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> instead of just fencing off the highways and inventing an autonomous system of vehicles As a popular joke likes to say: The best place for AI cars is on spe

by Swizec 5y ago

> instead of just fencing off the highways and inventing an autonomous system of vehicles As a popular joke likes to say: The best place for AI cars is on special roads. You can then make those cars drive very close togehter, even touching. Oh and you can then move the special road behind buildings instead of the front. Give room for more pedestrian friendly pleasant streets. Then you may as well move the road underground. You have invented the subway.

Zababa 5y ago
We have automated subway where I live, and while they're nice and modern, I understand why people would want the privacy and comfort of a personal car. That's one of the points that isn't mentionned in your joke. Another is that you could have your car use its AI in the special roads in the city and highways, and the rest of the time drive yourself, where AI is harder to implement. A bit like some hybrid cars where you can do most of the day to day commute on electricity, but for longer road trips you can use gas.
cratermoon 5y ago
Sort of. I think there's a good argument to be made for part-time self-driving cars with specially-designed highways in places where it makes sense. So you'd drive your car the old-fashioned way from your home on the residential streets until you get to the Automatic Interstate. There, you maneuver into the "pattern" lane and the road and the AI pull you into traffic and drive you to your exit. At that point you're directed out of the pattern and control is given back to you, where you take the side streets to wherever you were going. It has the advantage that it covers the very common use case where someone says they can't take public transportation because they need mobility at their destination.
- _jal 5y ago
  I kind of agree, in that I think there's a great argument to ban them from anywhere pedestrians are found.
  - cratermoon 5y ago
    Pedestrians and police cars, apparently https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/30/business/tesla-crash-police-car/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/30/business/tesla-crash-poli...
deelowe 5y ago
Is there not a space between "fully automated subway" and "automationless road" where practical solutions exist? Case in point, what if we changed the materials composition of road paint? Or, what if cars were designed to better alert other cars of their location and speed?
- mandevil 5y ago
  Are you going to attach these transmitters to every deer and every pedestrian? If not, we're back to 'elevated or buried road so we don't have to worry about animals and people- why not just build a train?' or 'AI which can solve the whole problem on its own' or 'If I recognize something unusual hand off back to a human, hope that they were paying attention and know what to do.' And that still leaves aside tricky things like construction sites, double parked cars, etc. Commercial airline autopilot has a lot more straightforward job: at normal operating altitudes there are no animals to worry about, no construction or other unexpected obstacles, and few other aircraft all of which can be essentially guaranteed to be squawking transponder codes of their own, and they still are mandated to have two pilots in them at all times. This is not because airlines like it- look how fast the flight engineer disappeared once flight management and navigation software became sufficient. It is instead because airlines have learned over the decades, from a lot of blood, that sometimes you need to have a pilot ready to intervene RIGHT THIS INSTANT, not 3 minutes from now when you've regained situational awareness after zoning out for a bit- and the AF447 disaster shows that they are right about that. And the only way to make sure you have such focus and alertness over many hours is to have two pilots, so they can trade off the responsibility of maintaining SA. And that's a much easier problem which has been actively attacked for decades.
  - deelowe 5y ago
    Are pedestrians and deer an issue today? I thought it was more specific than this.
coryrc 5y ago
Nobody poops in my car, busks, or gropes women. LMK when American governments can and do enforce minimal behavioural and safety standards in public.
- coryrc 5y ago
  Let's call street harassment what it is: an epidemic. According to a survey of subway riders conducted by the Office of the Manhattan Borough President in 2007, roughly two-thirds of respondents, mostly women, experienced sexual harassment on the subway; 69% reported feeling sexually threatened https://www.mic.com/articles/120898/7-simple-ways-to-stop-sexual-harassment-on-the-nyc-subway https://www.mic.com/articles/120898/7-simple-ways-to-stop-se...

by Swizec 5y ago

Zababa 5y ago

We have automated subway where I live, and while they're nice and modern, I understand why people would want the privacy and comfort of a personal car. That's one of the points that isn't mentionned in your joke. Another is that you could have your car use its AI in the special roads in the city and highways, and the rest of the time drive yourself, where AI is harder to implement. A bit like some hybrid cars where you can do most of the day to day commute on electricity, but for longer road trips you can use gas.

cratermoon 5y ago

Sort of. I think there's a good argument to be made for part-time self-driving cars with specially-designed highways in places where it makes sense. So you'd drive your car the old-fashioned way from your home on the residential streets until you get to the Automatic Interstate. There, you maneuver into the "pattern" lane and the road and the AI pull you into traffic and drive you to your exit. At that point you're directed out of the pattern and control is given back to you, where you take the side streets to wherever you were going. It has the advantage that it covers the very common use case where someone says they can't take public transportation because they need mobility at their destination.

_jal 5y ago
I kind of agree, in that I think there's a great argument to ban them from anywhere pedestrians are found.
- cratermoon 5y ago
  Pedestrians and police cars, apparently https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/30/business/tesla-crash-police-car/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/30/business/tesla-crash-poli...

deelowe 5y ago

Is there not a space between "fully automated subway" and "automationless road" where practical solutions exist? Case in point, what if we changed the materials composition of road paint? Or, what if cars were designed to better alert other cars of their location and speed?

mandevil 5y ago
Are you going to attach these transmitters to every deer and every pedestrian? If not, we're back to 'elevated or buried road so we don't have to worry about animals and people- why not just build a train?' or 'AI which can solve the whole problem on its own' or 'If I recognize something unusual hand off back to a human, hope that they were paying attention and know what to do.' And that still leaves aside tricky things like construction sites, double parked cars, etc. Commercial airline autopilot has a lot more straightforward job: at normal operating altitudes there are no animals to worry about, no construction or other unexpected obstacles, and few other aircraft all of which can be essentially guaranteed to be squawking transponder codes of their own, and they still are mandated to have two pilots in them at all times. This is not because airlines like it- look how fast the flight engineer disappeared once flight management and navigation software became sufficient. It is instead because airlines have learned over the decades, from a lot of blood, that sometimes you need to have a pilot ready to intervene RIGHT THIS INSTANT, not 3 minutes from now when you've regained situational awareness after zoning out for a bit- and the AF447 disaster shows that they are right about that. And the only way to make sure you have such focus and alertness over many hours is to have two pilots, so they can trade off the responsibility of maintaining SA. And that's a much easier problem which has been actively attacked for decades.
- deelowe 5y ago
  Are pedestrians and deer an issue today? I thought it was more specific than this.

coryrc 5y ago

Nobody poops in my car, busks, or gropes women. LMK when American governments can and do enforce minimal behavioural and safety standards in public.

coryrc 5y ago
Let's call street harassment what it is: an epidemic. According to a survey of subway riders conducted by the Office of the Manhattan Borough President in 2007, roughly two-thirds of respondents, mostly women, experienced sexual harassment on the subway; 69% reported feeling sexually threatened https://www.mic.com/articles/120898/7-simple-ways-to-stop-sexual-harassment-on-the-nyc-subway https://www.mic.com/articles/120898/7-simple-ways-to-stop-se...