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What If Your Autonomous Car Keeps Routing You Past Krispy Kreme?

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Re: What If Your Autonomous Car Keeps Routing You Past Krispy Kreme?

#61

Post by ZeroGravitas »

ds9 wrote: post #38
ChuckMcM wrote: post #2

Just one of a bazillion questions that comes up when your car is autonomous. What happens when the sekrit tech elite want to kill you and so they make your car drive off a cliff? Interesting questions to be sure and already being examined on such shows as "CSI" in the US. Basically one of the reasons new technology rolls out slowly is that there are lots of people asking these sorts of questions and trying to have an…

Another case worse than partially-hijacked trips was mentioned in a slashdot post, and if I recall correctly, there was a vague reference to the autonomous-car-makers considering it, and it has bothered me ever since. Imagine a situation where a crash appears to the AI of car C1 to be be inevitable. But also, if C1 executes maneuver M1, its own occupants will be saved from harm, but another car C2 will have a worse c…

You appear to be claiming this is a bad thing, when (assuming it worked as planned) this would make you safer, since on average you'll be in the other car.

Of course, an irrational fear of safer cars is already considered to be one of the big stumbling blocks for self-driving cars, even without this scenario.

Re: What If Your Autonomous Car Keeps Routing You Past Krispy Kreme?

#62

Post by maxerickson »

ericcumbee wrote: post #48
GhotiFish wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider that such base manipulation would be used primarily on the poor.

I think it is a very long way down the road before the poor start getting self driving cars.

If they work well they should be a more efficient use of capital than a normal car (higher utilization, better adherence to maintenance schedules, etc). That creates an opportunity for per mile charges to be cheaper than owning a car.

(they should obviously be some combination of more profitable and cheaper than a taxi service...)

Re: What If Your Autonomous Car Keeps Routing You Past Krispy Kreme?

#63

Post by mcintyre1994 »

ds9 wrote: post #38
ChuckMcM wrote: post #2

Just one of a bazillion questions that comes up when your car is autonomous. What happens when the sekrit tech elite want to kill you and so they make your car drive off a cliff? Interesting questions to be sure and already being examined on such shows as "CSI" in the US. Basically one of the reasons new technology rolls out slowly is that there are lots of people asking these sorts of questions and trying to have an…

Another case worse than partially-hijacked trips was mentioned in a slashdot post, and if I recall correctly, there was a vague reference to the autonomous-car-makers considering it, and it has bothered me ever since. Imagine a situation where a crash appears to the AI of car C1 to be be inevitable. But also, if C1 executes maneuver M1, its own occupants will be saved from harm, but another car C2 will have a worse c…

Apparently in the UK almost every inevitable crash will end with the driver swerving right, usually putting his passenger in harm (driver sits on the right). I'm told that's a natural and unavoidable reaction, so if it's true I assume the opposite holds for America and etc. I guess that's another decision the car has to make, do you hit an unavoidable obstacle head on or swerve, presumably drastically changing the survival chances of each passenger. The baseline human panic reaction is almost certainly easy to 'beat' but it's a horrifying though that a car would have to make that decision.

Re: What If Your Autonomous Car Keeps Routing You Past Krispy Kreme?

#64

Post by kissickas »

grahamburger wrote: post #31
A_COMPUTER wrote: post #27

I had speculated about something like this with friends when it was announced that Google was getting into autonomous driving cars. The combination of G+, Maps, Zagats and a Google car that drives itself would give possible scenarios like the car doing things like asking you: "You haven't had lunch yet today. There's a highly-rated Italian place just two minutes from here, would you me to take you there?" then afterw…

My phone already does this with Google Now.

It suggests where to eat lunch if you haven't had it yet? Serious question, that would be an awesome feature, but I couldn't find anything on it. I don't regularly get lunch out but mine is always giving me "Places Nearby" which seem to have nothing to do with my interests.

Re: What If Your Autonomous Car Keeps Routing You Past Krispy Kreme?

#65

Post by mcintyre1994 »

maxerickson wrote: post #59
ds9 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another case worse than partially-hijacked trips was mentioned in a slashdot post, and if I recall correctly, there was a vague reference to the autonomous-car-makers considering it, and it has bothered me ever since. Imagine a situation where a crash appears to the AI of car C1 to be be inevitable. But also, if C1 executes maneuver M1, its own occupants will be saved from harm, but another car C2 will have a worse c…

It is likely that an AI sophisticated enough to make the consideration will be sophisticated enough to avoid the question. That is, there isn't all that much reason for the cars to be operating on the precipice of disaster. (If you want to say "But what about uncontrollable and unforeseen circumstances?", we should hope that we make the test out to be 'better than most humans', not 'perfect')

Assuming we change slowly to self-driving cars and they're operating for a while in an environment with human driven vehicles, no disaster scenario should be assumed out. They will have to deal with the situation that kill people right now, and them choices could easily reduce to "kill my passengers or those drunks in that car hurtling toward me" for example.

