherent characteristic of capitalism that the primary driver is profit. I mean, it's the whole point of the system. What is the value of one human life within this system? Historically that value has not been high. Now, when people saying "publicly-funded investment" it's a popular conception that this means a vast amount of government waste, because everything the government does is wasteful, right? How is three or four companies spending huge amounts of money to pursue the exact same goal not wasteful? Look at things like the internet itself. Public funding of technology can work.
- isostatic 7y ago
  If * capitalistic automatic cars mean 2000 deaths per year, reducing linearly to zero after 10 years * socialist automatic cars eventually mean 1200 deaths per year, reducing to zero after 30 years * manual cars mean 1000 deaths per year, not reducing Then after 11 years total deaths will be the same in all 3 cases (11,000), but after 30 years it will be 11k capital, 18k socialist, and 30k and growing with no changes. However that's of no comfort to the families of who died in the start, especially the ones who didn't opt in (as was typical with flying when it was more dangerous).
  - untog 7y ago
    Is there any real point in debating numbers like this that are just plucked from the air?
    - isostatic 7y ago
      The relevant point is > I don't think anyone is suggesting that publicly-funded investment would make this happen faster. Just safer. The point is that while it could be safer per year, being slower means that it's not safer.
simion314 7y ago
Maybe OP is referring that some billionaire appears with some bad statistics that if we let him kill 1000 people he assures us that he will probably invent something to save double. Putting those billions in removing the drunk or tired drivers from the roads, enforcing the laws and rules would save more people.
crististm 7y ago
So are you volunteering?
claudeganon 7y ago
>1. We have democratic checks and debate now, regarding this issue. Not functionally, consistently, or meaningfully. Many of these companies have learned to how to ingratiate themselves to party machines in the markets where they operate, such that this decision-making is almost entirely excluded from public check or debate. Others, like Uber, willfully break laws with little consequence, for much of the same reason as the above. >2. I see no evidence that "massive, publicly-funded investment" would achieve this technological goal faster or better than via capitalistic means. Do you have any? As someone else pointed out, its not about faster but more safely. But the whole technology that these companies are building on top of was arrived at by this kind of public research to begin with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-driving_car#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-driving_car#History >3. Lives will be lost regardless of how the tech is developed. Surely this is obvious. So what are you even talking about? That private companies not be the nearly sole arbiters of what lives are worth sacrificing.

pjc50 7y ago

> does anyone doubt that with massive, publicly-funded investment we could not achieve them? Possibly, but the far harder thing to achieve is massive publicly-funded investment in the first place.

Wowfunhappy 7y ago

Humans are bad drivers, and countless people die in car crashes every year as a result. The question shouldn’t be whether autonomous cars will kill people, but whether they’ll kill more people than human drivers. If they'll kill fewer people, then on net they're saving lives, not "sacrificing" them.

LIV2 7y ago
If your wife or child got mowed down by an autonomous car would you be thinking "Oh well, that's progress!" Is it ethical to build something knowing it will definitely kill random people until you perfect the technology? Will auto makers be held accountable for any wrongful deaths caused by bugs?
- ryandvm 7y ago
  Probably not, but are emotional responses the correct criteria for rational decision-making?
- stagger87 7y ago
  Is there a name for this type of argument? I've seen it a lot with certain types of people, one that ignores any logic from the discussion and uses a sort of trap that makes you appear insensitive if you try to argue it? Is it appeal to pity?
  - MPetitt 7y ago
    Feels like a combo? https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-emotion https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-emotion https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/loaded-question https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/loaded-question
  - beerandt 7y ago
    The good place makes me think it's a version of the trolly problem. IANATOMP.
    - 7y ago

kolbe 7y ago

"does anyone doubt that with massive, publicly-funded investment we could not achieve them?" Yes, I very much doubt it in the US at least. We are many generations deep into an extremely nepotistic and corrupt bureaucracy. I have no faith that the US Federal Government is capable of handling even mundane projects at this point. We would require a serious shift in patriotism, education and accountability before I could believe the USA of 2020 is capable of doing something like the moon landing again.

