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U.S. eliminates human controls requirement for fully automated vehicles

reuters.com

171–180 of 376 posts

Re: U.S. eliminates human controls requirement for fully automated vehicles

#171
I would go further - if the vehicle is autonomous, it should be illegal for it to have a steering wheel.

The idea that you can make a deadly self-driving car, and then jail the driver because he could not react in 0.2 seconds when your car suddenly swerved is the greatest handover of money and power to corporations since the times of slavery.

So make the choice clear - either tha car has controls, or it doesn't. And if it doesn't, there will be no temptation to blame the passenger

Re: U.S. eliminates human controls requirement for fully automated vehicles

#172
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Doesn't the analogy fail given autonomous vehicles are eventually possible Only if there is a mathematical proof that eventually it will happen, someone might proof the reverse that current type of tech will never be good enough for general purpose driving and will work only in some specific conditions.

The only way it’s impossible in principle is if human intelligence (and a lot of non human animal intelligence) is due to some potent non-physical substance of thought which can never be made by any work of artifice on the physical plane, AKA a soul. Absent souls, human drivers are existence proof that minds made of matter can drive cars. That doesn’t stop being true even if the current preferred architecture is all…

>The only way it’s impossible in principle is if human intelligence (and a lot of non human animal intelligence) is due to some potent non-physical substance of thought which can never be made by any work of artifice on the physical plane, AKA a soul.

So I was thinking "eventually" as somewhat in next 100 years, otherwise even if you need a soul you could say shit like "eventually we will evolve to the next plane and become gods and we could create brains".

Could it be impossible that we hit a tech limit for AI? I mean there is no sure what that we will invent something better then digital, silicon based computers. I am not that pessimist though, but is possible we get smart and realize that we could just put tracks and have self driving little trains on them to travel around: 100% safe (we could have actual scientist/engineers code the software for them) and much more green.

Re: U.S. eliminates human controls requirement for fully automated vehicles

#173

This is problematic for a number of reasons. The most important in my mind is that the risk of the vehicle being hacked and carjacked remotely is always present. With the presence of an automation kill-switch and manual human controls the driver can always take back control. Without those, the driver is at the mercy of the hacker. Vehicle automation falls under the SCADA sub-domain of cyber-security. SCADA stands for…

Not a counterpoint but supplemental. Waymo and Cruise have been pouring a lot more initial effort into cybersecurity and they are just barely in production.

Re: U.S. eliminates human controls requirement for fully automated vehicles

#174
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be perfectly happy if we had automatic drivers that were as good as the average human driver, since I already integrated and accepted that risk and accept it every time I drive. Why raise the bar for a new technology if that risks preventing it from being widely deployed and relentlessly improved?

I would probably accept technology that's as good as the median driver.

how about one standard deviation about the mean? (sorry, I'm an unrepentant mean over median person)

Re: U.S. eliminates human controls requirement for fully automated vehicles

#175

This is problematic for a number of reasons. The most important in my mind is that the risk of the vehicle being hacked and carjacked remotely is always present. With the presence of an automation kill-switch and manual human controls the driver can always take back control. Without those, the driver is at the mercy of the hacker. Vehicle automation falls under the SCADA sub-domain of cyber-security. SCADA stands for…

>This is problematic for a number of reasons. The most important in my mind is that the risk of the vehicle being hacked and carjacked remotely is always present. Which raises the question: "Why would we engineer vehicles to accept external network connections?" Any communication to/from a vehicle should only be initiated by the vehicle itself. There's no reasonable criteria under which a vehicle should have its syst…

> Or am I missing something important?

We absolutely want to remotely control cars at some point, how else will you send a self-driving taxi to a customers or "ask" a car to comeback to the garage for a recall on the underlying hardware or for general maintenance?

Re: U.S. eliminates human controls requirement for fully automated vehicles

#176

This is problematic for a number of reasons. The most important in my mind is that the risk of the vehicle being hacked and carjacked remotely is always present. With the presence of an automation kill-switch and manual human controls the driver can always take back control. Without those, the driver is at the mercy of the hacker. Vehicle automation falls under the SCADA sub-domain of cyber-security. SCADA stands for…

>This is problematic for a number of reasons. The most important in my mind is that the risk of the vehicle being hacked and carjacked remotely is always present. Which raises the question: "Why would we engineer vehicles to accept external network connections?" Any communication to/from a vehicle should only be initiated by the vehicle itself. There's no reasonable criteria under which a vehicle should have its syst…

While I agree with you, so many new cars offer remote start/remote engine heating block initiation or even the ability to summon your vehicle from a parking garage and have it drive toward the exit. Many consumers will not purchase cars without these new features, all of which require an external server to issue commands to a vehicle. Definitely a huge security risk, especially with lack of manual controls.

Where are the “low-chip-count” new cars with VFD radio displays, dials, traditional keys, no screens and especially no cellular modem?

Re: U.S. eliminates human controls requirement for fully automated vehicles

#177
post #85
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have the technology to replace schoolchildren at a much lower cost than cars

Comment of the day. Thanks for the laugh.

Not all of us laugh. My first grandchild is going to be named for a childhood friend of my daughter, who was killed by a car. My daughter still hurts, 15 years later.

Re: U.S. eliminates human controls requirement for fully automated vehicles

#178

Look, I'm generally on the bull-ish side of autonomous driving, but this is almost akin to the feds passing laws on science fiction. Section 180.99 part alpha: "Minimum size of a Ringworld is mercury orbit around a red dwarf" I guess we can always drive with a USB-plugin gamepad if there's a glitch or a central system outage? This would actually represent progress if they eliminated the requirement for side mirrors,…

There are currently self-driving vehicles operating on public roads with no safety driver. That tech exists now. It may have many severe limitations (precision mapping, weather, construction areas, etc), but it does exist. Reducing those limitations may be a long term project but it is already clear that self driving vehicles could be deployed today without human controls as long as the scope of deployment matches those limitations.

This rules allows car manufacturers to work on new fully automous cars without controls that are designed to function as campus shuttles or taxis in a limited scope. There is still a lot of work to be done regulating the use self driving vehicles, but this removes a safety regulation hurdle that is stopping states and car makers from experimenting with different approaches.

Re: U.S. eliminates human controls requirement for fully automated vehicles

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human psychology is, unfortunately, more complicated than that. There was an attempt in 2016 to prepare a program to retrain coal miners in center Pennsylvania and other traditional mining regions, as the general market, automation, and decrease in available coal from mining had made that a high-unemployment space. Job retraining was on the table. People handily rejected it. They didn't want to do something else; the…

What if I told you to quit your job and I'll get you training for another role. If you trusted me you might go with it, but it you knew from previous experience that I was an incompetent buffoon you would likely say no. It's like a guy in a clown outfit saying the nobody wants open heart surgery beacuse everyone turns him down when he asks.

I think your assessment is good. Unfortunately, none of the clowns have taken off their clownsuits so the system shock is still the most probable outcome.

Re: U.S. eliminates human controls requirement for fully automated vehicles

#180
post #7

Reading between the lines here this just makes me think that the regulator has become captured by the industry. This is like removing human control on an autonomous Russian roulette revolver that shoots to the side if it detects a person in front of the barrel, then praying for the best.

At least the government isn't standing in the way of innovation this time.

The market will still decide if these vehicles sell. I wouldn't buy one, would you?

Plus, it's never too late to crack down. If there are a lot of accidents, you can bet members of Congress will thrive on the outrage.

So, there's really nothing to see here. Just the government getting out of the way, a little bit, for now.

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