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Once self-driving is better we need to do is to create moral rules for AI. There is a car controlled by computer. Pedestrian (child) abruptly enter into road f

Once self-driving is better we need to do is to create moral rules for AI. There is a car controlled by computer. Pedestrian (child) abruptly enter into road from behind cover. The Computer knows that with current speed it is impossible to stop. Its other choices is to drive into the sidewalk killing an old lady, drive into the opposite lane risking the life of a car owner and people in another car. A Human driver can decide on instinct, usually protecting themselves. The Computer needs to have an algorithm that decide who will live and who dies.

bryanlarsen 6y ago
> The Computer knows that with current speed it is impossible to stop. Then the car was going too fast. Full stop. The rest of your scenario is irrelevant.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  >Then the car was going too fast. Full stop. The rest of your scenario is irrelevant. How can you possibly say that with a straight face? There will be situations where a car is going a perfectly fine speed for the situation and then the situation changes in a way the car cannot have seen, known about, or anticipated resulting in a crash. This happens all the time with human drivers. It will happen with AI drivers too. Furthermore, we don't subject anything else that moves to this burden, why would we do so for cars (AI or otherwise)?
  - closeparen 6y ago
    When you already believe that cars should not exist, it’s not much of a stretch to say that cars which do exist should be limited to less than a walking pace anywhere pedestrians might be present. There’s a thing about the car companies having essentially stolen public space from the everyone else when they made it incumbent on pedestrians to watch out for cars, and a desire to reverse this. Of course this would pretty much invalidate them as a transportation mechanism, but that’s the point.
    - Dylan16807 6y ago
      I think you could simultaneously have a better improvement for pedestrians and less impact on traffic by turning those parking spaces into sidewalks and greenery.
  - bryanlarsen 6y ago
    > Furthermore, we don't subject anything else that moves to this burden, why would we do so for cars (AI or otherwise)? Yes we do. There are many jurisdictions where in a pedestrian-car collision, the car is presumed to be at fault unless the driver can prove otherwise.
  - bryanlarsen 6y ago
    > There will be situations where a car is going a perfectly fine speed for the situation and then the situation changes in a way the car cannot have seen, known about, or anticipated resulting in a crash. The parent's situation was not one of those. This was a situation where "Pedestrian (child) abruptly enter into road from behind cover." and there's an old lady on the sidewalk. In other words, there's a situation with limited visibility, limited room to maneuver (since the only other option is to go up on the sidewalk) and pedestrians present (the child may not be known but the old lady was). If you're in that situation and you're going too fast that you can't stop on a dime, you were not going a "perfectly fine speed for the situation".
    - Chyzwar 6y ago
      In European cities you will often see pedestrians walking 1m from cars driving 50-70 km/h. Human drivers can take this risk, AI to be useful needs to handle it well.
    - Dylan16807 6y ago
      If 95% of human drivers do something, then you can't just call it "irrelevant" because you think it's wrong to do. And humans don't go past parked cars on a street at 5mph.
      - bryanlarsen 6y ago
        20mph is slow enough to essentially ensure collisions aren't fatal.
        Dylan16807 6y ago
        But they still get hit. And the first paper in google suggests that 5% are still going to die. That's pretty far from sure.
        bryanlarsen 6y ago
        My reference shows 1% at 30km/h. But even 1% is too high. But luckily you also usually get a chance to scrub off some speed through braking. Braking follows a square law, so driving a little bit slower gains a massive difference in stopping distances.
a_t48 6y ago
Have you as a human ever come into this situation?
glandium 6y ago
Why is it always about running to the sidewalk or the other lane? There's also the option to reduce speed as much as possible, aka break hard, that a computer can do a) earlier than a human would b) much harder than a human would. Yes, the people in the car might take a lot of negative Gs. But that's also an option. The car might still hit the kid, but the difference could be some broken bones, or with chance, bruises, vs. death.
- jjav 6y ago
  > There's also the option to reduce speed as much as possible, aka break hard, that a computer can do a) earlier than a human would b) much harder than a human would. a) A computer can initiate braking a small fraction of a second faster than a human, which is great but not such a huge difference in braking distance. b) A computer cannot brake any harder than a human, certainly not "much harder". The max deceleration rate is traction-limited, which any remotely modern car (last ~25 years) can easily sustain with an untrained driver thanks to modern ABS. (As a side hobby I instruct in car control and accident avoidance clinics. Blindly braking hard is not often the best answer.)
  - glandium 6y ago
    Most people don't actually hit the brakes as hard as they could or should.

