16 ms·

What If Your Autonomous Car Keeps Routing You Past Krispy Kreme?

75 points by kdazzle 13y ago

ChuckMcM 13y ago
Just one of a bazillion questions that comes up when your car is autonomous. What happens when the sekrit tech elite want to kill you and so they make your car drive off a cliff? Interesting questions to be sure and already being examined on such shows as "CSI" in the US. Basically one of the reasons new technology rolls out slowly is that there are lots of people asking these sorts of questions and trying to have answers before they ship. Sometimes that works well, sometimes not (cite battery issues on 787).
- vezzy-fnord 13y ago
  Didn't the first one already happen with Michael Hastings? Although to be fair, it's just suspicions and not any officially accepted story. Nonetheless, they're fairly strong suspicions, same as with the Karl Koch case.
  - ewoodrich 13y ago
    Regardless of whether or not that is true (and full disclosure, I doubt that it is from what I've read) it is surprising to me how something with tenuous evidence can be presumptively believed to be true in certain circles. His own wife says it was a "tragic accident", and his brother says he believed Hastings to be in a "manic episode" at the time. Why is it that random people on the internet have so much more suspicion and rage than his loved ones who were closest to him? This isn't really meant to be directed at you, so much as expressing my frustration with a sort of casual canonization of a dubious event as a conspiracy.
    - downer83 13y ago
      Because the motive and the modus operandi make a good fit for the scenario. The family is not interested in the emotional baggage of foul play, or the hassle of an arduous investigation, which would, hypothetically, probably be fruitless, even if suspicions were accurate. It's much, much easier for loved ones to swallow an official story of a tragic accident. For total strangers, not burdened by emotions, the scenario is objectively disturbing.
    - sliverstorm 13y ago
      Because conspiracies make for a good story to fill your hunger for curiosity, and when you are only loosely versed in the circumstances it is easy to find reasons to believe it was a conspiracy.
    - beagle3 13y ago
      I haven't been following the Hastings case, so I can only reply in general: Following the recent Snowden disclosures, you should question yourself at disbelieving conspiracy so easily. You might be right (probably are, for all I know), but you have no reason to believe so other than pure faith. Ask yourself this (and answer truthfully): A year ago - did you believe that the NSA is actively sabotaging standards, intercepting shipments in order to modify the software to be under their control, etc? If you didn't (and I'm sure you've had the conspiracies mentioned), then why on earth would you believe "the official word" on anything like remote control of a car? You might have a lot of faith in the official status-quo for no reason at all.
      - vezzy-fnord 13y ago
        Ask yourself this (and answer truthfully): A year ago - did you believe that the NSA is actively sabotaging standards, intercepting shipments in order to modify the software to be under their control, etc? If you didn't (and I'm sure you've had the conspiracies mentioned), then why on earth would you believe "the official word" on anything like remote control of a car? I am fucking sick of people being surprised by the NSA revelations. NSA malpractice has been documented all the way back to 1975 by the Church Committee's papers: http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/contents/church/contents_church_reports_vol5.htm http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/contents/church/contents_c... Then later on we had Clipper chips, ECHELON, Presidential Surveillance Program, TEMPEST, Total Information Awareness, DCSNet, Room 641A and plenty of other surveillance disclosures. This whole stigmatization of conspiracy theorists as loons is wholly unfair, misguided and shows the speaker's ignorance of how intelligence agencies operate. Conspiracy theories aren't just idiotic pop culture ravings about Illuminati, reptilian men and ZOG.
- philsnow 13y ago
  Nearly exactly this happens in Stross's Halting State
  - jaxb 13y ago
    You mean, bidding for a better bus route?
    - philsnow 13y ago
      No, assassination by hijacking of automated cars
- ds9 13y ago
  Another case worse than partially-hijacked trips was mentioned in a slashdot post, and if I recall correctly, there was a vague reference to the autonomous-car-makers considering it, and it has bothered me ever since. Imagine a situation where a crash appears to the AI of car C1 to be be inevitable. But also, if C1 executes maneuver M1, its own occupants will be saved from harm, but another car C2 will have a worse crash or will crash when it otherwise would not - but if C1 does maneuver M2 instead, its own occupants will be killed or suffer worse harm, but the occupants of C2 will be better off. What if, in such a scenario, C1 would decide to "sacrifice" its own occupants to minimize the total harm (e.g., C2 has more occupants)? Self-driving cars might well be designed this way. It might be mandated by law. Authorities would try to reassure objectors by saying the "avoidably killed by your car" outcome is very unlikely and that you're better off in the big picture of all risks. Edit: On a closer reading I note that the linked page http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/10/the-ethics-of-autonomous-cars/280360/ http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/10/the-et... covers, not exactly the above, but similar scenarios.
  - carpo 13y ago
    And imagine if the AI also rated the car occupants on their future value to society.
    - acheron 13y ago
      If we're talking about Google, I assume it would rank people based on the number of friends they have in Google+.
  - noonespecial 13y ago
    The cynical side of me suspects that the "Volvos" of the future will make this choice less often than the "Pontiacs". The rich will still have safer cars, AI style. It seems like an interesting branch of "applied theology". Does one, in the end, have faith that these tiny entities imbued with lesser-god-like driving abilities really have one's best interests at heart?
  - maxerickson 13y ago
- TacticalCoder 13y ago
