5 ms·

> "Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I am willing to make." Honest question: If beta testing speeds up the transition to FSD by x months/years and caus

• tptacek 5y ago
  No, of course it isn't; think, for instance, of applying that same logic to other circumstances. You can't knowingly or recklessly endanger people simply because your long-term intentions are benign.
  • davej 5y ago
    There needs to be some testing of FSD solutions in real world scenarios and there will inevitably be deaths. There are thousands of deaths on the road every day right now. Even if FSD is mature and 1000x safer than human driving then there will still be deaths. Are you suggesting that if FSD is 1000x safer then it still shouldn't be allowed on the road because there is the possibility of deaths? I'm not claiming that FSD should or shouldn't be allowed on the road right now. My point is that we shouldn't wait for the chances of death to be zero.
    • heavyset_go 5y ago
      > There needs to be some testing of FSD solutions in real world scenarios and there will inevitably be deaths. There are thousands of deaths on the road every day right now. This is a solved problem with experimental design. Experiments are designed and reviewed by ethics boards, and participants are gathered after getting their informed consent and giving them just compensation for the risks involved. "Testing of FSD solutions in the real world" can follow the same path in their experimental designs, but they don't, because executives and shareholders don't want to pay for expensive ethical experimentation. They'd rather move fast and break bodies. Most modern life saving devices and treatments have gone through exactly this type of ethical experimentation. There's no reason Tesla's products couldn't, as well.
• andbberger 5y ago
  the other companies have no problems following the rules
  • twblalock 5y ago
    What rules did Tesla break here?
• stubish 5y ago
  Ethically, it is not an acceptable trade off. Your question is set in the future, after the action has been shown to be a success. A choice made today cannot be made ethical retroactively because it turned out to be the right decision. And it is unlikely we can prove the action caused the success in any case, or that not performing the action might have been better (maybe a success tomorrow sets back a better approach by 50 years, causing many more deaths). The better question to ask is 'if beta testing might speed up the transition to FSD and it might reduce the number of road deaths, is it an acceptable trade off?'. At which point you are doing risk analysis and algebra. But given this is the mathematics of human life, you are still in a very dubious ethical area, and the usual answer is still no.
  • davej 5y ago
    Of course, I don't know the future, it was just a hypothetical question, not a mathematical definition. My point was just the answer is not zero because the alternative is human driving and human driving is also not zero deaths. So, at some point we will have to make some sort of trade off that will involve some number of deaths. Unless you are suggesting that the likelihood of deaths should literally be zero before we start rolling out in public?
    • stubish 5y ago
      To indemnify manufacturers and drivers from the harm, it is going to require extraordinary proof and regulation. Similar to medicine, medical equipment, aircraft. Until that point, it is individual choice to turn it on, and their responsibility for any harm. Same situation as a driver choosing between wearing their eyeglasses or not. What is unclear is which individuals are taking responsibility with driverless trials, or if any indemnification by the state for driverless trials was done ethically.
• standyro 5y ago
  Reminds me of that moment in Fight Club. “Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.“