6 ms·

There is only one set of stats that matters here: crashes, fatalities, incidents etc per km compared to similar journeys. Everything else is bullshit and emotio

There is only one set of stats that matters here: crashes, fatalities, incidents etc per km compared to similar journeys. Everything else is bullshit and emotion and politics.

rsynnott 4y ago
From the lede: > which have blocked traffic and hampered emergency services Like, if the only stats that matter are road accidents, the obvious thing would be to just ban all motorised vehicles. A slightly more nuanced view is perhaps required.
epgui 4y ago
I think that’s a rather narrow accounting of all the possible costs. Stopping the flow of traffic can be very costly. It’s a balancing act: you do want to maximize the economic benefits of the technology, and on the other hand you do want to minimize the costs to society.
threeseed 4y ago
That's the only metrics that you've decided are important. SF and likely most cities will have others such as how disruptive you are. People rarely stop in the middle of a road, even with emergency services need to pass and refuse to move.
- wwqrd 4y ago
  > People rarely stop in the middle of a road How rarely? How does it compare to self driving cars per km driven?
  - notafraudster 4y ago
    If a person stops in the middle of a road, other people talk to that person, and typically learn what's going on and can help work on resolving it. Are they having a heart attack? Do they need people to push the car? Are they having a road rage incident? Are they a jerk who needs to run into a store and picked the wrong place to stop temporarily to do it? Even if the situation can't be solved, the ability to communicate (or the implication of not being able to communicate) gives predictable, human-friendly feedback which can be shared with emergency services and other people.
- LatteLazy 4y ago
  So if self driving cars killed 10 people by stopping in the road, but saved 1000 by never hitting pedestrians, that would be a bad trade?
  - ehvatum 4y ago
    The self-driving car could save many more lives by simply not moving at all from its parking spot, except in cases of medical emergency or imminent threat to life mitigated only by moving. The economy might be improved somewhat by personal vehicular mobility, but we’re talking about human lives.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
wwqrd 4y ago
Totally agree. If human drivers make more mistakes per km than autopilot then what sense does it make to stop self-driving cars?
- LatteLazy 4y ago
  A lot of people (including replies to my root comment) seem to take a puritanical rather than a pragmatic view: if a self driving car makes any mistakes at all, that's too many. Even if the human driver it replaces is much worse and will make many more (and more serious) errors should they not be replaced...
  - notafraudster 4y ago
    Humans are generally viewed to have an inherent right -- or at least a strong imperative -- to fully participate in society. Restricting a human's right or privilege to do something typically carries a higher burden than simply asking whether the thing they are doing is a net positive/negative. Over the last 100 years the layout of cities and countries reflects an expectation that full participation in society requires access to transportation. While driving is not an absolute right and we subject drivers to certain minimum requirements (licensing and sometimes periodic relicensing, insurance, various laws that apply to conduct in a motor vehicle), the presumption is basically to create a pathway that allows people to drive. Driving creates a danger and a number of costly externalities. Those are the costs side of the cost-benefit equation. It may be the case that AI drivers have generally lower costs because of your assertion that they make fewer mistakes or less grave mistakes than humans. This does not lead to the obvious inference that allowing an AI driver today in a particular place under a particular regime of rules confers a benefit equal to allowing a human to drive. In the same way, for instance, we do not generally pass laws or policies against people having children, even if we recognize that some people are suboptimal or unfit parents. Instead we presume fitness and build in some checks to capture excessively unfit parenting later. Whatever the cost of suboptimal parenting, we recognize the choice or ability to have a child to be a part of basic human dignity, and so the benefits outweigh the costs. Many jurisdictions place more onerous requirements on pet ownership than human ownership even if the downside cost of being a negligent pet owner is less bad than being a negligent parent. Perhaps the calculus will be different when AI driving is costless and ubiquitous; we might decide collectively that humans have no inherent right to manually operate vehicles and full participation in society does not require them to. But in the mean time, holding AI driver street tests to a higher standard than human drivers can be justified strictly on a cost-benefit (and thus pragmatic) basis. You might counter that, well, AI driving tests don't provide a benefit now, but given a particular utility function, the testing offers <x> marginal training value towards a future reduction in costs (in terms of injury/delay/death). But then it depends on your discount factor of the present versus the future, which is a socially determined function. There's also an underlying presumption that there's some elasticity of resource allocation. Perhaps allocating $x million towards AI driving reduces deaths or injuries or delays; but people can readily contest that $x million spent on other options could do so more efficiently (perhaps infrastructural investment in public transit, perhaps additional free driver's training, perhaps more robust emergency services, perhaps safety features). Because much of this investment is occurring in the private sector, people rely on the state's regulation of these efforts to incentivize allocating resources towards preferred investments. This is also pragmatic, rather than puritanical. It's fine to disagree or have a more bullish view of AI driving, or to feel these concerns are overrated, but it makes very little sense to characterize them as puritanical (in contrast to pragmatic). Some people may have puritanical views, just as some proponents of the technology may have messianic views. But both positions can be justified entirely from rational argument depending on one's utility function. Why strawman? You are a really uncharitable poster here. Your first intervention is to dismiss anyone who disagree with you about which metrics are most useful as "bullshit" and "emotional" and here you call them puritans. I think you should engage in some self-reflection and try to approach conversation online in a less antisocial way.
dauertewigkeit 4y ago
That is too simple. For example, consider if drunk driving is common, and lots of people get into accidents because of that. Then a self-driving car might do better than a drunk driver statistically. But then, what if you are not a drunk driver? Then you might personally drive safer than any self-driving car. A more realistic example could be that 65% of routes are safer in a self-driving car, but then your personal commuting route might be in the remaining 35%. Or for example one might look at accidents caused chiefly by inattention and assume that a self-driving car would perform better in those situations. But then, you have the unknown quantity of complex situations where a self-driving car will cause an accident due to not being able to understand its environment. There isn't really a way to condense the discussion to a single statistic without being disingenuous.
- LatteLazy 4y ago
  >A more realistic example could be that 65% of routes are safer in a self-driving car, but then your personal commuting route might be in the remaining 35%. This is a good example, I think it will be the reality of any change like this. But that is sort of my point: Someone will always lose out. That's the price of things getting better for everyone else. And that's that standard we should judge all changes on: do we do more good for more people than we do bad by making this change? Then perhaps you can re-distribute. That's what I am asking for here. If self-driving cars prevent 10 people dying down town but cause 5 to die up town, that's a good deal because 10>5. The fact it's a bad deal for those 5 people does not mean it is not a good deal for society as a whole...
  - dauertewigkeit 4y ago
    Personally, I am not a big fun of utilitarianism. Reducing deaths is fine obviously, but switching modes of death with the excuse that it reduces fatalities overall is in my opinion morally questionable.
    - LatteLazy 4y ago
      I won't pretend utilitarianism is perfect, but I don't think we have much option. If we take the "no new problems" extreme alternative then you get worse and stranger results: Seatbelts would never have been legal since while they save 1000s of lives a day, they also occasionally kill people who would otherwise survive...