  Indeed. Here's a simpler one than the "sekrit tech elite" wanting to kill you... What happens when the equivalent of the Mariposa botnet, but this time for autonomous cars, roots 12 million of autonomous cars? But, this time, we have to believe that security is going to be done correctly, right? (this time, promised, no backdoors, no 0-days, no compromised servers, no compromised keys, etc.) I does really hope this technology rolls out as slowly as possible because the security issues do really scare me.
  - Ambrosia 13y ago
    oh god, ransomware for your car...
    - im3w1l 13y ago
      "We are going to kill 100 drivers every day until 1bn in bitcoin is sent to 1...x" Just imagine the economic disruptions on day 3 when no one dares drive anymore
- redwall_hp 13y ago
  >What happens when the sekrit tech elite want to kill you and so they make your car drive off a cliff? It's considerably easier to physically tamper with a car, such as the good old Hollywood standby of cutting brake lines. Why worry about a fantasy of people trying to attack you remotely when there are plenty of real organizations that are much more likely to tamper with your car now?
  - saraid216 13y ago
    Because technophobia is harder when you don't have a technology to be afraid of.
  - 6d0debc071 13y ago
    > It's considerably easier to physically tamper with a car, such as the good old Hollywood standby of cutting brake lines. It's only hard to exploit a serious security flaw the first time. Until they close it, it's relatively easy to exploit it thereafter. The relative lethality seems likely to favour the software option too. Personally I doubt I'd get above 10mph before I tried using my brakes - (manoeuvring into and then out of my road.) Compared to, 'Wait until you're on the motorway and accelerate as hard as you can into oncoming traffic.' I don't see too many people walking away from the latter case - the closing speed would be something like 190mph, disregarding braking on the part of the oncoming traffic.
jupiterjaz 13y ago
Honestly if autonomous cars can reduce even 10% of accidents caused by drunk driving and other human errors then they will have payed their way and more.
- derekp7 13y ago
  But speaking of paying, self driving cars also won't speed, turn right on red without a full stop, etc. Which means traffic tickets would be a thing of the past, along with the revenue they bring in.
  - nightski 13y ago
    At the same time policing costs would decrease dramatically.
    - saraid216 13y ago
      That's probably not true. I've gotten the impression that a sizable chunk of police funding comes from speeding tickets. Paying an officer to do something low-risk like camping out next to a road for a shift isn't really expensive. Same with monitoring systems like cameras on traffic lights. Set-up cost is significant, but they probably pay for themselves within a year.
      - nightski 13y ago
        The initial cost doesn't matter. If an officer doesn't cost much, yet you don't have to pay him any more than that is a 100% decrease in cost. Second I know that the officer is not the only cost involved. What about maintaining a fleet of top of the line vehicles? How about paying all the support personnel such as IT Staff, dispatch, managers, etc? All of the other expensive toys carried around by the chaser?
        saraid216 13y ago
        > Second I know that the officer is not the only cost involved. What about maintaining a fleet of top of the line vehicles? How about paying all the support personnel such as IT Staff, dispatch, managers, etc? All of the other expensive toys carried around by the chaser? Arguable. It depends on how badly you want [insert autonomous car producer here] to run your local police department from the cloud.
melipone 13y ago
Actually, I had a paper some time ago already on the issue of combining preferences with optimization (shameless plug). http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16703681/homepage/mabramso/research/tcpabook.pdf http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16703681/homepage/mabrams...
drawkbox 13y ago
This brings up very interesting ideas and questions that will happen with autonomous cars. Routes and retail along those routes will enter a new era. Building a store you have to take into account algorithms of the vehicles. Slight changes to a widely used system could shut down a business faster than individual human choice (although it may also make other businesses seen more as it distributes traffic across more roads - hot spots could become medium and less travelled areas could become more lucrative). Also, wouldn't it lessen ad hoc pulling into McDonalds on the way home? If the machine is in control then you might not go get a donut even if it is along the route, you'd schedule it in more ahead of time. In the same way e-commerce is more direct, traveling will be more direct and the items at the checkout are not as distracting, same as passing other stores, you'll be busy doing other things like passengers possibly.
- nightski 13y ago
  I don't see any reason to believe why you are in any less control with a autonomous car. If anything, you would be in more control because making that quick decision turn into McDonalds would be as stressful as pushing a button.
  - greeneggs 13y ago
    You think there's going to be a "McDonalds" button on the dashboard? No, you'll have to press half a dozen buttons to reroute, and so you'll have past the restaurant and won't bother. Whereas currently, your control is direct and immediate. Although (to argue against myself), why shouldn't there be a display that shows you the upcoming businesses along your route, that you can click on to reroute? Perhaps businesses who pay extra get slightly larger visuals or video ads, or get shown for a larger radius (for example, the default is to show businesses just to the immediate left and right, but pay extra to get shown a block to the left or right). Quick, file a patent. :)
    - jack-r-abbit 13y ago
      I use Waze on my phone for my car nav. When I am stopped, it will often pop up a small advert for something near by (usually offering some sort of deal) with a single button that says something like "Go there". Tapping that button will reroute me. If this was built into the car nav of an autonomous vehicle, I don't see why it would need to be more complicated than what we already have in other apps today.
mistercow 13y ago
