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A Tragic Loss

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Re: A Tragic Loss

#491

Post by ars »

pacificmint wrote: post #299
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Self driving tech is poised to save many many lives. Based on what?

> Based on what? Human drivers are very bad. We kill over 32,000 people a year (and that's a 60 year low, just a few years ago it was over 40,000). So if self driving cars are just a little better than humans, they will save many lives. If they are a lot better than us, they will save many more.

> if self driving cars are just a little better than humans

You say that so glibly. Have you ever done the math? I did, I posted it here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12012166

Summary: The computer would have to be better than 99.99999% perfect to save any lives.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#492

Post by jacquesm »

smilingtom wrote: post #489
ghaff wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty well established that humans (e.g. [1]) that humans have a lot of trouble paying when they don't need to be actively engaged most of the time and also have trouble taking back control. In a consumer driving context, I have zero doubt that, as systems like these develop, people will start watching videos and reading absent draconian monitoring systems to ensure they keep their eyes on the road. I'm not sur…

I'm not sure you understand what some of the words you wrote mean.

I suspect an alternative input device.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#494

Post by pacificmint »

droopyEyelids wrote: post #328
pacificmint wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Based on what? Human drivers are very bad. We kill over 32,000 people a year (and that's a 60 year low, just a few years ago it was over 40,000). So if self driving cars are just a little better than humans, they will save many lives. If they are a lot better than us, they will save many more.

You have to make a comparison if you want to pass a judgement that something is "bad". Bad compared to what?

> Bad compared to what?

Bad compared to pretty much every other form of transportation that humans employ.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#495

Post by pacificmint »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #333
pacificmint wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Based on what? Human drivers are very bad. We kill over 32,000 people a year (and that's a 60 year low, just a few years ago it was over 40,000). So if self driving cars are just a little better than humans, they will save many lives. If they are a lot better than us, they will save many more.

>> if self driving cars are (...) That's a hypothetical. You say autonomous cars are "poised" to save many lives -not even avoid many deaths, actively "save". That's very strong language to use based on an "if" that nobody yet knows the answer to with any certainty. That is, unless you are privy to some information that the rest of us are not? Are you? What is it that you base your assertion on? Do you base it on any…

> You say autonomous cars are "poised" to save many lives

I said no such thing, you are putting words in my mouth.

What I said is that the baseline for traffic deaths is quite high, and if (or when) autonomous cars are even a little better than humans, then less lives will be lost.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#496

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

pacificmint wrote: post #495
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> if self driving cars are (...) That's a hypothetical. You say autonomous cars are "poised" to save many lives -not even avoid many deaths, actively "save". That's very strong language to use based on an "if" that nobody yet knows the answer to with any certainty. That is, unless you are privy to some information that the rest of us are not? Are you? What is it that you base your assertion on? Do you base it on any…

> You say autonomous cars are "poised" to save many lives I said no such thing, you are putting words in my mouth. What I said is that the baseline for traffic deaths is quite high, and if (or when) autonomous cars are even a little better than humans, then less lives will be lost.

>> I said no such thing, you are putting words in my mouth.

I was replying to someone else and you jumped in. You can hold the accusations of putting stuff in places, thank you.

>> What I said is that the baseline for traffic deaths is quite high, and if (or when) autonomous cars are even a little better than humans, then less lives will be lost.

And I said that autonomous cars being better than humans is just a hypothetical.

I'll add that we have no evidence that it's the case. Computers are better at humans at tasks that require fast and accurate retrieval, or computation, but they'll not just magically become better than humans at driving. Somebody has to program them to do that.

So who is going to do that? Do you know how to do that? Do you know anyone who knows how to do that?

The theory is that we'll put enough (real or virtual) cars in enough training situations that they'll learn to drive on their own, but that approach has serious limitations, not least the fact that in the real world there may be an infinite number of situations that a learner will never encounter during training. In any case, with any other cognitive task that we train computers to carry out they end up making completely ridiculous mistakes, which in the case of driving will cost lives.