claudeganon 7y ago
I'm confused by this sentiment as the technology was invented using this means to begin with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-driving_car#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-driving_car#History Why does government research always seem to become a corrupt, inefficient bureaucracy the moment that private industry runs off with its solutions to profit from?
- kolbe 7y ago
  The US government has done some of the greatest technological accomplishments in history. The people who did them are largely the Jews who had immense gratitude and pride for being a part of the nation that halted Nazi Germany. It's the children of the soldiers who stormed Normandy. It's the citizens of a nation riding the most impressive economic wave in history. As a result, in the 50s and 60s, there was no better job to be had than working for the government. Astronauts were like the modern day equivalent of rock stars who also started Google. It wasn't the money, but the pride of being a part of yet another great accomplishment that the greatest nation in history was embarking on. But that's gone today. We still had some of this going into the early 90s, and DARPA and the NSA I'm sure could attract and underpay enough talent to make up for other government bloat. But in 2019, we have lost this national opinion (or delusion).

SideburnsOfDoom 7y ago

> I’m very skeptical of this authoritarian market logic whereby we are told we must sacrifice others lives for the sake of “progress,” Then you should be _very_ sceptical of the current state of affairs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in... https://www.newscientist.com/article/2196238-does-air-pollution-really-kill-nearly-9-million-people-each-year/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2196238-does-air-pollut...

claudeganon 7y ago
I am very skeptical of the place of the personal car in American life and the massive subsidies that automotive industry receives in terms of things like infrastructure and military defense of fossil fuels. But I also don't believe that autonomous cars are a good solution to these concerns relative to proven solutions like various forms of mass public transportation.
- standyro 7y ago
  They may not be a perfect solution but people already waste hours of their lives stuck in traffic and clearly hate riding the bus. Look at the stats for declines in mass transportation ridership since Lyft/Uber took the US by storm. I love rail and subways, particularly high speed rail, but currently because of so many reasons, it's expensive to build per mile in major cities. Affordable mass produced semi-autonomous vehicles will quickly improve lives. We're already on the cusp of it. I own two them. Tesla and Comma.ai are the functional autonomous vehicle equivalent of the Apple iPhone and the Android T-Mobile G1. And there's no reason these sorts of industries won't be massively subsidized by a future (perhaps more liberal) American government, once we move on from subsidizing companies who barely innovate (General Motors, etc)
twic 7y ago
Air pollution is completely orthogonal to the deployment of autonomous cars.

sathackr 7y ago

People's lives are being sacrificed now, teaching us how to build safer cars. Some large percentage of the time, seatbelts prevent death or reduce the injury. Some small percentage of the time, they induce further injury or death. Do we stop using seatbelts until they are 100% effective? Was it a mistake to start putting seatbelts in cars before it could be proven that they absolutely wouldn't kill anyone?

LanceH 7y ago
Also look at what regulations have done to seat belts. They are almost all identical and the tech hasn't changed much in quite a while. Are they completely optimal, or are they merely sufficient for liability by meeting government standards?
- volkl48 7y ago
  There is the question of what we are trying to optimize for. If you are trying to attain maximum safety for a belted passenger, then no, current passenger seatbelts are not optimal. This is clearly evident from the far better seatbelts and driver safety devices used in motorsport. Current seatbelts represent a tradeoff between safety if you use it, and how annoying they are to use (and therefore, how likely people are to get annoyed and not use them).
- sathackr 7y ago
  It's a liability issue. Say someone gets hurt from a seatbelt. If it's designed exactly as required by regulation, there is an immunity for the company (IANAL so I don't know the legal term for this) IF you try to make it better, and do make it better for most cases, but worse for some edge case, then you have a liability issue in that your 'negligence' caused injury that wouldn't have happened otherwise. The stance on civil liability in America often stifles innovation in many areas regarding life safety. Tesla is learning this quickly.

