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Every time something like this makes the news, I would like to ask: 1. How many total vehicle-miles have this level of autonomous vehicles driven in all of his

Every time something like this makes the news, I would like to ask: 1. How many total vehicle-miles have this level of autonomous vehicles driven in all of history? 2. How many times has an incident like this happened? 3. Now what's that ratio for humans. Truth of the matter is, if the event was "One [bad] driver drove through police tape" this wouldn't be a story. I know even single-events are illustrative without a denominator, but it's hard to think about how much to fault autonomous vehicles as a whole without that.

colechristensen 3y ago
Every time someone posts this kind of response i wonder who is the apologist for the human who does something like this because normally functioning people never would, you have a robot that being hailed for its driving perfection acting like a drunk or a psychopath and people trying to convince you it’s not so bad because it’s brothers statistically don’t do it that often.
proc0 3y ago
I'd just like to point out one substantial difference. The autonomous part of the car is software so when if fails in a strange way that is also dangerous the natural question is how much is this going to happen across all the cars that have this software, and also how much can engineers understand why this happened to prevent it in the future. The answers to those questions are not straight forward so even a single incident has much wider implications than a human making a mistake.
- schiffern 3y ago
  >if fails in a strange way that is also dangerous the natural question is how much is this going to happen across all the cars that have this software If an AI messes up, it might do it again. If a human driver messes up, another human driver might do it again. I'm not seeing a substantial difference. Humans aren't all running the same software of course, but that just introduces some [additional] probabilistic uncertainty to our estimate. Fundamentally the situation with human drivers remains the same (or worse). In fact, we can be 100% certain that the 'human software' running on all the other cars on the road is not bug-free! > and also how much can engineers understand why this happened to prevent it in the future This is legitimately a substantial difference. Yet this difference is an advantage for autonomous cars, while the reaction to these headlines is almost universally negative toward the technology.
  - proc0 3y ago
    > In fact, we can be 100% certain that the 'human software' running on all the other cars on the road is not bug-free! The roads, traffic system, laws and institutions etc., have all been designed for humans, and have been constantly updated and improved for many decades. This means autonomous vehicles might make a mistake that is practically impossible for a human to make. As an exaggerated example to make the point, it could malfunction in the middle of a highway and break full stop, or maybe keep going straight and fly off the highway unto a building. That said, they will get safer just like the human system, and probably way more safer eventually.
    - schiffern 3y ago
      >This means autonomous vehicles might make a mistake that is practically impossible for a human to make. Exactly—the mistakes are newsworthy because they're unusual (both in specifics and the general novelty of "AI did X"), and not because (exaggerations aside) they're categorically any worse than the mistakes humans make. We are 100% guaranteed that humans aren't perfect drivers. A headline where we "discover" an AI is imperfect, therefore, doesn't let us conclude AI is worse than human drivers. On the other hand, autonomous systems can benefit from direct learning transfer through shared software, whereas humans cannot. In this respect AI is categorically superior to human drivers.
kjs3 3y ago
Then don't sell autonomous driving as anything other than "we hope it probably won't screw up more than any other bad driver" and fully admit that the autonomous driving companies are conducting a giant beta (maybe alpha) test using real roads and real people. This is exactly the sort of things those companies have been promising can't happen.

colechristensen 3y ago

Every time someone posts this kind of response i wonder who is the apologist for the human who does something like this because normally functioning people never would, you have a robot that being hailed for its driving perfection acting like a drunk or a psychopath and people trying to convince you it’s not so bad because it’s brothers statistically don’t do it that often.

proc0 3y ago

I'd just like to point out one substantial difference. The autonomous part of the car is software so when if fails in a strange way that is also dangerous the natural question is how much is this going to happen across all the cars that have this software, and also how much can engineers understand why this happened to prevent it in the future. The answers to those questions are not straight forward so even a single incident has much wider implications than a human making a mistake.

schiffern 3y ago
>if fails in a strange way that is also dangerous the natural question is how much is this going to happen across all the cars that have this software If an AI messes up, it might do it again. If a human driver messes up, another human driver might do it again. I'm not seeing a substantial difference. Humans aren't all running the same software of course, but that just introduces some [additional] probabilistic uncertainty to our estimate. Fundamentally the situation with human drivers remains the same (or worse). In fact, we can be 100% certain that the 'human software' running on all the other cars on the road is not bug-free! > and also how much can engineers understand why this happened to prevent it in the future This is legitimately a substantial difference. Yet this difference is an advantage for autonomous cars, while the reaction to these headlines is almost universally negative toward the technology.
- proc0 3y ago
  > In fact, we can be 100% certain that the 'human software' running on all the other cars on the road is not bug-free! The roads, traffic system, laws and institutions etc., have all been designed for humans, and have been constantly updated and improved for many decades. This means autonomous vehicles might make a mistake that is practically impossible for a human to make. As an exaggerated example to make the point, it could malfunction in the middle of a highway and break full stop, or maybe keep going straight and fly off the highway unto a building. That said, they will get safer just like the human system, and probably way more safer eventually.
  - schiffern 3y ago
    >This means autonomous vehicles might make a mistake that is practically impossible for a human to make. Exactly—the mistakes are newsworthy because they're unusual (both in specifics and the general novelty of "AI did X"), and not because (exaggerations aside) they're categorically any worse than the mistakes humans make. We are 100% guaranteed that humans aren't perfect drivers. A headline where we "discover" an AI is imperfect, therefore, doesn't let us conclude AI is worse than human drivers. On the other hand, autonomous systems can benefit from direct learning transfer through shared software, whereas humans cannot. In this respect AI is categorically superior to human drivers.

kjs3 3y ago

Then don't sell autonomous driving as anything other than "we hope it probably won't screw up more than any other bad driver" and fully admit that the autonomous driving companies are conducting a giant beta (maybe alpha) test using real roads and real people. This is exactly the sort of things those companies have been promising can't happen.