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

theatlantic.com

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

#71
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…

>What happens when the sekrit tech elite want to kill you and so they make your car drive off a cliff? It's considerably easier to physically tamper with a car, such as the good old Hollywood standby of cutting brake lines. Why worry about a fantasy of people trying to attack you remotely when there are plenty of real organizations that are much more likely to tamper with your car now?

Because technophobia is harder when you don't have a technology to be afraid of.

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

#72
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But speaking of paying, self driving cars also won't speed, turn right on red without a full stop, etc. Which means traffic tickets would be a thing of the past, along with the revenue they bring in.

At the same time policing costs would decrease dramatically.

That's probably not true. I've gotten the impression that a sizable chunk of police funding comes from speeding tickets.

Paying an officer to do something low-risk like camping out next to a road for a shift isn't really expensive. Same with monitoring systems like cameras on traffic lights. Set-up cost is significant, but they probably pay for themselves within a year.

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

#73
post #46

Honestly if autonomous cars can reduce even 10% of accidents caused by drunk driving and other human errors then they will have payed their way and more.

That's too idealistic. The reduction of accidents caused by human errors could very well be offset by a substantial increase in machine/OS/SW/HW caused accidents.

That's pretty unlikely though. It's not like cars are going from manual-everything to autonomous all at once. Multiple levels of traction control and steering assistance are already in control of your car, and they prevent more accidents than they cause. Autonomy is going to be rolled out in pieces and tested little by little.

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

#74
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…

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 su…

I've always thought that the protection part was a fallacy and the more obvious conclusion is that they swerve in the direction they are used to safely passing with.

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

#75
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…

Indeed. Here's a simpler one than the "sekrit tech elite" wanting to kill you... What happens when the equivalent of the Mariposa botnet, but this time for autonomous cars, roots 12 million of autonomous cars? But, this time, we have to believe that security is going to be done correctly, right? (this time, promised, no backdoors, no 0-days, no compromised servers, no compromised keys, etc.) I does really hope this t…

oh god, ransomware for your car...

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

#76

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.

Self-driving short-term rentals ala Zipcar or Car2Go?

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

#77
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…

>What happens when the sekrit tech elite want to kill you and so they make your car drive off a cliff? It's considerably easier to physically tamper with a car, such as the good old Hollywood standby of cutting brake lines. Why worry about a fantasy of people trying to attack you remotely when there are plenty of real organizations that are much more likely to tamper with your car now?

> It's considerably easier to physically tamper with a car, such as the good old Hollywood standby of cutting brake lines.

It's only hard to exploit a serious security flaw the first time. Until they close it, it's relatively easy to exploit it thereafter.

The relative lethality seems likely to favour the software option too. Personally I doubt I'd get above 10mph before I tried using my brakes - (manoeuvring into and then out of my road.) Compared to, 'Wait until you're on the motorway and accelerate as hard as you can into oncoming traffic.' I don't see too many people walking away from the latter case - the closing speed would be something like 190mph, disregarding braking on the part of the oncoming traffic.

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

#78
post #38
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…

As with most thought experiments, it's a little far-fetched though. How often, in the run-up to a crash, is it really possible to make oneself safer (or less safe) at the expense (or benefit) of another car?

A more common scenario might be driverless cars that don't communicate with each other and therefore try to "optimize" a crash without knowing how other cars are going to respond – potentially far more dangerous than the magnanimous AI you talk about.

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

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't the first one already happen with Michael Hastings? Although to be fair, it's just suspicions and not any officially accepted story. Nonetheless, they're fairly strong suspicions, same as with the Karl Koch case.

Regardless of whether or not that is true (and full disclosure, I doubt that it is from what I've read) it is surprising to me how something with tenuous evidence can be presumptively believed to be true in certain circles. His own wife says it was a "tragic accident", and his brother says he believed Hastings to be in a "manic episode" at the time. Why is it that random people on the internet have so much more suspi…

I haven't been following the Hastings case, so I can only reply in general:

Following the recent Snowden disclosures, you should question yourself at disbelieving conspiracy so easily. You might be right (probably are, for all I know), but you have no reason to believe so other than pure faith.

Ask yourself this (and answer truthfully): A year ago - did you believe that the NSA is actively sabotaging standards, intercepting shipments in order to modify the software to be under their control, etc? If you didn't (and I'm sure you've had the conspiracies mentioned), then why on earth would you believe "the official word" on anything like remote control of a car?

You might have a lot of faith in the official status-quo for no reason at all.

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

#80
post #38
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…

I need to start carpooling more
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