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The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#121

Post by dllthomas »

cwkoss wrote: post #84
foota wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm actually familiar with a situation like this, the person was on a highway at night and came around a corner to see a deer lying in the road and a crowd right behind the deer. There was a couple of people off to either side. They couldn't brake in time to stop and not harm the people on the other side of the deer.

Are you saying the correct response is to swerve in to the group with the fewest people? I don't think human drivers have the reaction time to make these decisions, not sure why so many expect computers to be able to.

Because eventually, computers will be able to.

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#122

Post by stale2002 »

patrickmay wrote: post #86
kybernetikos wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me the question is relatively uninteresting because it seems obvious. As long as cars belong to individuals they have the responsibility to favor the interests of those individuals as far as law permits. Where and how much the community is to be preferred over the individual, the community should specify in laws. People running code that breaks those laws should be liable for that codes actions. (I could imagine a…

> As long as cars belong to individuals they have the responsibility to favor the interests of those individuals as far as law permits. Well put. I would not buy a car that wasn't designed to protect its occupants first and foremost. My family is more important to me than abstract, unlikely to occur ethical dilemmas. Having that choice programmed in actually makes it easier for self-driving cars to predict the behavi…

Have you even been in a Taxi? Or a bus? Or any situation where someone who is not you is driving the car?

You have put your life into their hands when you do this.

No matter what algorithm the self driving car is running, it is going to be 100 times safer than you driving the car. Yes, YOU are a worse driver than a self driving car, NO MATTER what "ethics algorithm" it is running, because any of the ones that could be running will be safer than you or the taxi driver.

What you are basically saying is that "I don't trust any braking system in my car that isn't 100% perfect, therefore I am going to drive my car without ANY braking system! I'll physically stop the car myself if I ever need to brake!"

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#123

Post by Houshalter »

CodeCube wrote: post #96
Houshalter wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's overblown at all. There would be large advantages to programming your car to be more aggressive and risky.

I'm curious to hear what these advantages would be ... not saying there aren't, just having a hard time thinking about what you might mean.

Getting to your destination faster. Driving slightly faster than the speed limit, keeping less distance from cars, cutting them off, etc.

I'm not sure if anyone would be willing or able to reprogram a self driving car to do that. But I do think its plausible people would abuse self driving cars. E.g. carelessly walking into traffic knowing the self driving cars will reliably still stop and be passive.

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#124

Post by [deleted] »

cwkoss wrote: post #84
foota wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm actually familiar with a situation like this, the person was on a highway at night and came around a corner to see a deer lying in the road and a crowd right behind the deer. There was a couple of people off to either side. They couldn't brake in time to stop and not harm the people on the other side of the deer.

Are you saying the correct response is to swerve in to the group with the fewest people? I don't think human drivers have the reaction time to make these decisions, not sure why so many expect computers to be able to.

[deleted]

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#125

Post by nine_k »

eru wrote: post #114
rando3826 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm talking about the car's ethical choices in crashes, not the ethics of the programmers. There is no practical difference. Computers do what we tell them to do, whether what I tell it to do has a conditional in code (the computer chooses), or instead always chooses one option because I left that condition out is a completely irrelevant distinction.

You realize that the common `debugging caveat' applies: computer do indeed do what we tell them to do. That doesn't mean than anyone understands what the computer are going to do.

Debugging sucks.

Formally verified code is not unheard of.

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#126

Post by rickycook »

andrei_says_ wrote: post #103
foota wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm actually familiar with a situation like this, the person was on a highway at night and came around a corner to see a deer lying in the road and a crowd right behind the deer. There was a couple of people off to either side. They couldn't brake in time to stop and not harm the people on the other side of the deer.

They also could not think. If you've ever been in an accident, you know that there's no time for thinking. Reflexes take over. Ascribing ethical decisions to the driver in such a situation is not rational nor ethical.

no, but it's a situation in which a computer could make a decision

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#127

Post by foota »

Obi_Juan_Kenobi wrote: post #105
mikeash wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the ethical dilemma there? From your description it sounds like they were just screwed regardless.

Self-driving cars can also limit speed such that they'll always be able to stop for stationary obstacles. If it's a blind corner, they'll slow down.

True, but seeing as the article was about the ability of people to modify their car to for instance not do that I see where there could be a dilemma here.

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#128

Post by WalterBright »

rickycook wrote: post #120
msandford wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has 0.5 seconds until collision so no hope of stopping. Push the brake all you want, unless that car gets back in its lane, people die.

.5 seconds is both incorrect, and plenty for a car that sees and responds instantly to make a car-length braking correction.

A collision may not be avoidable, but every decrement to the speed will reduce its severity. It's the same idea as having crumple zones on a car body.

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#129

Post by WalterBright »

rando3826 wrote: post #33
mikeash wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the ethical question is greatly overblown. The odds of being in a situation where there's any sort of ethical choice to make are so remote as to not really be worth considering. 99.9999% of the time, the correct choice when faced with an impending crash will be to brake as hard as the driving surface allows and steer to avoid obstacles as much as possible. In any case, tinkering and commons already intersect…

> I think the ethical question is greatly overblown. Not at all. One programmer is going to make choices that affect ~ a billion vehicles one day, so something that doesn't happen 99.9999% per hour will happen 100 times per hour. And it's going to be more mundane things, like programming the speed limit 1 mph slower results in 500 less deaths per year, or using drm/copyright to stop poor people from getting driving s…

Engineers make such decisions all the time. There are always tradeoffs with respect to safety/cost/utility/etc.

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#130

Post by aquadrop »

dllthomas wrote: post #121
cwkoss wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying the correct response is to swerve in to the group with the fewest people? I don't think human drivers have the reaction time to make these decisions, not sure why so many expect computers to be able to.

Because eventually, computers will be able to.

Those computers probably won't get into situation like this in the first place, being able to stop or react preventive. Anyway, it will be so rare an occasion with no guaranteed outcome (it's all about probabilities), so it's not really matters as much as it's discussed. With same kinda of attention you could ask if making and selling ladders is ethical, because people fall from them and hurt themselves.
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