3 ms·

The worrying part is that if/when those percentages get better, you will be more likely to trust it enough to let it run over children.

zelphirkalt 1y ago
Soon promised to only have 1/10 of detection failures, better than ever before! Only 1 child per week! Rejoice! On a more serious note: Where do we as a society put the bar? What are the numbers, at which we accept the risk? Do we put the bar higher than for humans? Or same level? Or does the added convenience for car drivers tempt us to accept a lower bar?
- thomastjeffery 1y ago
  Setting a bar is the mistake. We need to reframe the entire narrative. Safety implementation is never objective. You can only implement a system by subjecting it to context. Traffic safety is a world of edge cases, and each driving implementation will engage with those edge cases from a different subjective context. We are used to framing computation as a system of rules: explicit logic that is predictably followed. Tesla is using the other approach to "AI": statistical models. A statistical model replaces binary logic with a system of bias. A model that is built out of good example data will behave as if it is the thing creating that data. This works well when the context that model is situated in is similar to the example. It works poorly when there is a mismatch of context. The important thing to know here is that in both cases, it "works". A statistical model never fails: that's a feature of binary logic. Instead, it behaves in a way we don't like. The only way to accommodate this is to build a model out of examples that incorporate every edge case. Those examples can't conflict with each other, either. The model must be biased to make the objectively correct decision for every unique context it could possibly encounter in the future; or it will be biased to make the wrong decision. The only real solution to traffic safety is to replace it with a fail-safe system: a system whose participants can't collide with each other or their surrounding environment. Today, the best implementation of this goal is trains. Humans have the same problems that statistical models have. There are two key differences, though: 1. Humans are reliably capable of logical deduction. 2. Humans can be held directly accountable for their mistakes. Tesla would very much like us to be ignorant of #1, and to insulate their platform from #2.
  - Fischgericht 1y ago
    "today, the best implementation of this goal is trains." Could not agree more.
- Fischgericht 1y ago
  I think it is just not possible to have mixed traffic of devices (humans) with a weight of 70kg and SUVs of 3 metric tons. You have to seperate those. And the default in car nations like Germany or the US has always been to ban the humans. After having seen how other nations are handling it, and what it does for quality of life, whenever I see how German cities look like (and of course most of US cities) it feels totally alien to me. Anyway: No, Robotaxis clearly are not the solution to the problem. In school kid vs. Tesla, the car always will win. And this includes even if you blame the kid for having made a mistake according to road regulations - making mistakes in regards of traffic rules as a young human should not be punished by death. What I have seen in my German home town also is a downward spiral: Hockey mums thinking it is safer for their kids to come pick them up with their SUVs. But because those are so big that it is impossible to see the other kids, risk of accidents is actually rising, causing more mums to driver their kids in SUVs etc.

zelphirkalt 1y ago

Soon promised to only have 1/10 of detection failures, better than ever before! Only 1 child per week! Rejoice! On a more serious note: Where do we as a society put the bar? What are the numbers, at which we accept the risk? Do we put the bar higher than for humans? Or same level? Or does the added convenience for car drivers tempt us to accept a lower bar?

thomastjeffery 1y ago
Setting a bar is the mistake. We need to reframe the entire narrative. Safety implementation is never objective. You can only implement a system by subjecting it to context. Traffic safety is a world of edge cases, and each driving implementation will engage with those edge cases from a different subjective context. We are used to framing computation as a system of rules: explicit logic that is predictably followed. Tesla is using the other approach to "AI": statistical models. A statistical model replaces binary logic with a system of bias. A model that is built out of good example data will behave as if it is the thing creating that data. This works well when the context that model is situated in is similar to the example. It works poorly when there is a mismatch of context. The important thing to know here is that in both cases, it "works". A statistical model never fails: that's a feature of binary logic. Instead, it behaves in a way we don't like. The only way to accommodate this is to build a model out of examples that incorporate every edge case. Those examples can't conflict with each other, either. The model must be biased to make the objectively correct decision for every unique context it could possibly encounter in the future; or it will be biased to make the wrong decision. The only real solution to traffic safety is to replace it with a fail-safe system: a system whose participants can't collide with each other or their surrounding environment. Today, the best implementation of this goal is trains. Humans have the same problems that statistical models have. There are two key differences, though: 1. Humans are reliably capable of logical deduction. 2. Humans can be held directly accountable for their mistakes. Tesla would very much like us to be ignorant of #1, and to insulate their platform from #2.
- Fischgericht 1y ago
  "today, the best implementation of this goal is trains." Could not agree more.
Fischgericht 1y ago
I think it is just not possible to have mixed traffic of devices (humans) with a weight of 70kg and SUVs of 3 metric tons. You have to seperate those. And the default in car nations like Germany or the US has always been to ban the humans. After having seen how other nations are handling it, and what it does for quality of life, whenever I see how German cities look like (and of course most of US cities) it feels totally alien to me. Anyway: No, Robotaxis clearly are not the solution to the problem. In school kid vs. Tesla, the car always will win. And this includes even if you blame the kid for having made a mistake according to road regulations - making mistakes in regards of traffic rules as a young human should not be punished by death. What I have seen in my German home town also is a downward spiral: Hockey mums thinking it is safer for their kids to come pick them up with their SUVs. But because those are so big that it is impossible to see the other kids, risk of accidents is actually rising, causing more mums to driver their kids in SUVs etc.