There is only one set of stats that matters here: crashes, fatalities, incidents etc per km compared to similar journeys. Everything else is bullshit and emotion and politics.

rsynnott 4y ago

From the lede: > which have blocked traffic and hampered emergency services Like, if the only stats that matter are road accidents, the obvious thing would be to just ban all motorised vehicles. A slightly more nuanced view is perhaps required.

epgui 4y ago

I think that’s a rather narrow accounting of all the possible costs. Stopping the flow of traffic can be very costly. It’s a balancing act: you do want to maximize the economic benefits of the technology, and on the other hand you do want to minimize the costs to society.

threeseed 4y ago

That's the only metrics that you've decided are important. SF and likely most cities will have others such as how disruptive you are. People rarely stop in the middle of a road, even with emergency services need to pass and refuse to move.

wwqrd 4y ago
> People rarely stop in the middle of a road How rarely? How does it compare to self driving cars per km driven?
- notafraudster 4y ago
  If a person stops in the middle of a road, other people talk to that person, and typically learn what's going on and can help work on resolving it. Are they having a heart attack? Do they need people to push the car? Are they having a road rage incident? Are they a jerk who needs to run into a store and picked the wrong place to stop temporarily to do it? Even if the situation can't be solved, the ability to communicate (or the implication of not being able to communicate) gives predictable, human-friendly feedback which can be shared with emergency services and other people.
LatteLazy 4y ago
So if self driving cars killed 10 people by stopping in the road, but saved 1000 by never hitting pedestrians, that would be a bad trade?
- ehvatum 4y ago
  The self-driving car could save many more lives by simply not moving at all from its parking spot, except in cases of medical emergency or imminent threat to life mitigated only by moving. The economy might be improved somewhat by personal vehicular mobility, but we’re talking about human lives.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

wwqrd 4y ago

Totally agree. If human drivers make more mistakes per km than autopilot then what sense does it make to stop self-driving cars?