Aunche 7y ago

> I’m very skeptical of this authoritarian market logic whereby we are told we must sacrifice others lives for the sake of “progress,” which is almost exclusively tied up with one person or business’ individual profit. This is a fairly nuanced Bloomberg article. You're making it sound like Elon himself is proclaiming that some sacrifices must be made for the sake of his self-driving Teslas.

Piskvorrr 7y ago
Of course. Even the article mentions Elon Musk never ever saying anything even slightly off: "uh, now I took my hands off the wheel and it still drives well, but that would be illegal, don't do it, wink wink, nod nod". Far better to have someone else do the job. Independently, of course: it's definitely NOT Elon Musk saying that, no no no. Nod, nod, wink, wink.

shafyy 7y ago

It's not like we are sacrificing lives to get there. Data shows that, at the margin, Autopilot prevents more accident than it causes. So, the headline of the article is wrong IMO, but in the article the author makes the correct points.

semi-extrinsic 7y ago
What data shows this? Has there been a public release of sufficient amount of data to support your claim? Tesla Autopilot has driven in total 1.6 billion miles on highways, in clear conditions, in modern high-crash-safety cars. There have been 3 fatalities. The equivalent number for 1.6 billion miles across all road types, all weather conditions and all types of vehicles would be 22 deaths in the US. But in the UK that number would only be 8, illustrating that safety is tightly linked with road conditions and vehicle demographics. As the Autopilot is only used in the easiest conditions and safest cars, there is simply not enough statistics to say whether they are safer or not. You would have to collect data on a single version of the system for half a decade before you could say anything certain.
- shafyy 7y ago
  Exactly the data you cited. I agree that we need more data, but it does seem that we're not "sacrificing lives" to get autonomous driving to work, does it?
  - czzr 7y ago
    It does not. The expected number of deaths for 1.6bn miles in expensive cars in perfect driving conditions is probably 0, Tesla had 3.
- dpcx 7y ago
  I asked a question on Twitter a few weeks/months ago, and didn't receive a very good answer: At what point do we have enough data?
  - 7y ago

mark-r 7y ago

> does anyone doubt that with massive, publicly-funded investment we could not achieve them? Yes, I doubt it. The scale of the problem is massively bigger than anybody will admit right now. To get to the point where an automated car will kill fewer people than human drivers, the car must have an understanding of its environment. Machine learning isn't going to get us there.

beerandt 7y ago
I say variations of this all the time. I don't get why people just assume AI will be better. It's like questioning the existence of their God.
- jakeogh 7y ago
  Sci-fi conditioning mixed with a hefty assumption that people are computers.
thfuran 7y ago
> To get to the point where an automated car will kill fewer people than human drivers, the car must have an understanding of its environment. Are you sure about that? > Machine learning isn't going to get us there Do you mean ANNs aren't going to get us there?
- jakeogh 7y ago
  Binary computing is never going to emulate wetware on a reasonable scale. A few neurons? Sure. It's going to take a different pardigm, likely biological. Evolving FPGA's (by ignoring the digital abstraction) is a window into why.
  - aeternum 7y ago
    Citation needed. Let's look at the scale. A brain neuron is 4 microns to 100 microns in size. Whereas a transistor sizes are now pushing 3nm. That's a lot of free space to work with, why can't we easily simulate many neurons within the space of a biological neuron?

traderjane 7y ago

If you choose traditional vehicles you are also sacrificing lives... is that not clear?

GaryNumanVevo 7y ago

It plays perfectly into the neoliberal ideal of expansive personal freedoms, enabled through technology, purchased by capital. Why don't we see any fully autonomous buses? You could run buses 24 / 7 without worrying about drivers. The difference, people aren't going to pay 50k for a bus seat.