I don't think anyone is going to be dumb enough to try the specific scenario this article outlines. The real world is noisy, and in practice, an objective like "reroute path to include Krispy Kreme, but only if it isn't too far out of the way" is going to have too many edge cases to do 100% reliably. And it only takes one "my car made me 40 minutes late to work by trying to take me by a Krispy Kreme in the next town" story to turn this idea into a gigantic embarrassment for everyone involved.
- jiggy2011 13y ago
  Until everyone shrugs it off and gets around it by holding their meetings at krispy kreme.
- scep12 13y ago
  > an objective like "reroute path to include Krispy Kreme, but only if it isn't too far out of the way" is going to have too many edge cases to do 100% reliably Too many edge cases? I'm sure you would have said the same thing about self-driving cars not too long ago. In a world where cars drive themselves, choosing an alternate route based on traffic and waypoints is a relatively easy problem to solve.
  - mistercow 13y ago
    It's a matter of risk vs. reward. The reward for self-driving cars is huge. If it screws up once or twice and makes you late, you don't have a whole lot to complain about. From the developer's point of view, it's not all that embarrassing because it's naturally framed in the context of "yeah, but it's a self-driving car." But the situation is totally different with advertising. It's not "I was late because my amazing scifi technology malfunctioned"; it's "I was late because of a crummy commercial". The consumer doesn't get any tangible reward for this, so they're just pissed off. And the developer and advertiser end up embarrassed because they did something shady and it screwed someone's day up.
maxerickson 13y ago
This isn't that scary, in situations where the passenger does not own the vehicle the route is probably going to be shown to them on the device that they use to request the car, so there is plenty of opportunity for a negotiated route (rather than a route determined strictly by the vehicle/operator). The trick is convincing enough people that they should pay attention to the route they pay for.
- VLM 13y ago
  This already doesn't work with human powered autonomous vehicles aka taxi cab.
VLM 13y ago
Back when in dashboard GPS was a thing, wasn't access to the device cut off while the vehicle was in gear? I wonder how that will interact with an autonomous vehicle. There are some interesting financial issues where driving me, slowly, past every McDonalds would waste a lot of time and gas. How much gasoline will I have to buy because a retailer purchased X number of drivebys? For a variety of interesting and irrelevant dietary reasons I don't eat at McDonalds. Presumably a smart enough socially connected car would understand that and not waste my gasoline, time, mileage, and a restauranteurs purchased drivebys so it would not route me past McDonalds. There are two amusements. The first is lying and suddenly according to social media 90% of americans are now following a paleo vegan diet, or never eat any cuisine except Bolivian (because to the best of my knowledge there are no centers of Bolivian cuisine anywhere nearby me) The second is the car equivalent of "swatting" where you fool a social network into believing the victim is a huge supporter of NORML so it routes the car thru some interesting neighborhoods, or endless fun with rightwingers who are now "in the closet" per social media so they get routed past certain bars and bathhouses and such. One significant problem is autonomous vehicles would remove the need to pay as much attention outside... so advertising would seem fairly pointless. I use mythtv at home to skip legacy TV network commercials; coming up with an exciting new technology to tailor TV commercials to me, which I'm going to skip anyway, sounds very much like horseshoe mfgrs trying to tailor their horseshoes to appeal to the new automobile invention a century or so ago. If no one's looking out the window any more, why spend all that money on signs? Just send them email spam. You can sent a lot of social media spam for the cost of running a giant neon sign 24x7 for a decade.
- endianswap 13y ago
  The modern cars I've driven with LCD dashboards (modern as in like MY2013) have all allowed screwing with everything while driving, even GPS. I remember when it wasn't allowed, but at some point they relaxed those rules?
tomp 13y ago
Why is this a hypothetical future scenario? AFAIK, Google is perfectly capable of doing that even now, with route finding/guidance on Google Maps.
- mixedbit 13y ago
  Right, Google was also recently granted a patent for something like this: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=8,630,897.PN.&OS=PN/8,630,897&RS=PN/8,630,897 http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=H...
- scep12 13y ago
  I had the same thought. I imagine that, in said future scenario, the author is assuming that the ubiquity of self-driving cars has progressed to the point in which drivers are far less attentive to their routes (given the autonomy of the cars). Compare that to the present; if you're using gmaps, you're engaged with where the car is going and perhaps more likely to notice the alternative route to Krispy Kreme. Then there's the safety aspect: current mapping/gps providers would really come under fire if they were asking you to take your eyes off the road for any longer than they already do. Most, if not all, offer enough voice guidance to remove the need to look at the screen at all. Even if the decision-making process were to be done out-loud, I could see some safety concerns arising.
DanielBMarkham 13y ago
Better yet, would you trade ads and impulse buys for free rides? So you never have to own a car, but every time you go anywhere your car is actively trying to get you to spend time and money doing things you normally wouldn't do -- play online games, visit donut shops, and so on. Would that be worth never having to own a car?
- ItendToDisagree 13y ago
  That actually sounds like a brilliant angle for selling an automated car service. "Our cars will take you wherever for a dime! To make up the difference we will be playing ads and/or having you partake in surveys during the ride." Sounds cool if you live in a city particularly.
- 6d0debc071 13y ago
  Nope. Most of the personal benefit of not having to drive would be that I could do other things with my time. If I've got to be doing something I don't like anyway, then that defeats much of the point.
- GhotiFish 13y ago
  Consider that such base manipulation would be used primarily on the poor.