Until we have a way to develop systems that understand their surroundings, autonomous cars being better drivers than humans is just a dangerous fantasy.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#497

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

Fricken wrote: post #389
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> if self driving cars are (...) That's a hypothetical. You say autonomous cars are "poised" to save many lives -not even avoid many deaths, actively "save". That's very strong language to use based on an "if" that nobody yet knows the answer to with any certainty. That is, unless you are privy to some information that the rest of us are not? Are you? What is it that you base your assertion on? Do you base it on any…

You're being extremely pedantic. Machines are getting better. Humans aren't.

Update: hold the press. Someone above posted a link to this wikipedia article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_i...

From which I quote:

The number of deaths – and deaths relative to the total population – have declined over the last two decades. From 1979 to 2005, the number of deaths per year decreased 14.97% while the number of deaths per capita decreased by 35.46%.

So at least the rate of fatalities is decreasing. I won't claim I know whether that's because humans get better at driving, carse get safer, traffic regulations get safer, or any other factor, but the point is roads are getting safer already and without any autonomous vehicles on them.

[Original bit:] Again- based on what? Why do you say that? What is even your measure of humans getting "better"? Better at what? Better drivers? Better cognitive systems? Better what?

Re: A Tragic Loss

#498

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

Fricken wrote: post #386
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Self driving tech is poised to save many many lives. Based on what?

94% of fatal accidents are due to human error, and preventable if you remove impairment, inattention, and poor judgement from the equation.

>> 94% of fatal accidents are due to human error

I assume you just pulled that out of thin air but even if you hadn't, it is completely meaningless. We have nothing to compare human performance against. Humans have been driving for more than a century. What are you going to compare that to?

As to how preventable accidents are- sure, if you remove factors like the ones you say, you'll reduce accidents, but humans suffer from those cognitive impairments on top of our extremely well-tuned cognitive apparatus. Computers have nothing of the sort. They may not get distracted, but they're rubbish at doing the thinking that keeps humans safe on the road the vast majority of the time (given that the vast majority of drivers don't get killed in accidents).

To put it plainly, if you put a brick on the gas pedal and lock the wheel, you'll reduce the amount of accidents caused by cogntivie impairments like inattention and poor judgement- but you won't reduce the overall rate of accidents.

In other words, if you hand control to a system that doesn't sleep on the wheel but can also not tell a puddle from a boulder, you will increase risks rather than reducing them.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#499

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

Nadya wrote: post #342
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> if self driving cars are (...) That's a hypothetical. You say autonomous cars are "poised" to save many lives -not even avoid many deaths, actively "save". That's very strong language to use based on an "if" that nobody yet knows the answer to with any certainty. That is, unless you are privy to some information that the rest of us are not? Are you? What is it that you base your assertion on? Do you base it on any…

Not who you are questioning. There are already videos of assisted-driving cars avoiding accidents which likely would have been fatal. We already know they can potentially save lives. It's something we already accept for flying. Autopilot in planes has resulted in deaths of crew and passengers. So we have precedent in at least one mode of transportation. Drivers get T-boned or rear end other people all the time. Those…

>> There are already videos of assisted-driving cars avoiding accidents

I'm not concerend about assisted driving. I'm concerned about fully autonomous cars being handed complete control in real-world situations.

I'm not just "concerned" about them- they scare the hell out of me.

>> Many being scenarios that Google's self-driving cars have the technology to avoid.

What Google says it programs its cars to do, what it really programs its cars to do and what its cars can really do are all separate things.

The problem is that the current technology level is nowhere near advanced enough to allow fully autonomous vehicles to operate safely. There is a huge number of situations that those cars aren't programmed for, that they can't be programmed for, because those situations are completely unforseeable.

Machine learning has a huge problem with data sparsness. You may train a learner in petabytes and petabytes of data collected from the real world and still miss the vast majority of events that may occur.

That is why, like I say elsewhere, machine learning-based AI makes utterly ludicrous mistakes that humans would never do, even in difficult situations were they can't be expected to perform with 0% error. I've used a few metaphors- here's another one: a human would never mistake a truck for a cucumber. A machine learning algorithm, might.

And what's worse, there's no way to prevent this sort of mistake, or even correct it, because most of the time the models built by such algorithms are simply too complex to be processed by humans in the way a hand-crafted system would be (and goddess knows how hard those can be to process).

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