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Apple scientists disclose self-driving car research

reuters.com

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Re: Apple scientists disclose self-driving car research

#111

Post by giobox »

iainmerrick wrote: post #97
smokeyj wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realize these regulations exist, my point is they come at a cost and that at some point the costs can become prohibitive. As I mentioned below the argument isn't just theoretical, it's why the term "medical tourism" exists. I believe reasonable tradeoffs could be made in theory, but I also believe the appeal of regulatory capture is too alluring for wall street to pass up. And when the people who need these devices…

the argument isn't just theoretical, it's why the term "medical tourism" exists. Can you explain that in more detail? What's the connection to regulations? Does medical tourism exclusively happen from countries with heavily regulated medicine to countries with light regulations? I would have assumed it was more about the distinction between state-run same-care-for-all healthcare systems versus commercial pay-to-play…

Both arguments are valid at the same time. People do absolutely shop around to skip waiting lines in state-run systems or save money by getting private treatment cheaper (UK citizens getting cheaper IVF in Spain is a common one I'm familiar with), but it's also sometimes true that certain treatments or medications that have been made available in one State that might not yet be certified for clinical use in another. New stem cell based therapies (the merits of which I have no idea...) in some South American nations is one example of the latter.

Re: Apple scientists disclose self-driving car research

#112

Post by Eridrus »

sxg wrote: post #5
dogruck wrote: post #2

I wonder if companies, like Apple, will segment their tech stack to extract areas where one could argue that it’s not ethical to have an intellectual advantage. Perhaps pedestrian detection is one such area. If two autonomous car companies are competing, it makes sense to fight on many feature sets. It feels wrong to compete on “ability to detect a bike rider.”

This is an interesting point. It's in every self-driving vehicle company's best interest to gain public trust in the industry as a whole. A high pedestrian injury/fatality rate from Google's self-driving tech reduces confidence in Apple's tech and the entire idea of self-driving vehicles. The incentives are there for these companies to work together to create highly reliable self-driving tech.

I don't think this is completely true. If someone actually has a meaningful advantage in safety, it's in their best interest to publicize that and use it as a wedge between them and the competition. Bonus points if you can use the ensuing backlash of your competitors killing people to write regulations that lock them out of the market.

Not necessarily what is best for people, but I don't think their incentives are as aligned as you make it seem.

Re: Apple scientists disclose self-driving car research

#113

Post by timthelion »

iainmerrick wrote: post #97
smokeyj wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realize these regulations exist, my point is they come at a cost and that at some point the costs can become prohibitive. As I mentioned below the argument isn't just theoretical, it's why the term "medical tourism" exists. I believe reasonable tradeoffs could be made in theory, but I also believe the appeal of regulatory capture is too alluring for wall street to pass up. And when the people who need these devices…

the argument isn't just theoretical, it's why the term "medical tourism" exists. Can you explain that in more detail? What's the connection to regulations? Does medical tourism exclusively happen from countries with heavily regulated medicine to countries with light regulations? I would have assumed it was more about the distinction between state-run same-care-for-all healthcare systems versus commercial pay-to-play…

There is regulation based medical tourism. For example, the Czech Republic is the only country in the "westernish" world which allows a special kind of IVF in which the nucleus is taken out of a near menopausal woman's egg, and placed into the mitochondrial fluid of a young woman's egg, and then fertilized using sperm from the husband, making a baby with genes from 3 people. Women from more western countries pay good money for this treatment.

Whether it is a good thing that it is legal here is questionable. Doctors seem very skeptical of this 3 genetic parent baby approach, and I don't know if it is because it is inherently risky, or if they are just conservative regarding the ethicalness.

Re: Apple scientists disclose self-driving car research

#114

Post by iainmerrick »

giobox wrote: post #111
iainmerrick wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the argument isn't just theoretical, it's why the term "medical tourism" exists. Can you explain that in more detail? What's the connection to regulations? Does medical tourism exclusively happen from countries with heavily regulated medicine to countries with light regulations? I would have assumed it was more about the distinction between state-run same-care-for-all healthcare systems versus commercial pay-to-play…

Both arguments are valid at the same time. People do absolutely shop around to skip waiting lines in state-run systems or save money by getting private treatment cheaper (UK citizens getting cheaper IVF in Spain is a common one I'm familiar with), but it's also sometimes true that certain treatments or medications that have been made available in one State that might not yet be certified for clinical use in another.…

That's true. I still don't see the connection to self-driving cars, though, and the idea that regulations "come at a cost and that at some point the costs can become prohibitive".

GP is concerned about "regulatory capture", but the UK/Spain example you gave is about states being faster or slower to allow access to certain medical techniques, not corporations exploiting the system to lock in their market dominance.

Re: Apple scientists disclose self-driving car research

#115

Post by BinaryIdiot »

devwastaken wrote: post #107
mgleason_3 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a simple explanation: You’re getting older, more conservative and more averse to change. It’s ok, it happens. As part of this you’re also likely over-estimating the danger and underestimating the benefits. I’m sure every self-driving car death will (and should be) scrutinized heavily. But remember there’s between 30,000 and 50,000 auto deaths every year. I’m betting self-driveing cars will do better.