  - ericcumbee 13y ago
    I think it is a very long way down the road before the poor start getting self driving cars.
    - maxerickson 13y ago
      If they work well they should be a more efficient use of capital than a normal car (higher utilization, better adherence to maintenance schedules, etc). That creates an opportunity for per mile charges to be cheaper than owning a car. (they should obviously be some combination of more profitable and cheaper than a taxi service...)
    - 13y ago
ericcumbee 13y ago
I am OK with this. as long as there is a web service that tells you when the "hot" light is on.
FrankCastello 13y ago
Funny eh? Get a secret US court to force Google or Ford to kill you by slamming the autonomous car driving you into a utility pole. Al Qaeda, torrent user or whatever war we'll be fighting by then
A_COMPUTER 13y ago
I had speculated about something like this with friends when it was announced that Google was getting into autonomous driving cars. The combination of G+, Maps, Zagats and a Google car that drives itself would give possible scenarios like the car doing things like asking you: "You haven't had lunch yet today. There's a highly-rated Italian place just two minutes from here, would you me to take you there?" then afterwards, "what did you think of your meal, on a scale of one to five? I'll share it with your G+ circles." The only thing that bothers me about this (besides the obvious data privacy issue) is how much power it gives one entity Google, to subtly manipulate nearly anything.
- grahamburger 13y ago
  My phone already does this with Google Now.
  - kissickas 13y ago
    It suggests where to eat lunch if you haven't had it yet? Serious question, that would be an awesome feature, but I couldn't find anything on it. I don't regularly get lunch out but mine is always giving me "Places Nearby" which seem to have nothing to do with my interests.
    - mcintyre1994 13y ago
      It's always seemed to me that places nearby is somewhat based on time, I'm more likely to get the cinema in the afternoon and a restaurant in the evening. It could just be coincidental but it'd make sense if it is influenced by time. That's not as clever as knowing I haven't had lunch yet, but since I often have it with me or buy it in a supermarket or something, they'd have no way of accurately knowing anyway.
6d0debc071 13y ago
> What if...? Why not present the user with the option before their trip begins so that you're not wasting a lot of fuel and so on? I can't see people being too happy with you if you start routing their lives around your convenience. Advertising currently costs the end user very little - but there's certainly a transaction cost involved. If you start doing this to people, there'll be a significant incentive for them to disable the system in some way, or opt for a different one. "Our cars only take you where you want to go." Would be a pretty good advertising message. "Average 10% faster journey times from A to B. You're in control. Take back your life." Etc.
calinet6 13y ago
This shows surprising parallels to Net Neutrality, highlighting the importance of getting this legislation correct for future technologies. We almost need a new "Bill of Rights" for the 21st century to deal with all the ambiguities brought about by technology.
rcthompson 13y ago
Well, one solution to this is to have it show you the route in advance and have you confirm it (or even edit it first). If it picks an obviously suboptimal route, you know something's up. If Krispy Kreme is already on your optimal route, then too bad. Basically, as long as the thing doing the navigating is also showing your the route it plans to take, then it can't pull any funny business like this without you noticing.
bronbron 13y ago
Maybe I'm missing something, but.. Doesn't this basically already happen? I would imagine retail space along main thoroughfares (e.g. "Main street" or space right next to a very popular highway exit) is substantially more expensive than one that sees 5 cars a day. Retailers already basically know what route you're likely to be taking - the one that most other people take. Granted they don't physically stop your car and ask if you would like Krispy Kremes, but it seems like that bidding war could get expensive quickly - now Krispy Kreme has to compete for retail space along Main street, and they also have to bid against Dunkin Donuts/etc. in the traffic routing business. Further, If Krispy Kreme is routing 25% of all traffic past their store, then the municipality in question either has to: a) Outlaw this b) Add additional roads, etc. to the road near Krispy Kreme, thus making this road the new "Main street" anyway. It'd drive up the cost of that real estate where Krispy Kreme is. All in all, I just don't see it being economically viable for anyone.
perlpimp 13y ago
There is limit for decisions for entire day one can have some if some decisions are made for you, you can focus on other things. Technically it is a small slice of your decision allotment but I guess if software can assist me then it is great. However it should not apply to people with less intensive mental labour, for those this might suddenly become habit forming for whatever purpose car decides to stop over or not. So in general it is ok for a car to stop by only if the car can roughly estimate your health, blood sugar level etc. I mean if the car can assist me for better living that would be great! my 2c
nodata 13y ago
Tell it to stop.
programminggeek 13y ago
Between Glass and Google's self-driving cars, it is quite clear that the future of advertising is going to be potentially quite distopian where virtual billboards pop up based on your interest and location and where ads playing in music are based on where you are and what time of day it is. They might be as simple as a McDonalds ad for their mighty wings and your car will change course if you say "I'm loving it!". This is actually the sort of natural endpoint of what I thought would happen with AR mobile apps and now that Google has Google Now on android, is doing glass and self driving cars, it is pretty clear what the future looks like. It's more ads.
- davidgerard 13y ago
  Pohl and Kornbluth nailed it in the 1950s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Space_Merchants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Space_Merchants
saipenguin 13y ago
What if your news article keeps buzz marketing Krispy Kreme?

