5 ms·
That's the entire point of Stallman's essay. Those what-ifs (EDIT: well, #2 and #3) aren't things the self-driving car (or a human driver, in most cases) will c
by function_seven 6y ago
That's the entire point of Stallman's essay. Those what-ifs (EDIT: well, #2 and #3) aren't things the self-driving car (or a human driver, in most cases) will compute in the milliseconds it takes to make a decision.
> What if there is a car following close behind?
They may be able to stop fast enough. Whereas if you intentionally don't brake hard enough and strike the car in front of you, you (the computer) have traded a possibility for a certainty. You control your braking and following parameters, they control theirs. (EDIT: Yeah, if there's a lot of distance in front of you, then the car can make use of that. It doesn't need to screech to a halt in every case. But this isn't trolley-car territory, it's just the standard way adaptive cruise and emergency braking already works)
> What if the car behind has more passengers than the car in front of you?
Irrelevant. It is not the car's job to be counting the number of occupants in every other car on the highway.
> What if swerving will kill pedestrians, but less than the passengers in the car you're about to hit?
I want the self-driving car to not make that choice. The passengers in the car, however numerous, are much more likely to survive impact than unprotected pedestrians.
It really is straightforward. Don't burden self-driving cars with silly edge-cases. Apply the most effective mitigation known in the general sense, and see that everyone is happy because they can anticipate the car's choices a bit better.
- garmaine 6y ago> That's the entire point of Stallman's essay. Those what-ifs (EDIT: well, #2 and #3) aren't things the self-driving car (or a human driver, in most cases) will compute in the milliseconds it takes to make a decision. It could be computed in the seconds, or minutes which lead up to the incident. A smart driver, human or AI, has a ready, already computed backup plan.
- function_seven 6y agoYou count the number of occupants in the car behind you, and you factor that into your braking strategy? Or, do you count occupants in the car ahead, and prepare to do the pedestrian math if a quick avoidance is needed? No, of course not. If I'm about to rear-end another car, even if it's a 1973 Ford Pinto with 4 occupants, I'm not going to swerve toward sidewalk pedestrians in lieu of slamming on the brakes. Even if I have all the information ahead of time on that car's faults and occupancy level. Nor would I want a computer to make that decision either. You're not wrong. These are things a computer could do. But I'd say that they're not something we want them to be doing. We don't need programmers debating trolley-problem scenarios. They can focus on just reducing or eliminating impacts directly caused by the system they're building. In other words, just hit the brakes.
- garmaine 6y agoI agree. I’m just asserting that the point made by Stallman about there not being enough computational capacity in the milliseconds before a crash to compute the trolly problem is a straw man.