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Should cars be fully driverless? No, says an MIT engineer and historian

news.mit.edu

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Re: Should cars be fully driverless? No, says an MIT engineer and historian

#11

Post by sandworm101 »

Zikes wrote: post #3

I must be missing something, because it seems like Mr. Mindell is saying cars shouldn't be fully driverless because they can't be. He cites numerous examples of other promised automation technologies that seem to have become a pipe dream over the past several decades. Except, Google's driverless cars have now logged over a million fully automated miles. It is a proven technology. These aren't exploratory machines goi…

I would suggest that Google cars haven't logged any driverless miles, at least not on public roads. They have humans onboard with backup controls (parking brakes if nothing else). So they are not driverless just yet.

Re: Should cars be fully driverless? No, says an MIT engineer and historian

#12

Post by [deleted] »

quanticle wrote: post #2

The thing that worries me about semi-autonomous cars is that we might end up in the same place we've ended up with aircraft. Aircraft are sufficiently autonomous in nominal conditions that pilot skills atrophy, and then when the plane encounters adverse conditions, these de-skilled pilots simply do not respond correctly to the problem, crashing the plane. Specifically, I'm thinking of something like Air France Flight…

[deleted]

Re: Should cars be fully driverless? No, says an MIT engineer and historian

#13

Post by sandworm101 »

zhanwei wrote: post #9

He is comparing situations where human decision makers are highly trained professionals such as astronauts and passenger plane pilot to daily driving situations where the average human decision maker is more likely to be an idiot(people switch off while driving) distracted by his smartphone.

Astronauts and pilots also switch off. It's not a function of training, but boredom and/or distraction.

Re: Should cars be fully driverless? No, says an MIT engineer and historian

#14

Post by mrspeaker »

quanticle wrote: post #2

The thing that worries me about semi-autonomous cars is that we might end up in the same place we've ended up with aircraft. Aircraft are sufficiently autonomous in nominal conditions that pilot skills atrophy, and then when the plane encounters adverse conditions, these de-skilled pilots simply do not respond correctly to the problem, crashing the plane. Specifically, I'm thinking of something like Air France Flight…

I wouldn't worry too much - a lot of people already die on the roads in fully non-autonomous cars. We only need fewer people to die and it's worth it.

Re: Should cars be fully driverless? No, says an MIT engineer and historian

#15

Post by hguant »

jessaustin wrote: post #4
quanticle wrote: post #2

The thing that worries me about semi-autonomous cars is that we might end up in the same place we've ended up with aircraft. Aircraft are sufficiently autonomous in nominal conditions that pilot skills atrophy, and then when the plane encounters adverse conditions, these de-skilled pilots simply do not respond correctly to the problem, crashing the plane. Specifically, I'm thinking of something like Air France Flight…

This danger will be avoided in automobiles by making human control impossible as soon as that makes any sense. There will be no steering wheel, the front seat will face backwards to facilitate conversation, and accident rates will plummet. The thing that robocars can do, which roboplanes cannot, is slow down or stop completely when faced with vexing situations.

Pulling over to the side of the road and putting your blinkers on is (almost) always an acceptable solution to an automotive error. Much harder to pull that off at 35,000 feet.

Re: Should cars be fully driverless? No, says an MIT engineer and historian

#16

Post by ekianjo »

Erm... the main point he makes is like "oh, we could not do it before no matter how hard we tried, so let's give up and keep humans in charge" basically.

I'm sure no one believe we would send rockets into space if you look back long enough in time, yet we did it. Driverless cars are not a concept anymore, many prototypes are very close to being fully operational - it would be very disappointing to stop at this stage.

Re: Should cars be fully driverless? No, says an MIT engineer and historian

#17

Post by ekianjo »

sandworm101 wrote: post #11
Zikes wrote: post #3

I must be missing something, because it seems like Mr. Mindell is saying cars shouldn't be fully driverless because they can't be. He cites numerous examples of other promised automation technologies that seem to have become a pipe dream over the past several decades. Except, Google's driverless cars have now logged over a million fully automated miles. It is a proven technology. These aren't exploratory machines goi…

I would suggest that Google cars haven't logged any driverless miles, at least not on public roads. They have humans onboard with backup controls (parking brakes if nothing else). So they are not driverless just yet.

a human not touching the wheel in most situations is a human that is NOT in control.

Re: Should cars be fully driverless? No, says an MIT engineer and historian

#18

Post by namuol »

> “That’s just proven to be a loser of an approach in a lot of other domains,” Mindell says. “I’m not arguing this from first principles. There are 40 years’ worth of examples.”

Yeah, and I have several millennia worth of examples suggesting that organized society at large is a worthless endeavor...

Re: Should cars be fully driverless? No, says an MIT engineer and historian

#19

Post by TeMPOraL »

sandworm101 wrote: post #13
zhanwei wrote: post #9

He is comparing situations where human decision makers are highly trained professionals such as astronauts and passenger plane pilot to daily driving situations where the average human decision maker is more likely to be an idiot(people switch off while driving) distracted by his smartphone.

Astronauts and pilots also switch off. It's not a function of training, but boredom and/or distraction.

Which only strenghtens the argument for self-driving cars. Hell, we even make those highly-trained professional aviators and astronauts depend on auto-pilots because it's much safer this way.

Re: Should cars be fully driverless? No, says an MIT engineer and historian

#20

Post by sandworm101 »

afarrell wrote: post #5
quanticle wrote: post #2

The thing that worries me about semi-autonomous cars is that we might end up in the same place we've ended up with aircraft. Aircraft are sufficiently autonomous in nominal conditions that pilot skills atrophy, and then when the plane encounters adverse conditions, these de-skilled pilots simply do not respond correctly to the problem, crashing the plane. Specifically, I'm thinking of something like Air France Flight…

Silly suggestion: have the copilot pilot spend the flight playing crash-recovery scenarios that reset every `random.randint(30,90)` minutes. When there is an actual emergency, plug him in to the actual avionics. It would be kinda like [work of fiction you probably should have read by now].

Pilots might look like they are sitting on their asses up there, but they aren't. They are constantly evaluating situations. Think of them like a bodyguard. They might look like they are just standing around doing nothing, but in fact they are constantly scouting for that one-in-a-million scenario. You don't want them heads-down playing games all day.
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