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For which any such system must be assumed unsafe until proven safe and the burden of proof lies with the manufacturer to present sound, robust, transparent, thi

• standardUser 1y ago
  I'm not sure what you're getting at here. By all accounts, Waymo operates more safely than a human driver. It's operated tens of millions of rides in several major cities over several years, hence all the useful data. There is absolutely nothing stopping the continued expansion of self-driving vehicles, Waymo or otherwise, and there are myriad factors moving it forward rapidly.
  • Veserv 1y ago
    I think I was pretty clear. > You do not get to counter-argue: “What matters is the rate of cases per mile driven” without actually presenting that number with supporting evidence. Otherwise the only sound conclusion is the default presumption of non-safety. I then pointed out how Waymo does present such evidence. But, if you applied that argument to Cruise you would be wrong. That demonstrates how that argument (when not presenting the numbers) can be used to support both good and bad and is thus a bad argument. The correct argument when somebody points to anecdotes of bad outcomes is to present statistically sound data of good outcomes, not argue they did not present statistically sound data of bad outcomes thus you get to assume it is good.
• 16bytes 1y ago
  > The burden of proof lies with the manufacturer to present sound, robust, transparent, third-party audited evidence. Waymo releases its safety data: https://waymo.com/safety/impact/ https://waymo.com/safety/impact/, which is backed by public reporting requirements. To say that it is wholly insufficient to make any safety claims on publicly driven 50M miles, is ridiculous. At the very least, it appears sound, robust and transparent, and able to be validated. > https://waymo.com/blog/2024/12/new-swiss-re-study-waymo https://waymo.com/blog/2024/12/new-swiss-re-study-waymo Is Swiss Re a valid third party? They also address peer-reviewed and external validation in the above safety impact page. I can understand being skeptical because of Cruise and especially claims made by Telsa, but there is a preponderance of supporting data for Waymo. Given all of this evidence, you would still conclude Waymo is unsafe?
  • Veserv 1y ago
    I think I was quite clear on my position. > In the case of Waymo, we have some tentative supporting evidence from this and other studies Waymo has run. However, that is still insufficient, even ignoring the lack of audits by non-conflicted parties, to strongly conclude Waymo is safer than a human. The evidence is promising, but it is only prudent to wait for further confirmation. You are not making a distinction between concluding unsafe and not being able to conclude safe. It is standard practice to not presume safety and that positive evidence of safety must be presented. Failure to demonstrate statistically sound evidence of danger is not proof of safety. Failure to disprove X is not proof of X. This is a very important point to avoid fallacious conclusions on these matters. To discuss your specific points. Yes, the data is promising, but it is insufficient. Traffic fatalities occur on the order of 1 per 60-80 million miles. Waymo has yet to reach even one expected traffic fatality yet. They appear to be on track to doing better, but there is not enough data yet. The reports Waymo present are authored by Waymo. Even the Swiss Re study is in cooperation with Swiss Re, not a independent study by Swiss Re. The studies are fairly transparent, they point to various public datasets, there are fairly extensive public reporting requirements, and Waymo has not demonstrated clear malfeasance, so we can tentatively assume they are “honest”. But we have plenty of examples of bad actors such as Cruise, cigarette companies, VW , etc. who have done end-runs around these types of basic safeguards. Waymo operational domain is not equivalent to standard human operational domain. They attempt to account for this in their studies, but it is a fairly complex topic with poor public datasets (which is why they cooperated with Swiss Re) so the correctness of their analysis has not been borne out yet. When Waymo incorporates freeways into their public offerings this will enable a less complicated analysis which would lend greater confidence to their conclusions. Waymo is still in “testing”. As their processes appear to be good, we should assume that their testing procedures are safer than should be expected out of actual deployment or verification procedures. That is not a negative statement. In fact, it would be problematic if their “testing” procedures were less or even equal in safety to their deployment procedures. That is just how testing is. You can and must apply more scrutiny to incomplete systems in use and prevent increased risks especially while under scrutiny otherwise you are almost certainly going to be worse off in deployment where there is less scrutiny. We have yet to see how this will translate out to deployment, so we will need to wait and see if safety while under test will appropriately apply to safety while in release. This is analogous to improved outcomes for patients in medical studies even if they are given the placebo because they just get more care in general while in the study. Anyways, Waymo appears to be doing as well and honestly as can be determined by a third party observer. I am optimistic about their data and outcomes, but it is only prudent to avoid over-optimism in safety-critical systems and not accept lazy evidence or arguments. High standards are the only way to safety.