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There's actually a much more exciting corollary to this though: the car can choose to crash in whatever way minimizes the risk of injury to you and others. This

There's actually a much more exciting corollary to this though: the car can choose to crash in whatever way minimizes the risk of injury to you and others. This may entail deliberately crashing into the known best crumple zones, even at the optimal angle to ensure there is reduced risk of impingement of your limbs, say - perhaps even tailored to knowledge of your shape. It would know you have no passengers, perhaps, and so choose to cannibalize your rear by either spinning sharply (if this is safe, which admittedly it's probably not, unless perhaps the road surface has lost grip and you cannot decelerate effectively using breaks) or - if a pile-up is likely - breaking more sharply to begin the crash with the vehicle behind ahead of schedule. There could be cooperative crashing, with all vehicles minimizing occurrence of collision and maximising optimal crumple-zone utilisation. I have no idea whatsoever what is or isn't safe or possible, but the cars can be made to know. These things are all a long time away, but it's actually far more exciting than terrifying.

brador 11y ago
Scenario: two passangers in your car, four in the other. Head on crash incoming. Let's say the AI has two options: A - You both die, one passanger in the other car dies. B - You survive, all four in the other car die. What should the AI do? Should the AI be set to value the driver and occupants life above all others, no matter what? or do we set an equation? 1 driver = 2 others? 3 others? 4? maybe the AI should ascertain fault and make a decision on that? ("if you're to blame you get a x2 weighting to die") My guess is Google is ignoring this possibility and working to the car never crashing. But at 55mph on ice a loss of traction and control is always a possibility. See, once we have AI making decisions, then we must also implement responsibility chains. Who takes the fall when decision making AI goes bad? The code writer? code owning corp? vehicle owner? CEO? In general: AI = good to go, decision making AI = we are not ready.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  We already have rather detailed rules (product liability law) for responsibility for products; and I've yet to see anything that points to any specific shortcoming of them when the product is an "AI making decisions". I don't really understand why people act like "this product caused harm when used for its intended purpose, should someone be accountable and if so who?" is a question that society hasn't thoroughly considered.
  - brador 11y ago
    Dumb products (for which the established laws apply) don't make decisions. AI does. That's what makes it AI, and it's gonna need new rules and regulations.
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      Even to the extent that the ways putative future AIs might "make decisions" might be more like the way humans do than the way existing products respond to stimulus and produce results, out body of liability law, thanks in part to the legacy of less egalitarian times, already had ample precedent for the treatment of responsibility for results of human decision making by entities that are legally property rather legal persons. To the extent that more enlightened times might see actors with that kind of independence as legal persons even if they are manufactured, well, we have personal liability law already, which also addresses agency relations, etc. where one legal person might be responsible for the acts of another. So, again, rather than vague handwaves at poorly defined distinctions, I'd like to hear those arguing that liability law is a real imminent problem with AI that will require major and fundamental change to do something to specify the specific ways in which existing law is inadequate.
- _benedict 11y ago
  I understand that this is the problem posited by this and many other articles. But right now we are almost certainly not even considering asking these questions of a self-driving car. It doesn't have remotely the situational awareness and data to make an informed decision, let alone the capacity. I would be surprised if any of the first several generations do anything beyond trying to avoid a collision. Including lowering velocity much below what a human might in adverse conditions. After that I expect that mitigating collision impact on the vehicles will be the next problem, since that is an engineering one. Such as optimal crash angles, etc. We are a long way from our cars making deliberate life-or-death moral decisions. Before we get there we have many decisions they can make very effectively that have no moral component. Once their decisions begin taking into account morality, society will no doubt legislate, but let's worry about that then.
veidr 11y ago
To me, it's closer to the terrifying end of the spectrum, because we reading this will all be dead[1] before cars will actually be able to make the kind of deeply informed and complex decisions you describe. It's still exciting, but in a pretty abstract way. [1]: barring the advent of Kim Stanley Robinson's gerontological treatment, but I'm assuming that's an even tougher but to crack
- _benedict 11y ago
  I kind of suspect that within a small number of generations of self-driving cars the decision of how best to utilise crumple zones will be incorporated into crash decision making. Coordinated crashing, however, will probably take several decades due to lack of interoperability, like so much tech progress. _Moral_ decisions are almost certainly a long long time away.

brador 11y ago

Scenario: two passangers in your car, four in the other. Head on crash incoming. Let's say the AI has two options: A - You both die, one passanger in the other car dies. B - You survive, all four in the other car die. What should the AI do? Should the AI be set to value the driver and occupants life above all others, no matter what? or do we set an equation? 1 driver = 2 others? 3 others? 4? maybe the AI should ascertain fault and make a decision on that? ("if you're to blame you get a x2 weighting to die") My guess is Google is ignoring this possibility and working to the car never crashing. But at 55mph on ice a loss of traction and control is always a possibility. See, once we have AI making decisions, then we must also implement responsibility chains. Who takes the fall when decision making AI goes bad? The code writer? code owning corp? vehicle owner? CEO? In general: AI = good to go, decision making AI = we are not ready.

dragonwriter 11y ago
We already have rather detailed rules (product liability law) for responsibility for products; and I've yet to see anything that points to any specific shortcoming of them when the product is an "AI making decisions". I don't really understand why people act like "this product caused harm when used for its intended purpose, should someone be accountable and if so who?" is a question that society hasn't thoroughly considered.
- brador 11y ago
  Dumb products (for which the established laws apply) don't make decisions. AI does. That's what makes it AI, and it's gonna need new rules and regulations.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    Even to the extent that the ways putative future AIs might "make decisions" might be more like the way humans do than the way existing products respond to stimulus and produce results, out body of liability law, thanks in part to the legacy of less egalitarian times, already had ample precedent for the treatment of responsibility for results of human decision making by entities that are legally property rather legal persons. To the extent that more enlightened times might see actors with that kind of independence as legal persons even if they are manufactured, well, we have personal liability law already, which also addresses agency relations, etc. where one legal person might be responsible for the acts of another. So, again, rather than vague handwaves at poorly defined distinctions, I'd like to hear those arguing that liability law is a real imminent problem with AI that will require major and fundamental change to do something to specify the specific ways in which existing law is inadequate.
_benedict 11y ago
I understand that this is the problem posited by this and many other articles. But right now we are almost certainly not even considering asking these questions of a self-driving car. It doesn't have remotely the situational awareness and data to make an informed decision, let alone the capacity. I would be surprised if any of the first several generations do anything beyond trying to avoid a collision. Including lowering velocity much below what a human might in adverse conditions. After that I expect that mitigating collision impact on the vehicles will be the next problem, since that is an engineering one. Such as optimal crash angles, etc. We are a long way from our cars making deliberate life-or-death moral decisions. Before we get there we have many decisions they can make very effectively that have no moral component. Once their decisions begin taking into account morality, society will no doubt legislate, but let's worry about that then.

veidr 11y ago

To me, it's closer to the terrifying end of the spectrum, because we reading this will all be dead[1] before cars will actually be able to make the kind of deeply informed and complex decisions you describe. It's still exciting, but in a pretty abstract way. [1]: barring the advent of Kim Stanley Robinson's gerontological treatment, but I'm assuming that's an even tougher but to crack

_benedict 11y ago
I kind of suspect that within a small number of generations of self-driving cars the decision of how best to utilise crumple zones will be incorporated into crash decision making. Coordinated crashing, however, will probably take several decades due to lack of interoperability, like so much tech progress. _Moral_ decisions are almost certainly a long long time away.