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I would want to understand the differences in who it would kill. If not pulling the lever, 70 of those are suicides, and if pulling it only 10 are, you're actua

I would want to understand the differences in who it would kill. If not pulling the lever, 70 of those are suicides, and if pulling it only 10 are, you're actually killing more people by pulling the lever, and potentially subjecting unwilling participants to continued suffering. But my main point is that it is a machine pulling the lever or not. Once you deploy such a machine we are all subject to it's cold calculation. We should go the extra mile to make sure the world we live in winds up being better and not just assume less deaths = better outcome.

simondotau 3y ago
To be clear, my use of 125 and 100 is only to mirror the post I was replying to. Expressed as a trolley problem I would choose that trade-off. As a real world proposition no society would, and certainly no autonomous vehicle operator would — for precisely the reason you state. We don't like robots which kill people. As I've said elsewhere, I don't expect any autonomous driving system to be anything less than 10X safer than human drivers, or one order of magnitude. And I don't think there could ever be a durable social warrant for autonomous vehicles unless they're at least 100X safer, or two orders of magnitude.[0] Given a minimum expectation of being 10X safer, and given that drivers don't get to choose the demographics of people who place themselves in harm's way near our roads, it is statistically unfathomable that autonomous vehicles could ever be net more dangerous for any demographic. -- [0] If anything I feel that's too conservative and three orders of magnitude might be closer to the threshold at which societies would tolerate autonomous cars. Road deaths in the USA are in the order of 40,000 annually. Three orders of magnitude still means 40 deaths per year. That's plenty enough to keep the press aroused and erect.

simondotau 3y ago

To be clear, my use of 125 and 100 is only to mirror the post I was replying to. Expressed as a trolley problem I would choose that trade-off. As a real world proposition no society would, and certainly no autonomous vehicle operator would — for precisely the reason you state. We don't like robots which kill people. As I've said elsewhere, I don't expect any autonomous driving system to be anything less than 10X safer than human drivers, or one order of magnitude. And I don't think there could ever be a durable social warrant for autonomous vehicles unless they're at least 100X safer, or two orders of magnitude.[0] Given a minimum expectation of being 10X safer, and given that drivers don't get to choose the demographics of people who place themselves in harm's way near our roads, it is statistically unfathomable that autonomous vehicles could ever be net more dangerous for any demographic. -- [0] If anything I feel that's too conservative and three orders of magnitude might be closer to the threshold at which societies would tolerate autonomous cars. Road deaths in the USA are in the order of 40,000 annually. Three orders of magnitude still means 40 deaths per year. That's plenty enough to keep the press aroused and erect.