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This seems to be simultaneously discounting AI (ChatGPT should have put to rest the idea that "it's all replication and repetition" by now, no?[1]) and wildly o

by ajross 4y ago

This seems to be simultaneously discounting AI (ChatGPT should have put to rest the idea that "it's all replication and repetition" by now, no?[1]) and wildly overestimating median human ability. In point of fact the human brain is absolutely terrible at driving. To the extent that without all the non-AI safety features implement in modern automobiles and street environments, driving would be more than a full order of magnitude more deadly. The safety bar[2] for autonomous driving is really, really low. And, yes, existing systems are crossing that bar as we speak. Even Teslas. [1] Or at least widely broadened our intuition about what can be accomplished with "mere" repetition and replication. [2] It's true though, that the practical bar is probably higher. We saw just last week that a routine accident that happens dozens of times every day becomes a giant front page freakout when there's a computer involved.

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
> the human brain is absolutely terrible at driving Compared to what?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- srveale 4y ago
  If humans do a task that causes >1 million deaths per year, I think we can say that overall we are terrible at that task without needing to make it relative to something else.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
    Not sure I agree. It's not hard to come up with tasks that inherently cause widespread death regardless of the skill of those who carry them out. Starting fairly large and heavy objects moving at considerable speed in the vicinity of other such objects and pedestrians, cyclists and stationary humans may just be one such task. That is, the inherent risks (i.e. you cannot stop these things instantly, or make them change direction instantly) combines with the cognitive/computational complexity of evaluating the context to create a task that can never be done without significant fatalities, regardless of who/what tries to perform it.
  - jhugo 4y ago
    I don't agree with this. Driving is, taken at its fundamentals, a dangerous activity; we are taking heavy machinery, accelerating it until it has considerable kinetic energy, and maneuvering it through a complex and constantly changing environment, often in situations where a single mistake will kill or seriously harm ourselves or other humans. The fact that a very large number of humans do this every day without causing any injury demonstrates that humans are very good at this task. The fact that deaths still occur simply shows that they could still be better.
    - mcswell 4y ago
      Agreed. I sometimes marvel as I'm driving on the freeway with other cars going 70, or maybe even more so when I'm driving 45 on a two lane highway, at how easy it would be to hit someone, and how comparatively seldom it happens.
  - pyth0 4y ago
    Now compare that >1 million deaths per year to the total number of people driving per year around the world... it looks like we're doing a pretty solid job.
  - refurb 4y ago
    You're looking at the wrong metric. 1.33 deaths per 100,000,000 vehicle miles travelled. That's amazingly good considering most people, if they drive at all, travel about 0.5% of that distance in their lifetime. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
hgomersall 4y ago
The difference regarding computers is that they absolutely cannot make a mistake a human would have avoided easily (like driving full speed into a lorry). That's the threshold for acceptable safety.
- ajross 4y ago
  I agree in practice that may be what ends up been necessary. But again, to repeat: that's because of the "HN Front Page Freakout" problem. The unambiguously correct answer to the problem is "is it measurably more safe by any metric you want to pick". Period. How much stuff is broken, people hurt, etc... Those are all quantifiable. (Also: your example is ridiculous. Human beings "drive full speed" into obstacles every single day! Tesla cross that threshold years ago.)
  - danenania 4y ago
    This is not necessarily true on an individual level though. Driving skills, judgment, risk-taking, alcoholism, etc. are nowhere close to evenly distributed. It's likely we'll go through a period where autonomous vehicles can reduce the overall number of accidents, injuries, and fatalities if widely adopted, but will still increase someone's personal risk vs. driving manually if they're a better than average driver.
  - hgomersall 4y ago
    But we don't live by a purely utilitarian principle of ethics. "I'm sorry Mrs Jones, I know your son had an expectation of crossing that pedestrian crossing in full daylight in a residential area without being mown down by a machine learning algorithm gone awry, but please rest assured that overall fewer people are dying as a result of humans not making the common set of different mistakes they used to make". All sorts of other factors are relevant to the ethics: who took the decision to drive; who's benefiting from the drive happening; is there a reasonable expectation of safety.
    - ajross 4y ago
      Yeah yeah, I get it. Moral philosophy is full of gray areas. I don't see how that remotely supports "AI cannot be allowed to make mistakes some humans would not", which was your decidedly absolutist position above. How about: "We should allow autonomy in most cases, though perhaps regulate it carefully to better measure its performance against manually-directed systems"
xeromal 4y ago
I think the biggest problem with AI driving is that while there are plenty of dumb human drivers there are also plenty of average drivers and plenty of skilled drivers. For the most part, if Tesla FSD does a dumb thing in a very specific edge case, ALL teslas do a dumb thing in a very specific edge case and that's what humans don't appreciate. A bug can render everyone's car dumb in a single instance.

