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> and ship bug fixes for each person their prior code killed My question is always, who is responsible for those deaths? Or will we just have so little care

> and ship bug fixes for each person their prior code killed My question is always, who is responsible for those deaths? Or will we just have so little care for life that we consider them "for the cause"?

paul7986 5y ago
That's my sentiment on this .... progress will be a killer in this realm of software development and on a large scale. Developers who get into robot cars the deaths their AI makes doesn't or won't bother them? Just analyze the data, learn and ship the fix who cares about johnny, susie and their kid killed by their AI's mistake in which they weren't even driving a robot car just driving alongside one like Uber's pedestrian killer robot car. Right now the vast majority of developers code we are shipping is just fixing bugs in business and consumer applications where loss of life is almost nil in what we fix and ship.
- bdamm 5y ago
  Paul, some engineers already live in the world where mistakes can cost lives. Including automotive software engineers. In fact, the engineering world is full of people who make compromises knowing that the product could be safer, but they're aiming for safe enough because that's the only real way to move forward.
mikepurvis 5y ago
A valid question, and one that deserves an answer. However, also valid to note that 38k+ people die on US roads each yeah, and as I understand it, most of those are chalked up to being freak, unpreventable "accidents". So maybe there's a step here even ahead of autonomous vehicles where we commit to abandoning this way of thinking and insist that every road death is fully root-caused. Not just back to human error, but in the FAA sense, back to why equipment, processes, and infrastructure were in place that allowed a single moment of human inattention to be so deadly.
- bluGill 5y ago
  > Not just back to human error, but in the FAA sense, back to why equipment, processes, and infrastructure were in place that allowed a single moment of human inattention to be so deadly. I'm for it - but I'll bet the average person will be against all the weeks of training we will soon require every years before you are allowed to touch a car. It will be even worse once people realize how high the drop out rate is (people who fail and suddenly can't get around)
  - mikepurvis 5y ago
    Yeah. I think most advocates have long ago realized that the only way you could ever hope to have the requirements for vehicle piloting tightened up to where they should be is if you've built a society where 99% of people can drop out of the pool of drivers and survive, and that means some combination of a) robust mass transit, and b) machine pilots. The current system is obviously the result of a century of symbiosis between car-centric development and driving being seen by most as a requirement to participate in society, and therefore a de facto right.
dx034 5y ago
It depends on the kind of accident. Currently, accidents are also treated very differently depending on intend and the likelihood that this fault would've been made by other drivers. I assume software will be judged under the same circumstances.

paul7986 5y ago

That's my sentiment on this .... progress will be a killer in this realm of software development and on a large scale. Developers who get into robot cars the deaths their AI makes doesn't or won't bother them? Just analyze the data, learn and ship the fix who cares about johnny, susie and their kid killed by their AI's mistake in which they weren't even driving a robot car just driving alongside one like Uber's pedestrian killer robot car. Right now the vast majority of developers code we are shipping is just fixing bugs in business and consumer applications where loss of life is almost nil in what we fix and ship.

bdamm 5y ago
Paul, some engineers already live in the world where mistakes can cost lives. Including automotive software engineers. In fact, the engineering world is full of people who make compromises knowing that the product could be safer, but they're aiming for safe enough because that's the only real way to move forward.

mikepurvis 5y ago

A valid question, and one that deserves an answer. However, also valid to note that 38k+ people die on US roads each yeah, and as I understand it, most of those are chalked up to being freak, unpreventable "accidents". So maybe there's a step here even ahead of autonomous vehicles where we commit to abandoning this way of thinking and insist that every road death is fully root-caused. Not just back to human error, but in the FAA sense, back to why equipment, processes, and infrastructure were in place that allowed a single moment of human inattention to be so deadly.

bluGill 5y ago
> Not just back to human error, but in the FAA sense, back to why equipment, processes, and infrastructure were in place that allowed a single moment of human inattention to be so deadly. I'm for it - but I'll bet the average person will be against all the weeks of training we will soon require every years before you are allowed to touch a car. It will be even worse once people realize how high the drop out rate is (people who fail and suddenly can't get around)
- mikepurvis 5y ago
  Yeah. I think most advocates have long ago realized that the only way you could ever hope to have the requirements for vehicle piloting tightened up to where they should be is if you've built a society where 99% of people can drop out of the pool of drivers and survive, and that means some combination of a) robust mass transit, and b) machine pilots. The current system is obviously the result of a century of symbiosis between car-centric development and driving being seen by most as a requirement to participate in society, and therefore a de facto right.

dx034 5y ago

It depends on the kind of accident. Currently, accidents are also treated very differently depending on intend and the likelihood that this fault would've been made by other drivers. I assume software will be judged under the same circumstances.