75 points by kdazzle 13y ago

Just one of a bazillion questions that comes up when your car is autonomous. What happens when the sekrit tech elite want to kill you and so they make your car drive off a cliff? Interesting questions to be sure and already being examined on such shows as "CSI" in the US. Basically one of the reasons new technology rolls out slowly is that there are lots of people asking these sorts of questions and trying to have answers before they ship. Sometimes that works well, sometimes not (cite battery issues on 787).

vezzy-fnord 13y ago
Didn't the first one already happen with Michael Hastings? Although to be fair, it's just suspicions and not any officially accepted story. Nonetheless, they're fairly strong suspicions, same as with the Karl Koch case.
- ewoodrich 13y ago
  Regardless of whether or not that is true (and full disclosure, I doubt that it is from what I've read) it is surprising to me how something with tenuous evidence can be presumptively believed to be true in certain circles. His own wife says it was a "tragic accident", and his brother says he believed Hastings to be in a "manic episode" at the time. Why is it that random people on the internet have so much more suspicion and rage than his loved ones who were closest to him? This isn't really meant to be directed at you, so much as expressing my frustration with a sort of casual canonization of a dubious event as a conspiracy.
  - downer83 13y ago
    Because the motive and the modus operandi make a good fit for the scenario. The family is not interested in the emotional baggage of foul play, or the hassle of an arduous investigation, which would, hypothetically, probably be fruitless, even if suspicions were accurate. It's much, much easier for loved ones to swallow an official story of a tragic accident. For total strangers, not burdened by emotions, the scenario is objectively disturbing.
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    Because conspiracies make for a good story to fill your hunger for curiosity, and when you are only loosely versed in the circumstances it is easy to find reasons to believe it was a conspiracy.
  - beagle3 13y ago
    I haven't been following the Hastings case, so I can only reply in general: Following the recent Snowden disclosures, you should question yourself at disbelieving conspiracy so easily. You might be right (probably are, for all I know), but you have no reason to believe so other than pure faith. Ask yourself this (and answer truthfully): A year ago - did you believe that the NSA is actively sabotaging standards, intercepting shipments in order to modify the software to be under their control, etc? If you didn't (and I'm sure you've had the conspiracies mentioned), then why on earth would you believe "the official word" on anything like remote control of a car? You might have a lot of faith in the official status-quo for no reason at all.
    - vezzy-fnord 13y ago
      Ask yourself this (and answer truthfully): A year ago - did you believe that the NSA is actively sabotaging standards, intercepting shipments in order to modify the software to be under their control, etc? If you didn't (and I'm sure you've had the conspiracies mentioned), then why on earth would you believe "the official word" on anything like remote control of a car? I am fucking sick of people being surprised by the NSA revelations. NSA malpractice has been documented all the way back to 1975 by the Church Committee's papers: http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/contents/church/contents_church_reports_vol5.htm http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/contents/church/contents_c... Then later on we had Clipper chips, ECHELON, Presidential Surveillance Program, TEMPEST, Total Information Awareness, DCSNet, Room 641A and plenty of other surveillance disclosures. This whole stigmatization of conspiracy theorists as loons is wholly unfair, misguided and shows the speaker's ignorance of how intelligence agencies operate. Conspiracy theories aren't just idiotic pop culture ravings about Illuminati, reptilian men and ZOG.
philsnow 13y ago
Nearly exactly this happens in Stross's Halting State
- jaxb 13y ago
  You mean, bidding for a better bus route?
  - philsnow 13y ago
    No, assassination by hijacking of automated cars
ds9 13y ago
Another case worse than partially-hijacked trips was mentioned in a slashdot post, and if I recall correctly, there was a vague reference to the autonomous-car-makers considering it, and it has bothered me ever since. Imagine a situation where a crash appears to the AI of car C1 to be be inevitable. But also, if C1 executes maneuver M1, its own occupants will be saved from harm, but another car C2 will have a worse crash or will crash when it otherwise would not - but if C1 does maneuver M2 instead, its own occupants will be killed or suffer worse harm, but the occupants of C2 will be better off. What if, in such a scenario, C1 would decide to "sacrifice" its own occupants to minimize the total harm (e.g., C2 has more occupants)? Self-driving cars might well be designed this way. It might be mandated by law. Authorities would try to reassure objectors by saying the "avoidably killed by your car" outcome is very unlikely and that you're better off in the big picture of all risks. Edit: On a closer reading I note that the linked page http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/10/the-ethics-of-autonomous-cars/280360/ http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/10/the-et... covers, not exactly the above, but similar scenarios.
- carpo 13y ago
  And imagine if the AI also rated the car occupants on their future value to society.
  - acheron 13y ago
    If we're talking about Google, I assume it would rank people based on the number of friends they have in Google+.
- noonespecial 13y ago
  The cynical side of me suspects that the "Volvos" of the future will make this choice less often than the "Pontiacs". The rich will still have safer cars, AI style. It seems like an interesting branch of "applied theology". Does one, in the end, have faith that these tiny entities imbued with lesser-god-like driving abilities really have one's best interests at heart?
- maxerickson 13y ago
TacticalCoder 13y ago
Indeed. Here's a simpler one than the "sekrit tech elite" wanting to kill you... What happens when the equivalent of the Mariposa botnet, but this time for autonomous cars, roots 12 million of autonomous cars? But, this time, we have to believe that security is going to be done correctly, right? (this time, promised, no backdoors, no 0-days, no compromised servers, no compromised keys, etc.) I does really hope this technology rolls out as slowly as possible because the security issues do really scare me.
- Ambrosia 13y ago
  oh god, ransomware for your car...
  - im3w1l 13y ago
    "We are going to kill 100 drivers every day until 1bn in bitcoin is sent to 1...x" Just imagine the economic disruptions on day 3 when no one dares drive anymore
redwall_hp 13y ago
>What happens when the sekrit tech elite want to kill you and so they make your car drive off a cliff? It's considerably easier to physically tamper with a car, such as the good old Hollywood standby of cutting brake lines. Why worry about a fantasy of people trying to attack you remotely when there are plenty of real organizations that are much more likely to tamper with your car now?
- saraid216 13y ago
  Because technophobia is harder when you don't have a technology to be afraid of.
- 6d0debc071 13y ago
  > It's considerably easier to physically tamper with a car, such as the good old Hollywood standby of cutting brake lines. It's only hard to exploit a serious security flaw the first time. Until they close it, it's relatively easy to exploit it thereafter. The relative lethality seems likely to favour the software option too. Personally I doubt I'd get above 10mph before I tried using my brakes - (manoeuvring into and then out of my road.) Compared to, 'Wait until you're on the motorway and accelerate as hard as you can into oncoming traffic.' I don't see too many people walking away from the latter case - the closing speed would be something like 190mph, disregarding braking on the part of the oncoming traffic.

