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None of these three cases involved the Waymo car behaving in ways that are not that uncommon among human drivers, and our theory of mind does not make us nearly

None of these three cases involved the Waymo car behaving in ways that are not that uncommon among human drivers, and our theory of mind does not make us nearly-infallible predictors of what another driver is going to do. Your objection becomes essentially hypothetical unless these cars are behaving in ways that are both outside of the norms established by the driving public, and dangerous.

bumby 3y ago
That’s true, but also one of the selling points of some AI tasks. As a non hypothetical example, the DoD hired a company to train a software dogfighting simulator with RL. What surprised the pilots was how many “best practices” it broke and how it essentially behaved like a pilot with a death wish. Possibly good in war, maybe not so good on a public road.
- dcow 3y ago
  Your comparison is RL dogfighting? I think you need to brush up on recent autonomous driving systems…
  - bumby 3y ago
    Do you not feel they are related? In general, aviation tech tends to outpace automotive tech (I’ve worked in both). Maybe you could enlighten me?
    - dcow 3y ago
      Modern AVs are not driving like they have a death wish by any stretch of the imagination (and these systems are not developed using raw RL). They are driving safer than humans. Any concern that they are not following established best practices is entirely unfounded and strictly grounded in FUD.
      - bumby 3y ago
        >They are driving safer than humans. I don’t think you can make this strong of a claim with the available data. Likewise, someone can’t make strong claim in the opposite direction. The best data I’ve seen is from NTSB investigations, and it clearly shows some very dangerous behavior. But it’s just a snapshot of data. And I think you’ve taken away the wrong point. It was about unexpected behavior, not “driving with a death wish.” The ability of people to consistently miss/twist the point to fit their own predetermined viewpoint is tiresome.
        mannykannot 3y ago
        > And I think you’ve taken away the wrong point. It was about unexpected behavior, not “driving with a death wish.” Indeed - so how did systems with a "death wish" enter into this discussion? Well, it turns out it was by you, about which you said "...maybe not so good on a public road." In this light, your complaint about others twisting the point seems rather ironic.
        bumby 3y ago
        >so how did systems with a "death wish" enter into this discussion? It was the way the pilots described the unexpected behavior of the RL model. If I related a story about ChatGPT where someone said, "It wrote like it was drunk" would you insist that I'm saying ChatGPT actually imbibes in alcohol before coming up with a response? I think you might be missing the point of an analogy. This tends to correlate with people with dichotomous thinking, which is also part of the thread and the difficulty with people understanding the intended point. The part you missed was that the "maybe not so good on a public road" was about breaking "best practices," not about acting with a death wish. The intent was to underscore, yet again, was that unexpected behavior is sometimes beneficial in a wartime environment where you want to keep the other party guessing and off-balance, but not beneficial in a public safety domain. Again, twisting an argument to make a preconceived point rather than reading it as it was actually written. It's hard to get someone to understand a point when their biases are hell-bent on deliberately not understanding it.

bumby 3y ago

That’s true, but also one of the selling points of some AI tasks. As a non hypothetical example, the DoD hired a company to train a software dogfighting simulator with RL. What surprised the pilots was how many “best practices” it broke and how it essentially behaved like a pilot with a death wish. Possibly good in war, maybe not so good on a public road.

dcow 3y ago
Your comparison is RL dogfighting? I think you need to brush up on recent autonomous driving systems…
- bumby 3y ago
  Do you not feel they are related? In general, aviation tech tends to outpace automotive tech (I’ve worked in both). Maybe you could enlighten me?
  - dcow 3y ago
    Modern AVs are not driving like they have a death wish by any stretch of the imagination (and these systems are not developed using raw RL). They are driving safer than humans. Any concern that they are not following established best practices is entirely unfounded and strictly grounded in FUD.
    - bumby 3y ago
      >They are driving safer than humans. I don’t think you can make this strong of a claim with the available data. Likewise, someone can’t make strong claim in the opposite direction. The best data I’ve seen is from NTSB investigations, and it clearly shows some very dangerous behavior. But it’s just a snapshot of data. And I think you’ve taken away the wrong point. It was about unexpected behavior, not “driving with a death wish.” The ability of people to consistently miss/twist the point to fit their own predetermined viewpoint is tiresome.
      - mannykannot 3y ago
        > And I think you’ve taken away the wrong point. It was about unexpected behavior, not “driving with a death wish.” Indeed - so how did systems with a "death wish" enter into this discussion? Well, it turns out it was by you, about which you said "...maybe not so good on a public road." In this light, your complaint about others twisting the point seems rather ironic.
        bumby 3y ago
        >so how did systems with a "death wish" enter into this discussion? It was the way the pilots described the unexpected behavior of the RL model. If I related a story about ChatGPT where someone said, "It wrote like it was drunk" would you insist that I'm saying ChatGPT actually imbibes in alcohol before coming up with a response? I think you might be missing the point of an analogy. This tends to correlate with people with dichotomous thinking, which is also part of the thread and the difficulty with people understanding the intended point. The part you missed was that the "maybe not so good on a public road" was about breaking "best practices," not about acting with a death wish. The intent was to underscore, yet again, was that unexpected behavior is sometimes beneficial in a wartime environment where you want to keep the other party guessing and off-balance, but not beneficial in a public safety domain. Again, twisting an argument to make a preconceived point rather than reading it as it was actually written. It's hard to get someone to understand a point when their biases are hell-bent on deliberately not understanding it.