"I’m betting" Thats the problem. How do you know? When you have family, and people you care about, thats not 'conservative'. Thats the reality of being human. If 'change' means that consumers become the testing grounds for unsafe technologies, then yeah, I'll be plenty 'adverse to change'. These technologies do not require people to die to be made.

Trying to find some good statistics but looking around it seems a majority of accidents end up being caused by human error, distracted driving and drunk driving. AI wouldn't have any of those so I'm personally confident that it'll have a much higher level of safety.

The trouble is when we swap "human error" for "machine error". Because humans screw up all the time but a machine is going to fail in a way that'll likely be very obvious to us. That is going to be take an emotional toll, I think, and will be a hurdle to get over for self driving cars.

No one wants to be told "sorry but your family died because of a bug in the car's software told it to make a left into a semi".

Re: Apple scientists disclose self-driving car research

#116

Post by jlebar »

devwastaken wrote: post #107
mgleason_3 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a simple explanation: You’re getting older, more conservative and more averse to change. It’s ok, it happens. As part of this you’re also likely over-estimating the danger and underestimating the benefits. I’m sure every self-driving car death will (and should be) scrutinized heavily. But remember there’s between 30,000 and 50,000 auto deaths every year. I’m betting self-driveing cars will do better.

"I’m betting" Thats the problem. How do you know? When you have family, and people you care about, thats not 'conservative'. Thats the reality of being human. If 'change' means that consumers become the testing grounds for unsafe technologies, then yeah, I'll be plenty 'adverse to change'. These technologies do not require people to die to be made.

If we were to slow down the progress of self driving cars, would that not also be a bet on human drivers?

Re: Apple scientists disclose self-driving car research

#117

Post by muraiki »

menacingly wrote: post #13

There was a time when I thought of regulations as progress killers, but I find myself shifting on that and getting nervous every time I hear about self-driving tech. It's great stuff, but I really do not want my family to be the brave eggs we had to crack to get to the omelet of a driverless future. I now _like_ that someone somewhere has a book listing chemicals that aren't allowed to be shipped on an airplane, and…

One study by RAND says: "Autonomous vehicles would have to be driven hundreds of millions of miles and, under some scenarios, hundreds of billions of miles to create enough data to clearly demonstrate their safety... Under even the most-aggressive test driving assumptions, it would take existing fleets of autonomous vehicles tens and even hundreds of years to log sufficient miles to adequately assess the safety of the vehicles when compared to human-driven vehicles" https://www.rand.org/news/press/2016/04/12.html

That being said, RAND released a study this month, targeted at policymakers, that models how many human lives would be saved given the introduction of non-perfect autonomous vehicles, including a little javascript widget to try out various settings: https://www.rand.org/blog/articles/2017/11/why-waiting-for-p...

Crucially, this study models scenarios such as AVs being _half_ as safe as human drivers, yet still resulting in saving more lives over time. I think the question then becomes, who will be responsible for the missing 50% of safety when somebody gets killed by one?

Edit: Another question: if somebody you loved was killed by a self-driving car, would you be comforted in knowing that the technology was in aggregate saving the lives of other people? I have no answers to these questions... it's a hard problem.

Re: Apple scientists disclose self-driving car research

#118

Post by nawitus »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #115
devwastaken wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I’m betting" Thats the problem. How do you know? When you have family, and people you care about, thats not 'conservative'. Thats the reality of being human. If 'change' means that consumers become the testing grounds for unsafe technologies, then yeah, I'll be plenty 'adverse to change'. These technologies do not require people to die to be made.

Trying to find some good statistics but looking around it seems a majority of accidents end up being caused by human error, distracted driving and drunk driving. AI wouldn't have any of those so I'm personally confident that it'll have a much higher level of safety. The trouble is when we swap "human error" for "machine error". Because humans screw up all the time but a machine is going to fail in a way that'll likel…

"AI wouldn't have any of those so I'm personally confident that it'll have a much higher level of safety."

AI and perfect AI are different things.

Re: Apple scientists disclose self-driving car research

#119

Post by Apocryphon »

timthelion wrote: post #110
willis77 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As of 2015, there were 9 car models without recorded deaths - https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/record-9-models-have-... I'm not sure how statistically significant the numbers are, but it's something!

If I'm reading this correctly, those cars nave no "driver deaths" that means, that no one has died while driving those cars. This is a bit like a shotgun, which has potentially killed many people, but has not killed its owner.

Imagine if everyone was only allowed to drive those 9 car models.

Re: Apple scientists disclose self-driving car research

#120

Post by BinaryIdiot »

nawitus wrote: post #118
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trying to find some good statistics but looking around it seems a majority of accidents end up being caused by human error, distracted driving and drunk driving. AI wouldn't have any of those so I'm personally confident that it'll have a much higher level of safety. The trouble is when we swap "human error" for "machine error". Because humans screw up all the time but a machine is going to fail in a way that'll likel…

"AI wouldn't have any of those so I'm personally confident that it'll have a much higher level of safety." AI and perfect AI are different things.

Agreed but that doesn't make my statement incorrect :)

I said AI wouldn't have the issues of human error, distracted and drunk driving. It opens up all new types of errors, sure, but it wouldn't have the biggest killers of people. So unless we screw up pretty badly here it almost has to be lower mortality rates.

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