jupiterjaz 13y ago

Honestly if autonomous cars can reduce even 10% of accidents caused by drunk driving and other human errors then they will have payed their way and more.

derekp7 13y ago
But speaking of paying, self driving cars also won't speed, turn right on red without a full stop, etc. Which means traffic tickets would be a thing of the past, along with the revenue they bring in.
- nightski 13y ago
  At the same time policing costs would decrease dramatically.
  - saraid216 13y ago
    That's probably not true. I've gotten the impression that a sizable chunk of police funding comes from speeding tickets. Paying an officer to do something low-risk like camping out next to a road for a shift isn't really expensive. Same with monitoring systems like cameras on traffic lights. Set-up cost is significant, but they probably pay for themselves within a year.
    - nightski 13y ago
      The initial cost doesn't matter. If an officer doesn't cost much, yet you don't have to pay him any more than that is a 100% decrease in cost. Second I know that the officer is not the only cost involved. What about maintaining a fleet of top of the line vehicles? How about paying all the support personnel such as IT Staff, dispatch, managers, etc? All of the other expensive toys carried around by the chaser?
      - saraid216 13y ago
        > Second I know that the officer is not the only cost involved. What about maintaining a fleet of top of the line vehicles? How about paying all the support personnel such as IT Staff, dispatch, managers, etc? All of the other expensive toys carried around by the chaser? Arguable. It depends on how badly you want [insert autonomous car producer here] to run your local police department from the cloud.

melipone 13y ago

Actually, I had a paper some time ago already on the issue of combining preferences with optimization (shameless plug). http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16703681/homepage/mabramso/research/tcpabook.pdf http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16703681/homepage/mabrams...

drawkbox 13y ago

This brings up very interesting ideas and questions that will happen with autonomous cars. Routes and retail along those routes will enter a new era. Building a store you have to take into account algorithms of the vehicles. Slight changes to a widely used system could shut down a business faster than individual human choice (although it may also make other businesses seen more as it distributes traffic across more roads - hot spots could become medium and less travelled areas could become more lucrative). Also, wouldn't it lessen ad hoc pulling into McDonalds on the way home? If the machine is in control then you might not go get a donut even if it is along the route, you'd schedule it in more ahead of time. In the same way e-commerce is more direct, traveling will be more direct and the items at the checkout are not as distracting, same as passing other stores, you'll be busy doing other things like passengers possibly.

nightski 13y ago
I don't see any reason to believe why you are in any less control with a autonomous car. If anything, you would be in more control because making that quick decision turn into McDonalds would be as stressful as pushing a button.
- greeneggs 13y ago
  You think there's going to be a "McDonalds" button on the dashboard? No, you'll have to press half a dozen buttons to reroute, and so you'll have past the restaurant and won't bother. Whereas currently, your control is direct and immediate. Although (to argue against myself), why shouldn't there be a display that shows you the upcoming businesses along your route, that you can click on to reroute? Perhaps businesses who pay extra get slightly larger visuals or video ads, or get shown for a larger radius (for example, the default is to show businesses just to the immediate left and right, but pay extra to get shown a block to the left or right). Quick, file a patent. :)
  - jack-r-abbit 13y ago
    I use Waze on my phone for my car nav. When I am stopped, it will often pop up a small advert for something near by (usually offering some sort of deal) with a single button that says something like "Go there". Tapping that button will reroute me. If this was built into the car nav of an autonomous vehicle, I don't see why it would need to be more complicated than what we already have in other apps today.