bryanlarsen 6y ago

> The Computer knows that with current speed it is impossible to stop. Then the car was going too fast. Full stop. The rest of your scenario is irrelevant.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago
>Then the car was going too fast. Full stop. The rest of your scenario is irrelevant. How can you possibly say that with a straight face? There will be situations where a car is going a perfectly fine speed for the situation and then the situation changes in a way the car cannot have seen, known about, or anticipated resulting in a crash. This happens all the time with human drivers. It will happen with AI drivers too. Furthermore, we don't subject anything else that moves to this burden, why would we do so for cars (AI or otherwise)?
- closeparen 6y ago
  When you already believe that cars should not exist, it’s not much of a stretch to say that cars which do exist should be limited to less than a walking pace anywhere pedestrians might be present. There’s a thing about the car companies having essentially stolen public space from the everyone else when they made it incumbent on pedestrians to watch out for cars, and a desire to reverse this. Of course this would pretty much invalidate them as a transportation mechanism, but that’s the point.
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    I think you could simultaneously have a better improvement for pedestrians and less impact on traffic by turning those parking spaces into sidewalks and greenery.
- bryanlarsen 6y ago
  > Furthermore, we don't subject anything else that moves to this burden, why would we do so for cars (AI or otherwise)? Yes we do. There are many jurisdictions where in a pedestrian-car collision, the car is presumed to be at fault unless the driver can prove otherwise.
- bryanlarsen 6y ago
  > There will be situations where a car is going a perfectly fine speed for the situation and then the situation changes in a way the car cannot have seen, known about, or anticipated resulting in a crash. The parent's situation was not one of those. This was a situation where "Pedestrian (child) abruptly enter into road from behind cover." and there's an old lady on the sidewalk. In other words, there's a situation with limited visibility, limited room to maneuver (since the only other option is to go up on the sidewalk) and pedestrians present (the child may not be known but the old lady was). If you're in that situation and you're going too fast that you can't stop on a dime, you were not going a "perfectly fine speed for the situation".
  - Chyzwar 6y ago
    In European cities you will often see pedestrians walking 1m from cars driving 50-70 km/h. Human drivers can take this risk, AI to be useful needs to handle it well.
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    If 95% of human drivers do something, then you can't just call it "irrelevant" because you think it's wrong to do. And humans don't go past parked cars on a street at 5mph.
    - bryanlarsen 6y ago
      20mph is slow enough to essentially ensure collisions aren't fatal.
      - Dylan16807 6y ago
        But they still get hit. And the first paper in google suggests that 5% are still going to die. That's pretty far from sure.
        bryanlarsen 6y ago
        My reference shows 1% at 30km/h. But even 1% is too high. But luckily you also usually get a chance to scrub off some speed through braking. Braking follows a square law, so driving a little bit slower gains a massive difference in stopping distances.

a_t48 6y ago

Have you as a human ever come into this situation?

glandium 6y ago

Why is it always about running to the sidewalk or the other lane? There's also the option to reduce speed as much as possible, aka break hard, that a computer can do a) earlier than a human would b) much harder than a human would. Yes, the people in the car might take a lot of negative Gs. But that's also an option. The car might still hit the kid, but the difference could be some broken bones, or with chance, bruises, vs. death.

jjav 6y ago
> There's also the option to reduce speed as much as possible, aka break hard, that a computer can do a) earlier than a human would b) much harder than a human would. a) A computer can initiate braking a small fraction of a second faster than a human, which is great but not such a huge difference in braking distance. b) A computer cannot brake any harder than a human, certainly not "much harder". The max deceleration rate is traction-limited, which any remotely modern car (last ~25 years) can easily sustain with an untrained driver thanks to modern ABS. (As a side hobby I instruct in car control and accident avoidance clinics. Blindly braking hard is not often the best answer.)
- glandium 6y ago
  Most people don't actually hit the brakes as hard as they could or should.