LatteLazy 4y ago
A lot of people (including replies to my root comment) seem to take a puritanical rather than a pragmatic view: if a self driving car makes any mistakes at all, that's too many. Even if the human driver it replaces is much worse and will make many more (and more serious) errors should they not be replaced...
- notafraudster 4y ago
  Humans are generally viewed to have an inherent right -- or at least a strong imperative -- to fully participate in society. Restricting a human's right or privilege to do something typically carries a higher burden than simply asking whether the thing they are doing is a net positive/negative. Over the last 100 years the layout of cities and countries reflects an expectation that full participation in society requires access to transportation. While driving is not an absolute right and we subject drivers to certain minimum requirements (licensing and sometimes periodic relicensing, insurance, various laws that apply to conduct in a motor vehicle), the presumption is basically to create a pathway that allows people to drive. Driving creates a danger and a number of costly externalities. Those are the costs side of the cost-benefit equation. It may be the case that AI drivers have generally lower costs because of your assertion that they make fewer mistakes or less grave mistakes than humans. This does not lead to the obvious inference that allowing an AI driver today in a particular place under a particular regime of rules confers a benefit equal to allowing a human to drive. In the same way, for instance, we do not generally pass laws or policies against people having children, even if we recognize that some people are suboptimal or unfit parents. Instead we presume fitness and build in some checks to capture excessively unfit parenting later. Whatever the cost of suboptimal parenting, we recognize the choice or ability to have a child to be a part of basic human dignity, and so the benefits outweigh the costs. Many jurisdictions place more onerous requirements on pet ownership than human ownership even if the downside cost of being a negligent pet owner is less bad than being a negligent parent. Perhaps the calculus will be different when AI driving is costless and ubiquitous; we might decide collectively that humans have no inherent right to manually operate vehicles and full participation in society does not require them to. But in the mean time, holding AI driver street tests to a higher standard than human drivers can be justified strictly on a cost-benefit (and thus pragmatic) basis. You might counter that, well, AI driving tests don't provide a benefit now, but given a particular utility function, the testing offers <x> marginal training value towards a future reduction in costs (in terms of injury/delay/death). But then it depends on your discount factor of the present versus the future, which is a socially determined function. There's also an underlying presumption that there's some elasticity of resource allocation. Perhaps allocating $x million towards AI driving reduces deaths or injuries or delays; but people can readily contest that $x million spent on other options could do so more efficiently (perhaps infrastructural investment in public transit, perhaps additional free driver's training, perhaps more robust emergency services, perhaps safety features). Because much of this investment is occurring in the private sector, people rely on the state's regulation of these efforts to incentivize allocating resources towards preferred investments. This is also pragmatic, rather than puritanical. It's fine to disagree or have a more bullish view of AI driving, or to feel these concerns are overrated, but it makes very little sense to characterize them as puritanical (in contrast to pragmatic). Some people may have puritanical views, just as some proponents of the technology may have messianic views. But both positions can be justified entirely from rational argument depending on one's utility function. Why strawman? You are a really uncharitable poster here. Your first intervention is to dismiss anyone who disagree with you about which metrics are most useful as "bullshit" and "emotional" and here you call them puritans. I think you should engage in some self-reflection and try to approach conversation online in a less antisocial way.

dauertewigkeit 4y ago

That is too simple. For example, consider if drunk driving is common, and lots of people get into accidents because of that. Then a self-driving car might do better than a drunk driver statistically. But then, what if you are not a drunk driver? Then you might personally drive safer than any self-driving car. A more realistic example could be that 65% of routes are safer in a self-driving car, but then your personal commuting route might be in the remaining 35%. Or for example one might look at accidents caused chiefly by inattention and assume that a self-driving car would perform better in those situations. But then, you have the unknown quantity of complex situations where a self-driving car will cause an accident due to not being able to understand its environment. There isn't really a way to condense the discussion to a single statistic without being disingenuous.

LatteLazy 4y ago
>A more realistic example could be that 65% of routes are safer in a self-driving car, but then your personal commuting route might be in the remaining 35%. This is a good example, I think it will be the reality of any change like this. But that is sort of my point: Someone will always lose out. That's the price of things getting better for everyone else. And that's that standard we should judge all changes on: do we do more good for more people than we do bad by making this change? Then perhaps you can re-distribute. That's what I am asking for here. If self-driving cars prevent 10 people dying down town but cause 5 to die up town, that's a good deal because 10>5. The fact it's a bad deal for those 5 people does not mean it is not a good deal for society as a whole...
- dauertewigkeit 4y ago
  Personally, I am not a big fun of utilitarianism. Reducing deaths is fine obviously, but switching modes of death with the excuse that it reduces fatalities overall is in my opinion morally questionable.
  - LatteLazy 4y ago
    I won't pretend utilitarianism is perfect, but I don't think we have much option. If we take the "no new problems" extreme alternative then you get worse and stranger results: Seatbelts would never have been legal since while they save 1000s of lives a day, they also occasionally kill people who would otherwise survive...