mistercow 13y ago

I don't think anyone is going to be dumb enough to try the specific scenario this article outlines. The real world is noisy, and in practice, an objective like "reroute path to include Krispy Kreme, but only if it isn't too far out of the way" is going to have too many edge cases to do 100% reliably. And it only takes one "my car made me 40 minutes late to work by trying to take me by a Krispy Kreme in the next town" story to turn this idea into a gigantic embarrassment for everyone involved.

jiggy2011 13y ago
Until everyone shrugs it off and gets around it by holding their meetings at krispy kreme.
scep12 13y ago
> an objective like "reroute path to include Krispy Kreme, but only if it isn't too far out of the way" is going to have too many edge cases to do 100% reliably Too many edge cases? I'm sure you would have said the same thing about self-driving cars not too long ago. In a world where cars drive themselves, choosing an alternate route based on traffic and waypoints is a relatively easy problem to solve.
- mistercow 13y ago
  It's a matter of risk vs. reward. The reward for self-driving cars is huge. If it screws up once or twice and makes you late, you don't have a whole lot to complain about. From the developer's point of view, it's not all that embarrassing because it's naturally framed in the context of "yeah, but it's a self-driving car." But the situation is totally different with advertising. It's not "I was late because my amazing scifi technology malfunctioned"; it's "I was late because of a crummy commercial". The consumer doesn't get any tangible reward for this, so they're just pissed off. And the developer and advertiser end up embarrassed because they did something shady and it screwed someone's day up.

maxerickson 13y ago

This isn't that scary, in situations where the passenger does not own the vehicle the route is probably going to be shown to them on the device that they use to request the car, so there is plenty of opportunity for a negotiated route (rather than a route determined strictly by the vehicle/operator). The trick is convincing enough people that they should pay attention to the route they pay for.

VLM 13y ago
This already doesn't work with human powered autonomous vehicles aka taxi cab.

VLM 13y ago

Back when in dashboard GPS was a thing, wasn't access to the device cut off while the vehicle was in gear? I wonder how that will interact with an autonomous vehicle. There are some interesting financial issues where driving me, slowly, past every McDonalds would waste a lot of time and gas. How much gasoline will I have to buy because a retailer purchased X number of drivebys? For a variety of interesting and irrelevant dietary reasons I don't eat at McDonalds. Presumably a smart enough socially connected car would understand that and not waste my gasoline, time, mileage, and a restauranteurs purchased drivebys so it would not route me past McDonalds. There are two amusements. The first is lying and suddenly according to social media 90% of americans are now following a paleo vegan diet, or never eat any cuisine except Bolivian (because to the best of my knowledge there are no centers of Bolivian cuisine anywhere nearby me) The second is the car equivalent of "swatting" where you fool a social network into believing the victim is a huge supporter of NORML so it routes the car thru some interesting neighborhoods, or endless fun with rightwingers who are now "in the closet" per social media so they get routed past certain bars and bathhouses and such. One significant problem is autonomous vehicles would remove the need to pay as much attention outside... so advertising would seem fairly pointless. I use mythtv at home to skip legacy TV network commercials; coming up with an exciting new technology to tailor TV commercials to me, which I'm going to skip anyway, sounds very much like horseshoe mfgrs trying to tailor their horseshoes to appeal to the new automobile invention a century or so ago. If no one's looking out the window any more, why spend all that money on signs? Just send them email spam. You can sent a lot of social media spam for the cost of running a giant neon sign 24x7 for a decade.

endianswap 13y ago
The modern cars I've driven with LCD dashboards (modern as in like MY2013) have all allowed screwing with everything while driving, even GPS. I remember when it wasn't allowed, but at some point they relaxed those rules?

tomp 13y ago

Why is this a hypothetical future scenario? AFAIK, Google is perfectly capable of doing that even now, with route finding/guidance on Google Maps.

mixedbit 13y ago
Right, Google was also recently granted a patent for something like this: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=8,630,897.PN.&OS=PN/8,630,897&RS=PN/8,630,897 http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=H...
scep12 13y ago
I had the same thought. I imagine that, in said future scenario, the author is assuming that the ubiquity of self-driving cars has progressed to the point in which drivers are far less attentive to their routes (given the autonomy of the cars). Compare that to the present; if you're using gmaps, you're engaged with where the car is going and perhaps more likely to notice the alternative route to Krispy Kreme. Then there's the safety aspect: current mapping/gps providers would really come under fire if they were asking you to take your eyes off the road for any longer than they already do. Most, if not all, offer enough voice guidance to remove the need to look at the screen at all. Even if the decision-making process were to be done out-loud, I could see some safety concerns arising.

DanielBMarkham 13y ago

Better yet, would you trade ads and impulse buys for free rides? So you never have to own a car, but every time you go anywhere your car is actively trying to get you to spend time and money doing things you normally wouldn't do -- play online games, visit donut shops, and so on. Would that be worth never having to own a car?

