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> Runaway trucks are a very real problem Yes. And autonomous trucks are an engineering problem, not an abstract philosophical question. You can ask the questio
by krisoft 4y ago
> Runaway trucks are a very real problem
Yes. And autonomous trucks are an engineering problem, not an abstract philosophical question. You can ask the question: “how is the autonomous truck going to know if it should slam into the petrol station or into the fruit stand?” And there is no good answer to that. Or you can ask: “How do we engineer autonomous trucks so the probability of a runaway incident is lower than epsilon?” And then suddenly it turns out this is a solveable problem with our existing tools. (With redundant brakes, and with built-in brake health checks.)
> under the additional constraints that you imposed on it yourself
I assume you mean comparing to what a competent human would do? It is implicit in the whole discussion. Human drivers are the current best practice. You are asking about the “fruit stand vs petrol station” question presumably because a human would know to choose the fruit stand.
Nobody is asking this alternate question, because they would immediately feel it is ridiculous: A young boy is crossing the road in front of an AV. In 30 years he will become a politician, will instigate a violent sectarian war which will result in the death of millions of innocents. Should the AV run him over thus preventing all that suffering?
Just to state the obvious: no, the AV should not run the boy over. But why is nobody asking this question? Because it is obviously silly. We as a human can’t look at a young boy and know them as a future mass murderer, therefore we don’t expect this from an autonomous car either.
> you are looking at an instance where an autonomous vehicle failed to make a reasonable decision that a human would right in this article.
Oh yes. And it is a fascinating one. I was reacting to your “fruit stand vs petrol pump” hypothetical not to the article directly.
- bcrl 4y agoIn the real world someone has to program the self driving system to make the decision about how to react. That is, there is a software team somewhere that is going to have to decide what behaviour to program into the system for the trolley problem. So, your statement that it is not an abstract philosophical question is patently false. Obligatory link to The Good Place making the trolley problem real here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtRhrfhP5b4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtRhrfhP5b4 It is hopelessly naive to think that these problems can simply be engineered away. In the real world failures happen in redundant systems. Air brakes are supposed to "fail safe", but in reality a host of factors contribute to accidents: how well a truck or trailer's brakes are maintained, engine state, speed, loading, temperature and grade all combine to make them fail. Trains have multiple braking systems, yet sometimes all 3 fail and a spectacular accident occurs. In addition to all the traditional mechanical issues, self driving vehicles have tonnes of software failure modes that traditional cars do not. More importantly, those software issues are not well understood at this point in time. If you want to better understand why software can't be trusted to Do The Right Thing, go back and read investigations analyzing failures of systems that have come before. The Therac-25 is good over here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 No system a human can build can be completely intrinsically safe. Mistakes by designers occur. Safety is a process that takes time and effort, and it will take decades for self driving cars to work out all the bugs.