9 ms·
Still better than humans, humans kill 3000 people using vehicles every day, and most of those aren't even trying
by mavhc 7y ago
Still better than humans, humans kill 3000 people using vehicles every day, and most of those aren't even trying
- est31 7y agoYeah but if the system is designed in the wrong way, hackers could kill millions in a single moment. Admittedly, this danger already exists as in all modern cars between driver and car there is a layer of (hackable and wireless network connected) software.
- the-pigeon 7y agoHackers could hijack a missile and kill a lot of people too. This is why we have security. And honestly modern cars are so computerized already I think your argument applies to them as much as autonomous cars.
- ben_w 7y ago“We’re already doomed” isn’t a good reason to not be concerned about new ways to be doomed. Yes, we have security. Yes, cars can (probably) already be hacked, perhaps even en-mass rather than in targeted ways. But: one the big advantages of machine learning in cars is that every car can learn from the experiences of every other car. That makes them monocultures. Monocultures are fragile. You find the weakness of one, you find the weakness of all. I want the benefits of the former without the risks of the latter. I don’t know if that’s even possible.
- umvi 7y ago> I want the benefits of the former without the risks of the latter. I don’t know if that’s even possible. That's where competition comes in. Just like AMD vs. Intel or OSX vs. Windows. If you find a weakness in one, you don't necessarily find a weakness in the other. Hence, finding a weakness in Tesla doesn't mean it will work against Waymo or Uber.
- ben_w 7y agoTo the extent that there is competition, there is an identical loss of opportunity to learn from each other’s mistakes.
- est31 7y ago> Hackers could hijack a missile and kill a lot of people too. That's a sunken cost fallacy. Only because other things are hackable as well doesn't mean there is no danger. > And honestly modern cars are so computerized already I think your argument applies to them as much as autonomous cars. I've said that in my comment above as well, but it was in an edit before you replied so I guess you didn't refresh before submitting the comment.
- dmurray 7y ago> That's a sunken cost fallacy. Only because other things are hackable as well doesn't mean there is no danger. It's really not a sunken cost fallacy. It's good evidence that the "think of the terrorists" angle is overblown. There are plenty of other problems with self-driving cars, but not that one.
- rixed 7y agoAnd plenty of other problems with missiles before that one too. As the news dramatically reminded us recently, the number one cause of non accidental casualties in plane is being shot down by the military, by a very large margin before terrorism. Similarly it is not hard to guess that car related casualties due to terrorism is never going to be significant compared to others. Terrorism overall is not a big issue, despite we like to think that our main problems are caused by a few malignant individuals.
- yellow_lead 7y agoI'll bite. Aside from Tesla owners, I do not know anyone in my life today whose vehicle connects to the Internet. Of course, I mean to say I don't see how your comparison to present day is accurate.
- NullPrefix 7y ago>Aside from Tesla owners, I do not know anyone in my life today whose vehicle connects to the Internet When did the whole OnStar botnet start? I think it's earlier than 2010.
- yellow_lead 7y agoI wasn't aware of that. I suppose that would count as the car, but doesn't most car hacking occur when the component has access to i.e the CAM bus?
- Vendan 7y agoWhy do you think OnStar doesn't have access to the can bus https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10008228 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10008228
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- shagie 7y agoThere was the Jeep a few years ago... https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-highway/ https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-hig...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jupp0r 7y agoMy 2017 Ford connects to wifi.
- deleted 7y ago
- brandonmenc 7y agoCome on, you know missiles are locked down with way more security than consumer vehicles.
- ClumsyPilot 7y agoI am sorry, what? Which missile system can be hacked and launched remotely? This is a ridiculous claim. Cars are already getting hacked. The whole point of the post is to highlight how car manufacturers have no concern or competence for security, is will be like the boeing scandal but much worse.
- wozniacki 7y agoAt best, youre conflating two vastly different things - Boeing engineers and car manufacturers. At worst, youre a troll. Cars are no where being hacked at the scale or magnitude that affected the numbers involved in the Boeing fumble. No where near. Not even remotely close.
- ajhurliman 7y agoI think what they meant by "tricking" the cars is to paint roads in a deceiving way to make cars meander into lakes or something like that, not hacking everyone's cars.
- TwoBit 7y agoBut cars will recognize that something changed and validate it.
- beerandt 7y agoThis presumes a car with logical abilities that would negate the need for infrastructure to "meet it halfway."
- cmsj 7y agoIt doesn't even have to be malicious. I was driving through Germany recently and some roadworks on a highway meant we were using temporary contraflow lanes, and even with my big fancy human brain, I was sometimes struggling to decide which of the layers of permanent/temporary lane markings I should observe.
- jfengel 7y agoSounds like a great case for computers. They can communicate with each other and all make the same decisions. Even if it's "wrong", it'll be safer if they all make the same wrong decision than a bunch of people coming to different conclusions and demonstrating it only by putting 3,000 pounds of steel where they think it should go.
- neckbeak 7y agoLike a lot of technologies. Nuclear plants still happened.
- heavyset_go 7y agoThere is no evidence that automated driving systems are any safer than human drivers, or that they ever will be.
- tensor 7y agoAutopilot is evidence that automated systems are already better than humans today. The edge cases scare people but on aggregate the stats show is superior to people. This sort of tech is only going to keep getting better.
- pjkundert 7y agoLook up "Ergodicity". Autopilot doesn't need to be 2x or 10x better than a human driver -- it needs to be 100x or 1,000x better, or nobody (sane) should touch it. The problem is not that autopilot is superior than your own driving in the vast majority of the cases! The problem is the 1 in a million times when it makes a trivial mistake that virtually no human would, and kills you instantly. Like driving under an obvious semi-trailer, and shearing your torso off. An understandable example: You have two games of chance, both with identical 5/6 chance of winning. One game, you'll play immediately (and as often as possible). The other, you would never play, not even once. How is that possible? Both have identical 5/6 chances of winning? But, one is "ergotic", meaning that the odds hold over the long term as often as you play, and one is "non-ergotic", meaning that as soon as you lose, you're finished. One is a single dice roll. The other is Russian Roulette. Self-driving cars are Russian Roulette. One "mistake" on the part of the system, and you're dead. The fact that the "stats" prove that it is safer, overall, don't change the fact: you and your family are dead.
- kens 7y agoPeople die all the time from driving under a semi-trailer. Look up "Underride". Over 200 people die every year from underride crashes in the US, so this isn't a mistake made only by autopilots. In other words, if we switched to self-driving cars and three people died every week when the autopilot drove into a semi-trailer, that would be a big improvement.
- tehjoker 7y agoGood luck getting the system to even that level of proficiency. Not impossible, but people are actually very good drivers (that still kill truckloads of people).
- LargoLasskhyfv 7y agoNow imagine every car equipped to 'self-drive'. No manually driven cars anymore anywhere. No old timers, no exceptions. What would the daily dead rate be? 30k? 30m? Somewhere in between? Lower? It's easy to say they are better, when there are so few of them. (Compared to the amount of human driven cars)
- 6510 7y agoConfigurable! A reasonable amount of death. Not to much but enough to still allow for fast traffic. This kind of calc is already done for car safety features. It probably is as ridiculous as it sounds but who am I to judge.
- LargoLasskhyfv 7y agoAscribe it to my typical german worryguts. DELTA DASH NOVEMBER OSCAR NOVEMBER OSCAR