by ajross 4y ago

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago

> the human brain is absolutely terrible at driving Compared to what?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
srveale 4y ago
If humans do a task that causes >1 million deaths per year, I think we can say that overall we are terrible at that task without needing to make it relative to something else.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  Not sure I agree. It's not hard to come up with tasks that inherently cause widespread death regardless of the skill of those who carry them out. Starting fairly large and heavy objects moving at considerable speed in the vicinity of other such objects and pedestrians, cyclists and stationary humans may just be one such task. That is, the inherent risks (i.e. you cannot stop these things instantly, or make them change direction instantly) combines with the cognitive/computational complexity of evaluating the context to create a task that can never be done without significant fatalities, regardless of who/what tries to perform it.
- jhugo 4y ago
  I don't agree with this. Driving is, taken at its fundamentals, a dangerous activity; we are taking heavy machinery, accelerating it until it has considerable kinetic energy, and maneuvering it through a complex and constantly changing environment, often in situations where a single mistake will kill or seriously harm ourselves or other humans. The fact that a very large number of humans do this every day without causing any injury demonstrates that humans are very good at this task. The fact that deaths still occur simply shows that they could still be better.
  - mcswell 4y ago
    Agreed. I sometimes marvel as I'm driving on the freeway with other cars going 70, or maybe even more so when I'm driving 45 on a two lane highway, at how easy it would be to hit someone, and how comparatively seldom it happens.
- pyth0 4y ago
  Now compare that >1 million deaths per year to the total number of people driving per year around the world... it looks like we're doing a pretty solid job.
- refurb 4y ago
  You're looking at the wrong metric. 1.33 deaths per 100,000,000 vehicle miles travelled. That's amazingly good considering most people, if they drive at all, travel about 0.5% of that distance in their lifetime. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...

hgomersall 4y ago

The difference regarding computers is that they absolutely cannot make a mistake a human would have avoided easily (like driving full speed into a lorry). That's the threshold for acceptable safety.

ajross 4y ago
I agree in practice that may be what ends up been necessary. But again, to repeat: that's because of the "HN Front Page Freakout" problem. The unambiguously correct answer to the problem is "is it measurably more safe by any metric you want to pick". Period. How much stuff is broken, people hurt, etc... Those are all quantifiable. (Also: your example is ridiculous. Human beings "drive full speed" into obstacles every single day! Tesla cross that threshold years ago.)
- danenania 4y ago
  This is not necessarily true on an individual level though. Driving skills, judgment, risk-taking, alcoholism, etc. are nowhere close to evenly distributed. It's likely we'll go through a period where autonomous vehicles can reduce the overall number of accidents, injuries, and fatalities if widely adopted, but will still increase someone's personal risk vs. driving manually if they're a better than average driver.
- hgomersall 4y ago
  But we don't live by a purely utilitarian principle of ethics. "I'm sorry Mrs Jones, I know your son had an expectation of crossing that pedestrian crossing in full daylight in a residential area without being mown down by a machine learning algorithm gone awry, but please rest assured that overall fewer people are dying as a result of humans not making the common set of different mistakes they used to make". All sorts of other factors are relevant to the ethics: who took the decision to drive; who's benefiting from the drive happening; is there a reasonable expectation of safety.
  - ajross 4y ago
    Yeah yeah, I get it. Moral philosophy is full of gray areas. I don't see how that remotely supports "AI cannot be allowed to make mistakes some humans would not", which was your decidedly absolutist position above. How about: "We should allow autonomy in most cases, though perhaps regulate it carefully to better measure its performance against manually-directed systems"

xeromal 4y ago

I think the biggest problem with AI driving is that while there are plenty of dumb human drivers there are also plenty of average drivers and plenty of skilled drivers. For the most part, if Tesla FSD does a dumb thing in a very specific edge case, ALL teslas do a dumb thing in a very specific edge case and that's what humans don't appreciate. A bug can render everyone's car dumb in a single instance.