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A Tragic Loss

teslamotors.com

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Re: A Tragic Loss

#371

Post by ams6110 »

sliverstorm wrote: post #265
mevile wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition it had important information for how other Tesla drivers can use the auto-pilot feature more safely. The article combines condolences and helpful safety information to prevent this kind of thing from happening again. Also, you don't see GM making a blog post every time someone passes away in a car they make.

GM's cars don't have autopilot driving their passengers into a semi (that I know of)

I had posted the same comment before I saw this one (I deleted mine).

I would assume that the higher-end GM cars do have an automatic braking collision avoidance system by now, since that's a pretty standard feature above a certain price point. And I would assume it's not foolproof either, but at least it doesn't lead the driver to think he can take his hands off the wheel and not pay attention to what's happening on the road.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#372

Post by ams6110 »

rasz_pl wrote: post #370
mevile wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition it had important information for how other Tesla drivers can use the auto-pilot feature more safely. The article combines condolences and helpful safety information to prevent this kind of thing from happening again. Also, you don't see GM making a blog post every time someone passes away in a car they make.

> auto-pilot feature there is no such feature, there is a MobilEye _lane following_ system Tesla repackaged under Autopilot(TM) brand. Say it out loud - lane following. Mercedes sold this same tech almost 10 years ago, difference is Tesla felt pressure and started believing their own marketing lies about autonomous driving.

They call it autopilot. Words mean things. That word creates an impression that it is more capable than it really is.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#373

Post by ikeboy »

archagon wrote: post #330
jfrisby wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your friend/loved one more valuable than the 90 other people who die in automotive accidents (in the U.S. alone) daily? Your attempt at "humanizing" the situation is merely being dismissive of the values of others' lives. Everyone who dies is special and important to someone. To wring your hands and rail against utilitarianism is to try and apply tribalism to moral reasoning. Because this person matters more TO YO…

> Is your friend/loved one more valuable than the 90 other people who die in automotive accidents (in the U.S. alone) daily? To me, the key factor is blame. Who do we fault in an accident? We can't imprison an algorithm or put it in jail. But we can implicate a careless driver. A loved one should not have to die because a truck happened to be the right shade of white — not without much discussion and the possibility…

How is a death with the possibility of legal recourse any better than one without?

As far as I see, the point of legal recourse is to deter it from happening in the first place, I.e. it is purely consequentialist. If you reject such consequentialist thinking, what's the point of having someone to blame?

Re: A Tragic Loss

#375

Post by FireBeyond »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #308
spenvo wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My hand being on the wheel at all times is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for verifying that I am paying attention and am ready to take over control. Then you are not using the feature the way Tesla says you should, the only way Tesla says it's safe to be used. > I am sick and tired of absolutist statements about risk. Recklessly rolling out tech is screwing the industry-at-large, given the regulato…

> Then you are not using the feature the way Tesla says you should, the only way Tesla says it's safe to be used. Sometimes public demand forces vendors to add disclaimers to their products despite the fact that everyone knows the disclaimer is a lie. Drug paraphernalia come to mind.

And then the vendor uses the same disclaimer to wash their hands of responsibility.

You can't have it both ways.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#376

Post by rasz_pl »

daveguy wrote: post #316
zarriak wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems odd to me that the autopilot doesn't use them together, as it would seem that the autopilot would easily be able to see with the camera whether it was a sign, as at least in the United States they seem a somewhat uniform green.

I think the likely answer is Tesla "autopilot" is a glorified cruise control + lane assist + data collection for future intelligent controls. Google probably has close to this capability, but they are at the leading edge of image recognition. In order to depend on it the AI would have to be able to distinguish 99.9+% and would have to be able to tell the difference between a green truck and a road sign. I honestly th…

Yes, Tesla system is a fancy lane following dressed in powerful PR.

Btw I dont feel Imagenet results are relevant, it only tests static 2d images. Car system can have multiple cameras providing 3d reconstruction in near realtime. Mobileye (what tesla repackaged) probably has only one front facing camera and is too stupid beyond 'hey this uniformly colored blob is in my lane'

Re: A Tragic Loss

#377

Post by danso »

Worth pointing out that this crash happened on May 7:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/01/business/self-driving-tesl...

It's a little bit odd that the press release's sole specific reference to time -- "We learned yesterday" -- is in its 3rd word...which, for me, made me think the accident happened yesterday, or shortly before...Not two months before.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#378

Post by fdsaaf »

crpatino wrote: post #368
fdsaaf wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> replace an attentive driver It's unrealistic to assume that human drivers are attentive all the time. Autopilot never gets tired, never eats, never applies makeup, never sneezes, and never gets distracted by screaming children. You have to compare autopilot to realistic humans, not your platonic ideal of what a driver should be. I'm sick and tired of people making statements about road transit predicated on the ide…

> It's unrealistic to assume that human drivers are attentive all the time... Yes, this is an unfortunate fact of life that human beings are no angels. However, most modern societies agree that reckless drivers are to be held accountable for their less than perfect behavior. If a police officer (or more recently, surveillance camera) catches you while DUI, or texting, or some other of the most blatant irresponsible b…

I prefer to talk about real utilitarian tradeoffs instead of putting I imaginary, arbitrarily virtuous angels against computers. Every day you delay automation of automobile traffic is another batch of lives lost.

Are you more interested in saving lives or in expressing the short sighted and sanctimonious outrage of a Luddite?

Re: A Tragic Loss

#379

Post by ChicagoBoy11 »

I wrote this on a comment thread 260 days ago when the autopilot features were introduced.

>A common phrase in aircraft cockpits nowadays is "What the heck is it doing now?" as pilots have migrated from actually flying the plane to simply being glorified systems managers. While planes have become so, so, so much safer because of all this automation, pilots uncertainty regarding autopilot functioning is a major concern nowadays, and the reason for several accidents. There are very interesting HCI challenges around properly communicating to the pilot/driver "what the heck it is doing" and clearly communicating just how much control the human has or doesn't have at any given point. This "announcement" certainly doesn't inspire any confidence that they have really thought this through deeply enough (I think they probably have, but it should be communicated like it). As a huge Tesla fan, I can't help but feel like I need to hold my breath now and make sure something terrible doesn't happen because of this, and it ends up leading to even more regs setting us back on the path to full car automation.

I really hate having been right. But from the ensuing discussion here about the rightness or wrongness about labeling features "beta" in the car, to the disconnect of how the technology was "meant" to be used versus how it was portrayed by the company itself, it is pretty clear they really fucked up.

The huge discrepancy between the cautionary tone of this press release and everything that came before it is a great reminder that while some of us may be really worried about preventing AI from having unintended consequences in our society, there are at the same time many more pressing issues that we must address that are very much caused by very human motivations and actions.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#380

Post by rasz_pl »

jfrisby wrote: post #354
ModernMech wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It makes me a bit sad that the political zeitgeist in the tech community is leaning towards "acceptable losses" when it comes to accidents in automated cars Yes, this is another thing that makes me so angry about this situation. Back in the day, I worked on a project to give autonomy to power wheelchair systems. In order to get it to market, we had to go through FDA approval, which involved testing the equipment in…

Except that the car wasn't autonomous here. The human behind the wheel had been explicitly instructed to keep hands on the wheel and feet on the pedals -- and that it was his responsibility to override the machine's judgement if circumstances warranted.

yet all the PR material talks about autonomous driving, car drives itself wink wink
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