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> the biggest hurdle will be public acceptance. The AI will not make the same kind of mistakes humans make. So while the aggregate number of accidents will be (

> the biggest hurdle will be public acceptance. The AI will not make the same kind of mistakes humans make. So while the aggregate number of accidents will be (likely much) lower without a human at the wheel, the AI will make deadly mistakes that no human would make, and this will terrify the public. I'd argue safety is not a concern. There are a lot of "safe" things we could do, but don't. A significant percentage of the country doesn't even vaccinate its children. Self-driving cars aren't suddenly going to make us aware of our own mortality in ways that life itself hasn't already. The real fear is lack of accountability. If a drunk plows into a crowd of pedestrians, he will be dragged out of it and (metaphorically) lynched. Justice makes us feel better about circumstances beyond our control. If North Korea test-launched an ICBM that erroneously hit Japan, we'd declare war over their typo. But when a self-driving car erroneously mows down pedestrians, we're told to just accept it, nothing we could do, mumble-mumble-training-data, and tragedies like this happen so we can be safer. Nothing is going to condition us to resent the idea of Safety more than having our personal agency and sense of justice taken away from us in its name.

ttfkam 3y ago
Personal agency and justice are not provided by cars. To that point, how much agency do you feel you have in standstill bumper to bumper traffic. How much justice do you feel sitting in traffic, focused on the bumper stickers in front of you versus other actually productive activities while the bus or train are in motion. Cars != Liberty They never were. They have always been rapidly depreciating assets that are useful for one-off destinations and horrible externalities with regard to city planning.
throwaway2037 3y ago
What do you think about a separate set of laws that determines pay outs from AV companies to people injured in AV accidents? It seems reasonable to me. For over 50 years, (life) insurance companies have offered specific pay outs for injuries. In some sense, a framework already exists. Also, if you want to make the system "bullet proof", require AV companies to put a certain amount of money on deposit with the state (or buy insurance from a separate company). (In a sense, this already exists for insurance companies through strict balance sheet regulations.) Then, you cannot have terrible AV company with many accidents that goes bankrupt from fines and cannot pay. To be clear: I do think, in my lifetime, AV will become normal in many places. Some horrific accidents will happen that result in massive fines to the companies. As a result, some of them will go bankrupt.

ttfkam 3y ago

Personal agency and justice are not provided by cars. To that point, how much agency do you feel you have in standstill bumper to bumper traffic. How much justice do you feel sitting in traffic, focused on the bumper stickers in front of you versus other actually productive activities while the bus or train are in motion. Cars != Liberty They never were. They have always been rapidly depreciating assets that are useful for one-off destinations and horrible externalities with regard to city planning.

throwaway2037 3y ago

What do you think about a separate set of laws that determines pay outs from AV companies to people injured in AV accidents? It seems reasonable to me. For over 50 years, (life) insurance companies have offered specific pay outs for injuries. In some sense, a framework already exists. Also, if you want to make the system "bullet proof", require AV companies to put a certain amount of money on deposit with the state (or buy insurance from a separate company). (In a sense, this already exists for insurance companies through strict balance sheet regulations.) Then, you cannot have terrible AV company with many accidents that goes bankrupt from fines and cannot pay. To be clear: I do think, in my lifetime, AV will become normal in many places. Some horrific accidents will happen that result in massive fines to the companies. As a result, some of them will go bankrupt.