ItendToDisagree 13y ago
That actually sounds like a brilliant angle for selling an automated car service. "Our cars will take you wherever for a dime! To make up the difference we will be playing ads and/or having you partake in surveys during the ride." Sounds cool if you live in a city particularly.
6d0debc071 13y ago
Nope. Most of the personal benefit of not having to drive would be that I could do other things with my time. If I've got to be doing something I don't like anyway, then that defeats much of the point.
GhotiFish 13y ago
Consider that such base manipulation would be used primarily on the poor.
- ericcumbee 13y ago
  I think it is a very long way down the road before the poor start getting self driving cars.
  - maxerickson 13y ago
    If they work well they should be a more efficient use of capital than a normal car (higher utilization, better adherence to maintenance schedules, etc). That creates an opportunity for per mile charges to be cheaper than owning a car. (they should obviously be some combination of more profitable and cheaper than a taxi service...)
  - 13y ago

ericcumbee 13y ago

I am OK with this. as long as there is a web service that tells you when the "hot" light is on.

FrankCastello 13y ago

Funny eh? Get a secret US court to force Google or Ford to kill you by slamming the autonomous car driving you into a utility pole. Al Qaeda, torrent user or whatever war we'll be fighting by then

A_COMPUTER 13y ago

I had speculated about something like this with friends when it was announced that Google was getting into autonomous driving cars. The combination of G+, Maps, Zagats and a Google car that drives itself would give possible scenarios like the car doing things like asking you: "You haven't had lunch yet today. There's a highly-rated Italian place just two minutes from here, would you me to take you there?" then afterwards, "what did you think of your meal, on a scale of one to five? I'll share it with your G+ circles." The only thing that bothers me about this (besides the obvious data privacy issue) is how much power it gives one entity Google, to subtly manipulate nearly anything.

grahamburger 13y ago
My phone already does this with Google Now.
- kissickas 13y ago
  It suggests where to eat lunch if you haven't had it yet? Serious question, that would be an awesome feature, but I couldn't find anything on it. I don't regularly get lunch out but mine is always giving me "Places Nearby" which seem to have nothing to do with my interests.
  - mcintyre1994 13y ago
    It's always seemed to me that places nearby is somewhat based on time, I'm more likely to get the cinema in the afternoon and a restaurant in the evening. It could just be coincidental but it'd make sense if it is influenced by time. That's not as clever as knowing I haven't had lunch yet, but since I often have it with me or buy it in a supermarket or something, they'd have no way of accurately knowing anyway.

6d0debc071 13y ago

> What if...? Why not present the user with the option before their trip begins so that you're not wasting a lot of fuel and so on? I can't see people being too happy with you if you start routing their lives around your convenience. Advertising currently costs the end user very little - but there's certainly a transaction cost involved. If you start doing this to people, there'll be a significant incentive for them to disable the system in some way, or opt for a different one. "Our cars only take you where you want to go." Would be a pretty good advertising message. "Average 10% faster journey times from A to B. You're in control. Take back your life." Etc.

calinet6 13y ago

This shows surprising parallels to Net Neutrality, highlighting the importance of getting this legislation correct for future technologies. We almost need a new "Bill of Rights" for the 21st century to deal with all the ambiguities brought about by technology.

rcthompson 13y ago

Well, one solution to this is to have it show you the route in advance and have you confirm it (or even edit it first). If it picks an obviously suboptimal route, you know something's up. If Krispy Kreme is already on your optimal route, then too bad. Basically, as long as the thing doing the navigating is also showing your the route it plans to take, then it can't pull any funny business like this without you noticing.

bronbron 13y ago

Maybe I'm missing something, but.. Doesn't this basically already happen? I would imagine retail space along main thoroughfares (e.g. "Main street" or space right next to a very popular highway exit) is substantially more expensive than one that sees 5 cars a day. Retailers already basically know what route you're likely to be taking - the one that most other people take. Granted they don't physically stop your car and ask if you would like Krispy Kremes, but it seems like that bidding war could get expensive quickly - now Krispy Kreme has to compete for retail space along Main street, and they also have to bid against Dunkin Donuts/etc. in the traffic routing business. Further, If Krispy Kreme is routing 25% of all traffic past their store, then the municipality in question either has to: a) Outlaw this b) Add additional roads, etc. to the road near Krispy Kreme, thus making this road the new "Main street" anyway. It'd drive up the cost of that real estate where Krispy Kreme is. All in all, I just don't see it being economically viable for anyone.

perlpimp 13y ago

There is limit for decisions for entire day one can have some if some decisions are made for you, you can focus on other things. Technically it is a small slice of your decision allotment but I guess if software can assist me then it is great. However it should not apply to people with less intensive mental labour, for those this might suddenly become habit forming for whatever purpose car decides to stop over or not. So in general it is ok for a car to stop by only if the car can roughly estimate your health, blood sugar level etc. I mean if the car can assist me for better living that would be great! my 2c

nodata 13y ago

Tell it to stop.

programminggeek 13y ago

Between Glass and Google's self-driving cars, it is quite clear that the future of advertising is going to be potentially quite distopian where virtual billboards pop up based on your interest and location and where ads playing in music are based on where you are and what time of day it is. They might be as simple as a McDonalds ad for their mighty wings and your car will change course if you say "I'm loving it!". This is actually the sort of natural endpoint of what I thought would happen with AR mobile apps and now that Google has Google Now on android, is doing glass and self driving cars, it is pretty clear what the future looks like. It's more ads.

davidgerard 13y ago
Pohl and Kornbluth nailed it in the 1950s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Space_Merchants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Space_Merchants

saipenguin 13y ago

What if your news article keeps buzz marketing Krispy Kreme?