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Hacked billboards make Teslas see phantom objects causing them to swerve or stop

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201–210 of 264 posts

Re: Hacked billboards make Teslas see phantom objects causing them to swerve or stop

#201
post #20

This is clever, and Tesla's software is awful, but anyone doing this for real, with intent to divert cars from the road etc. would be committing a pretty serious crime.

Why would that be a crime? The driver is ultimately responsible, not the car.

If you know that displaying unofficial highway signs will cause "self-driving" cars to swerve off the road, it's not much different an act from dropping breeze blocks off a motorway bridge.

I've no idea whether that'd be a highway crime, a computer misuse crime, or just attempted murder - that'd be a new one for lawyers in every country to argue.

Re: Hacked billboards make Teslas see phantom objects causing them to swerve or stop

#202
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are already billboards with pictures of stop signs, stop lights, etc on them. It doesn't take any criminal intent. Things that were once just billboards are suddenly hazards.

Seems reasonable enough to ban that. Might confuse a tired human too.

Or maybe remind them to stop for school buses: https://www.wkyt.com/content/news/New-billboards-to-remind-d...

Re: Hacked billboards make Teslas see phantom objects causing them to swerve or stop

#204
post #135
post #91

There are a lot of similar failure modes in humans. Sometimes they're are used for good, like making drivers slow down: https://www.insider.com/optical-illusions-3d-crosswalk-drivi... But other times they cause crashes: https://imgur.com/a/kYr94

Those examples in the first line are so bad, I hope they don't catchup.

Some places in the Netherlands tested those. Imho they don't work as advertised. On a picture they might look 3d but when you driving towards them your brain knows the perspective doesn't change and doesn't trick you into thinking it is 3d.

The effect is more like: What is this for strange art!?

Re: Hacked billboards make Teslas see phantom objects causing them to swerve or stop

#205
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty important. The way the guys does this is very close to how you could also fool a human by hanging up real stop signs in the wrong places, and "stupidity" people would start to respect them. The only difference here is that a mere 500 ms flash elicites a response, where a human wouldn't notice. on balance, a 500 ms response time does seem like a feature more than a bug compared to a human.

Well, which one is it now: Are self-driving computers superior to humans and make less mistakes, or is it OK for a computer to be tricked by something some humans would also not detect? Btw. I think I can tell if there is a real stop-sign or something on a billboard after some 'huh'-moment and without slamming on the brakes. And humans still go circles around AI regarding plausibility-checking very out-of-the-ordinar…

It isn’t either/or. One system can be overall superior another and that system can have different vulnerabilities and weaknesses. Cars are generally considered better than horses for transport, but cars also cannot use grass for fuel.

Re: Hacked billboards make Teslas see phantom objects causing them to swerve or stop

#206
post #20

This is clever, and Tesla's software is awful, but anyone doing this for real, with intent to divert cars from the road etc. would be committing a pretty serious crime.

The wonderful thing about IoT is the criminal can be on the other side of the world with no chance of any justice coming to them.

Your run-of-the-mill criminal has some sort of profit motive and this seems like a very roundabout way to attempt extortion.

A terrorist on the other hand would probably be dissatisfied with the not-quite-catastophic outcome. If you want to cause real havoc, there are far more valuable targets to hack into.

Re: Hacked billboards make Teslas see phantom objects causing them to swerve or stop

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today they silence the voices of everyone you hate, tomorrow they silence your voice. Its a very slippery slope and it is dangerous. Corporations should never pretend to be the guardians of truth. Bias will just spew from there about whats supposedly real and whats supposedly fake.

The root cause here is that we have corporations big enough that their censorship matters.

I think keeping it legal that they cannot be sued based on user provided content should be changed to remove such protections if they are using it for political censorship of any kind. This is insane that we even need to consider to have a law for this. Companies come and go, it would equally be nice if we had no more bailouts, let them fail when they have to fail. On the other hand, I can see the value in large companies maintaining large bank accounts: in many cases it allows them to sustain their employee payroll in cases like COVID. I can't imagine what the unemployment rate would of looked like otherwise.

Re: Hacked billboards make Teslas see phantom objects causing them to swerve or stop

#209
Billboards at night should be forbidden. Period.

I almost had an accident when a billboard that was dark suddenly displayed a very bright image on my side. My body reacted moving suddenly the steering wheel as a reflex action.

At another one having some big image being moved actually made my eyes follow the movement instead of the road with cars on it. I had to make work in order to focus on the road and not the screen.

It also makes your eyes to loose your vision in the dark.

Re: Hacked billboards make Teslas see phantom objects causing them to swerve or stop

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The wonderful thing about IoT is the criminal can be on the other side of the world with no chance of any justice coming to them.

Your run-of-the-mill criminal has some sort of profit motive and this seems like a very roundabout way to attempt extortion. A terrorist on the other hand would probably be dissatisfied with the not-quite-catastophic outcome. If you want to cause real havoc, there are far more valuable targets to hack into.

We have idiots that call swat teams on twitch streamers. The profit is for the lulz.
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