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It's not a mutually exclusive choice. That's the point. Let me counter your collective auto collision/injury rate. Let's suppose the only injuries sustained in

It's not a mutually exclusive choice. That's the point. Let me counter your collective auto collision/injury rate. Let's suppose the only injuries sustained in a year are the deaths of school children exiting a school bus. There's no rhyme or reason to why sometimes the driver assist mows down children. BUT, collectively, there are far, far fewer deaths. Say 1,000 school children are killed per year, but those are the only deaths. That's far less than the 40,000 Americans killed per year in auto crashes. So that's good, right? No. Of course not. We want these systems to not make the same mistakes humans make and to not make mistakes humans wouldn't make. Do that, and your fatalities will decrease in an acceptable manner.

lotsofpulp 1y ago
There is no utility in spending time discussing the relative cost of 1,000 lives of children versus 40,000 Americans (presuming the Americans are made up of less than 1,000 children). Although, note that the US government has long provided better medical care to old people (via Medicare’s higher reimbursement to healthcare providers) than to [poor] children (because Medicaid pays less). In the 1990s, it was funny seeing my 80+ year old immigrant grandparents get tons of healthcare while my dad would tell me to play carefully because we couldn’t afford the doctor if I broke an arm or leg, or we couldn’t afford a dentist and braces (small business owner so Medicaid disqualified due to assets, yet insufficient cash flow to pay doctors). > There's no rhyme or reason to why sometimes the driver assist mows down children. If you are claiming a software engineer is throwing in a random kill/maim function in the driver software, then that would be worse as it could be implemented at scale (rather than individual drivers choosing to kill/maim). Otherwise, I would classify injury caused by driver assist mechanisms as technical issues due to hardware/software, directly comparable to injury caused by human drivers due to say choosing to look at their phone or drive drunk. Or being 95 and lacking physical/cognitive capacity.
gruez 1y ago
>That's far less than the 40,000 Americans killed per year in auto crashes. So that's good, right? No. Of course not. >We want these systems to not make the same mistakes humans make and to not make mistakes humans wouldn't make. Do that, and your fatalities will decrease in an acceptable manner. I don't think anyone is going to claim 1000 kids getting mowed down by automated cars is "good", but it's far preferable to 40k people getting mowed down normally. They are however, willing to accept the deaths of 1k kids if it meant saving the lives of 40k people.
- taylodl 1y ago
  > They are however, willing to accept the deaths of 1k kids if it meant saving the lives of 40k people. I bet they're not. People instinctively reject utilitarian trade-offs, especially when it involves children. The idea of sacrificing a few for the many might make sense on paper, but in practice, it’s emotionally and politically untenable.
  - gruez 1y ago
    Note that 0-14 year olds make up 18% of the US population, so assuming the 40k deaths in the counterfactuals are evenly distributed, that'd imply 7.2k kids dying as well, still worse than the 1k.
    - taylodl 1y ago
      In the United States, approximately 1,100 children under the age of 13 die each year in motor vehicle crashes. Not that it matters, because you're still making a utilitarian argument, and the majority of people, including Americans, reject that kind of reasoning. More importantly, utilitarian arguments rarely persuade lawmakers. Policy decisions are driven by public sentiment, political incentives, and moral framing - not abstract cost-benefit calculations.
      - lotsofpulp 1y ago
        >not abstract cost-benefit calculations. Comparing mortality/morbidity data is the opposite of abstract. It’s about as defined as you can get in a discussion about safety.
        taylodl 1y ago
        You're really not understanding how much people hate utilitarian arguments and those making them.

lotsofpulp 1y ago

There is no utility in spending time discussing the relative cost of 1,000 lives of children versus 40,000 Americans (presuming the Americans are made up of less than 1,000 children). Although, note that the US government has long provided better medical care to old people (via Medicare’s higher reimbursement to healthcare providers) than to [poor] children (because Medicaid pays less). In the 1990s, it was funny seeing my 80+ year old immigrant grandparents get tons of healthcare while my dad would tell me to play carefully because we couldn’t afford the doctor if I broke an arm or leg, or we couldn’t afford a dentist and braces (small business owner so Medicaid disqualified due to assets, yet insufficient cash flow to pay doctors). > There's no rhyme or reason to why sometimes the driver assist mows down children. If you are claiming a software engineer is throwing in a random kill/maim function in the driver software, then that would be worse as it could be implemented at scale (rather than individual drivers choosing to kill/maim). Otherwise, I would classify injury caused by driver assist mechanisms as technical issues due to hardware/software, directly comparable to injury caused by human drivers due to say choosing to look at their phone or drive drunk. Or being 95 and lacking physical/cognitive capacity.

gruez 1y ago

>That's far less than the 40,000 Americans killed per year in auto crashes. So that's good, right? No. Of course not. >We want these systems to not make the same mistakes humans make and to not make mistakes humans wouldn't make. Do that, and your fatalities will decrease in an acceptable manner. I don't think anyone is going to claim 1000 kids getting mowed down by automated cars is "good", but it's far preferable to 40k people getting mowed down normally. They are however, willing to accept the deaths of 1k kids if it meant saving the lives of 40k people.

taylodl 1y ago
> They are however, willing to accept the deaths of 1k kids if it meant saving the lives of 40k people. I bet they're not. People instinctively reject utilitarian trade-offs, especially when it involves children. The idea of sacrificing a few for the many might make sense on paper, but in practice, it’s emotionally and politically untenable.
- gruez 1y ago
  Note that 0-14 year olds make up 18% of the US population, so assuming the 40k deaths in the counterfactuals are evenly distributed, that'd imply 7.2k kids dying as well, still worse than the 1k.
  - taylodl 1y ago
    In the United States, approximately 1,100 children under the age of 13 die each year in motor vehicle crashes. Not that it matters, because you're still making a utilitarian argument, and the majority of people, including Americans, reject that kind of reasoning. More importantly, utilitarian arguments rarely persuade lawmakers. Policy decisions are driven by public sentiment, political incentives, and moral framing - not abstract cost-benefit calculations.
    - lotsofpulp 1y ago
      >not abstract cost-benefit calculations. Comparing mortality/morbidity data is the opposite of abstract. It’s about as defined as you can get in a discussion about safety.
      - taylodl 1y ago
        You're really not understanding how much people hate utilitarian arguments and those making them.