Better than humans is great, sophisticated AI is great, we can't expect perfect but I don't see a situation where they enter an environment much less dangerous than today's.

Re: What If Your Autonomous Car Keeps Routing You Past Krispy Kreme?

#66

Post by mcintyre1994 »

kissickas wrote: post #64
grahamburger wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My phone already does this with Google Now.

It suggests where to eat lunch if you haven't had it yet? Serious question, that would be an awesome feature, but I couldn't find anything on it. I don't regularly get lunch out but mine is always giving me "Places Nearby" which seem to have nothing to do with my interests.

It's always seemed to me that places nearby is somewhat based on time, I'm more likely to get the cinema in the afternoon and a restaurant in the evening. It could just be coincidental but it'd make sense if it is influenced by time. That's not as clever as knowing I haven't had lunch yet, but since I often have it with me or buy it in a supermarket or something, they'd have no way of accurately knowing anyway.

Re: What If Your Autonomous Car Keeps Routing You Past Krispy Kreme?

#67

Post by mcintyre1994 »

jrockway wrote: post #57
noonespecial wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Four people are in the car, two friends, and two people who are on the title and regs. There is no steering wheel. Whose license do the points go on?

Probably the same person that gets points when they cause an accident with their bicycle: i.e., nobody, because you don't get points for that.

Are we talking push bikes? At least in the UK you don't need a license for that anyway. I guess it's possible you wouldn't need a license for a self-driving car, but while regulations demand a fit driver who can control the vehicle that won't be the case.

Re: What If Your Autonomous Car Keeps Routing You Past Krispy Kreme?

#68

Post by scep12 »

mistercow wrote: post #7

I don't think anyone is going to be dumb enough to try the specific scenario this article outlines. The real world is noisy, and in practice, an objective like "reroute path to include Krispy Kreme, but only if it isn't too far out of the way" is going to have too many edge cases to do 100% reliably. And it only takes one "my car made me 40 minutes late to work by trying to take me by a Krispy Kreme in the next town"…

> an objective like "reroute path to include Krispy Kreme, but only if it isn't too far out of the way" is going to have too many edge cases to do 100% reliably

Too many edge cases? I'm sure you would have said the same thing about self-driving cars not too long ago. In a world where cars drive themselves, choosing an alternate route based on traffic and waypoints is a relatively easy problem to solve.

Re: What If Your Autonomous Car Keeps Routing You Past Krispy Kreme?

#69

Post by jrockway »

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #67
jrockway wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably the same person that gets points when they cause an accident with their bicycle: i.e., nobody, because you don't get points for that.

Are we talking push bikes? At least in the UK you don't need a license for that anyway. I guess it's possible you wouldn't need a license for a self-driving car, but while regulations demand a fit driver who can control the vehicle that won't be the case.

My point is, I think regulations will change as technology improves. As transatlantic flights started, engines were unreliable, so regulators forced airlines to take awkward routes when crossing oceans (so that they would be 60 single-engine flying minutes away from a diversion airfield). Now that engines are more reliable, the regulations are significantly more relaxed, sometimes allowing 330 minutes to a diversion airport.

The point is, regulations are not set in stone. Companies can advance the state of the art, and ask the government to regulate less strictly.

As it stands now, self-driving cars are a research project, so we'd expect them to be regulated very strictly. As testing shows them to be safe, then we can relax the regulations. If self-driving cars without a supervising driver end up being safer than a normal car with a normal driver, it would make sense to not require a license. If an accident happens, it happens. Car accidents are nothing new.

Re: What If Your Autonomous Car Keeps Routing You Past Krispy Kreme?

#70

Post by maxerickson »

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #65
maxerickson wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is likely that an AI sophisticated enough to make the consideration will be sophisticated enough to avoid the question. That is, there isn't all that much reason for the cars to be operating on the precipice of disaster. (If you want to say "But what about uncontrollable and unforeseen circumstances?", we should hope that we make the test out to be 'better than most humans', not 'perfect')

Assuming we change slowly to self-driving cars and they're operating for a while in an environment with human driven vehicles, no disaster scenario should be assumed out. They will have to deal with the situation that kill people right now, and them choices could easily reduce to "kill my passengers or those drunks in that car hurtling toward me" for example. Better than humans is great, sophisticated AI is great, we…

I expect the standard heuristic when the program detects an unavoidable collision will be to minimize impact energy, whatever that means.

(It won't have good information about the mass of oncoming traffic, but there aren't that many situations where choosing to collide with the oncoming vehicle makes any sense at all)

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