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"A new technology reduces mortality risk for all people, but has slightly better outcomes for white adults." Conclusion - we call on lawmakers to make this tec

"A new technology reduces mortality risk for all people, but has slightly better outcomes for white adults." Conclusion - we call on lawmakers to make this technology illegal. We prefer more people die at equal rates more than we prefer less people to die at unequal rates. I am not sure I agree with the ethics that underlies this way of seeing the world.

candiddevmike 3y ago
It should be illegal, the current systems will never deliver without additional object detection methods (radar, lidar, etc). Get this shit recalled and back to the drawing board.
- luma 3y ago
  Do you have lidar and radar when you drive? Should it be illegal for you to drive without those things?
  - notamy 3y ago
    What is it with people on this website (not specifically the user I’m replying to) and going with "the computer vaguely does the thing the human does, literally what's the difference???" (or similar) as an argument/gotcha/etc. around ML/AI/self-driving/...? It’s painfully obvious that the computer and the human are different systems that process information differently and therefore likely need different sets of inputs for optimal function.
    - matwood 3y ago
      I agree that they are different, but if I read the comment you responded to charitably, it's pointing out that the bar often seems unreasonably high for self driving. Human drivers are terrible leading to ~100 deaths/day in the US. How much better does self-driving need to be in order to make it worthwhile? Does it have to be perfect?
      - hermannj314 3y ago
        The government mandates adding rear view cameras to all cars at a cost of like $1 million dollars per life saved. There is no rational basis for vehicle safety standards and the outcomes (deaths per passenger mile) show that we are doing a horrible job at it. Regulating the addition of LIDAR based object detection to all vehicles will have no basis in safety until domestic manufacturers can't compete with imports and they need another expensive component to tack on to every car to narrow the price gap in their incompetence to compete globally. Then there will be a PR campaign, funded by Detroit, about how necessary it is for "safety" to add LIDAR or whatever to every car.
    - luma 3y ago
      It’s counter argument by example. Very Serious Scientists argued that heavier than air flight is impossible while birds were flying outside their window. Likewise, I am 100% confident that it is possible in theory to drive a car without the assistance of LIDAR or RADAR. Does this mean current systems require this or that? Nope, but making the claim that all systems must be equipped with a certain technology seems short sighted, particularly when the proven counter example is putting a few million miles on the road every day.
  - jhot 3y ago
    Why guess depth from images when you can know depth?
- elcano 3y ago
  I wouldn't say 'never'. But the right thing to do is to keep the training wheels (radar, lidar) until it's proven that the system has learned to drive without them when there's good visibility and to reduce speed (or stop, if necessary) when the visibility is reduced. This also includes learning to recognize almost every possible situation, including zero shot events.
asddubs 3y ago
What if the technology was only/primarily tested with white people, rather than inherently having better outcomes for white adults? It's not really as clear cut as you make it out to be, technologies at this level of complexity aren't just derived from physical/biological principles. Perhaps there was a better variant of the technology that was scrapped as a cost-cutting measure, because it performed the same for white adults, but better for other classes of people (alluding to radar here, though I'm not sure it really performed the same, but I'm trying to make a larger point than any specific technology anyway).
- hermannj314 3y ago
  Fair point. Cost benefit analysis for adoption of safety features in automobiles is inconsistent. Drunk drivers kill more Americans each few months than terrorists on planes have in the last 25 years. Yet every airline passenger must prove they aren't a terrorist but no one driving a car has a default presumption they are drunk. Unless you've been convicted previously, then maybe sometimes. I wouldn't be surprised if a better model exists for object detection and we aren't using it to save pennies. Politics and ethics in automobile safety is asinine. Fair point.
- mrweasel 3y ago
  > What if the technology was only/primarily tested with white people, rather than inherently having better outcomes for white adults? I think we have a precedence for that in testing of drugs. The majority of drugs are primarily tested on white men, meaning that their effect and dosages may be problematic for women or people of color. There's also the issue of the majority of tools being designed for right handed people and any left handed either needs to spend more on tools or accept a certain risk when operating a chainsaw.

candiddevmike 3y ago

It should be illegal, the current systems will never deliver without additional object detection methods (radar, lidar, etc). Get this shit recalled and back to the drawing board.

luma 3y ago
Do you have lidar and radar when you drive? Should it be illegal for you to drive without those things?
- notamy 3y ago
  What is it with people on this website (not specifically the user I’m replying to) and going with "the computer vaguely does the thing the human does, literally what's the difference???" (or similar) as an argument/gotcha/etc. around ML/AI/self-driving/...? It’s painfully obvious that the computer and the human are different systems that process information differently and therefore likely need different sets of inputs for optimal function.
  - matwood 3y ago
    I agree that they are different, but if I read the comment you responded to charitably, it's pointing out that the bar often seems unreasonably high for self driving. Human drivers are terrible leading to ~100 deaths/day in the US. How much better does self-driving need to be in order to make it worthwhile? Does it have to be perfect?
    - hermannj314 3y ago
      The government mandates adding rear view cameras to all cars at a cost of like $1 million dollars per life saved. There is no rational basis for vehicle safety standards and the outcomes (deaths per passenger mile) show that we are doing a horrible job at it. Regulating the addition of LIDAR based object detection to all vehicles will have no basis in safety until domestic manufacturers can't compete with imports and they need another expensive component to tack on to every car to narrow the price gap in their incompetence to compete globally. Then there will be a PR campaign, funded by Detroit, about how necessary it is for "safety" to add LIDAR or whatever to every car.
  - luma 3y ago
    It’s counter argument by example. Very Serious Scientists argued that heavier than air flight is impossible while birds were flying outside their window. Likewise, I am 100% confident that it is possible in theory to drive a car without the assistance of LIDAR or RADAR. Does this mean current systems require this or that? Nope, but making the claim that all systems must be equipped with a certain technology seems short sighted, particularly when the proven counter example is putting a few million miles on the road every day.
- jhot 3y ago
  Why guess depth from images when you can know depth?
elcano 3y ago
I wouldn't say 'never'. But the right thing to do is to keep the training wheels (radar, lidar) until it's proven that the system has learned to drive without them when there's good visibility and to reduce speed (or stop, if necessary) when the visibility is reduced. This also includes learning to recognize almost every possible situation, including zero shot events.

asddubs 3y ago

What if the technology was only/primarily tested with white people, rather than inherently having better outcomes for white adults? It's not really as clear cut as you make it out to be, technologies at this level of complexity aren't just derived from physical/biological principles. Perhaps there was a better variant of the technology that was scrapped as a cost-cutting measure, because it performed the same for white adults, but better for other classes of people (alluding to radar here, though I'm not sure it really performed the same, but I'm trying to make a larger point than any specific technology anyway).

hermannj314 3y ago
Fair point. Cost benefit analysis for adoption of safety features in automobiles is inconsistent. Drunk drivers kill more Americans each few months than terrorists on planes have in the last 25 years. Yet every airline passenger must prove they aren't a terrorist but no one driving a car has a default presumption they are drunk. Unless you've been convicted previously, then maybe sometimes. I wouldn't be surprised if a better model exists for object detection and we aren't using it to save pennies. Politics and ethics in automobile safety is asinine. Fair point.
mrweasel 3y ago
> What if the technology was only/primarily tested with white people, rather than inherently having better outcomes for white adults? I think we have a precedence for that in testing of drugs. The majority of drugs are primarily tested on white men, meaning that their effect and dosages may be problematic for women or people of color. There's also the issue of the majority of tools being designed for right handed people and any left handed either needs to spend more on tools or accept a certain risk when operating a chainsaw.