When I was a kid, all elevators had an elevator operators. You entered, he closed an outer gate on the hole in the wall and then an inner gate. He then asked you the floor. He then pulled a cable that moved the car up/down, and stopped at your floor - often jockeying a little up/down to level the floor within ~~ an inch.
Then came push button elevators with automatic levelling and inner/outer door operation. So you push the button, elevator comes/door opens and you enter and the operator ask you what floor - WTF?. Yes, the operators union in cahoots with elevator installers unions saw the writing on the wall. Buildings were shorter, but few wanted to trudge up/down 10-20 floors. Deliveries carried as most freight elevators worked the old way. These strikes for an un-needed job went on for a while and landlords often gave in and wages went to 5 times the prior wage as you were over a barrel and your pants were down, and in the overall rent of space = small potatoes.
Eventually it became so egregious that new buildings who never had operators were able to get pickets limited for places that never had a union to 2 information pickets who could not block access at all.
Bear in mind these were safety elevators, with dual safety brakes so the doom and gloom of elevators full of screaming people falling 20+ floors that were featured by the info pickets. The walking public saw it as BS and ignored them and in time they went away.
We can easily have fully automatic subway trains. All you need are doors on the platform side to mate with doors on the car side and a controlled set of rails and you could do it. In fact many airport monorails do this now.
So, safe robot cars? This may be technically possible now - if you have zero people operated cars who can screw it all up. I have never been on Munk's Boring system in Las Vegas. A video that uses a car and driver is on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djfYafWFWtk&ab_channel=CNET
This needs to be changen to 10-12 passenger trollies - in time driverless, Tesla should make these trolley as there is a HUGE market for them in controlled right of way.
As we sit random mixed human/robo are prey to erratic humans. An asphalt path on a route like the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) is good as long as thuggery was dealt with. Any system will fail if wild humans can screw it up - we see wild humans (AKA homeless) in many cities. This is a complex drug/crime linked 'wild' system that has resisted control. It costs too much in wages to have paid drivers for the masses - they can not afford what the wealthy can.
Can we have a less flamey discussion of self driving cars?
21–30 of 32 posts
Re: Can we have a less flamey discussion of self driving cars?
#22Self driving cars and trucks are inefficient and much more can be achieved with public transportation like trains, trams, buses, etc.
The inherent problem is that these are marketing gimmicks permitted by our current technological development, but it doesn't mean they are useful. All the questions this technology poses are solved in one sweep with effective and comfortable public transportation.
Re: Can we have a less flamey discussion of self driving cars?
#23Until car companies can be sued into the ground for their self driving car killing someone, there won't be proper incentives in place to ensure the tech is safe and not a move fast and break things race between manufacturers that puts everyone at risk.
Well, there are already companies that accept nigh-unlimited liability for the consequences of car accidents - insurance companies. And drivers are used to paying enough in insurance premiums to cover the costs of the payouts.
Accepting liability for car accidents isn't necessarily a death sentence for a car company, any more that it is for an insurance company. Just instead of paying a $x00/year insurance fee you'll be paying an $x00/year self-driving subscription fee.
Re: Can we have a less flamey discussion of self driving cars?
#24I keep thinking the key is to make 100% of cars self-driving, and networked so they can all communicate and negotiate, which takes the unpredictability and lack of attention of human drivers out of the equation, and then pedestrians and cyclists will adapt. If this was the case, then you could probably get rid of traffic lights and speed limits...but it's the kind of solution to accommodate software solutions that co…
The problem with V2X (vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure) is that it is impossible to make it secure. Lots of work has been done on V2X protocols and ideas of operations, and none of them solve the fundamental problem that no one has a clue as to how to make such a large scale system secure against hostile actors. At best, every car would have to be continuously solving a Byzantine Generals problem for all V2X inputs, and those "solutions" don't really solve the problem.
Either the car is capable enough of operating by itself that V2X information is non-essential, or it is an extortion and assassination machine waiting to happen. Think ransomware locking away your documents and family pictures is bad already? Try "pay us 10 bitcoins or you die in a car accident on your commute home today".
Re: Can we have a less flamey discussion of self driving cars?
#25> - What might be the economic and environmental ramifications of a world with ubiquitous “robotaxis”?
Personally when I hear people talking about a future where nobody owns a car because robotaxis have replaced them, it feels dystopian to me.
After all, when the government of X demands all travel records in their country be handed over to their secret police; or that the people on a 'watchlist' not be permitted to travel? The robotaxi company will have to conform to local laws.
Re: Can we have a less flamey discussion of self driving cars?
#26The typical car is on the road 1% of the time. The typical driver-less car will be on the road whenever possible, so will see 100x usage. Just 1% of cars being driver-less will therefore double cars on the road. That will go to things that are good - taking the kids to soccer practice, go to things that are neutral - sleeping in the car as it drives to the beach, and it will go to things that are wasteful, like shipp…
Surely those 100% utilised driverless cars would reduce the other cars on the road?
I mentioned this in my post - soccer moms who used to drop off their kid and go home, then pick up their kid and go home will save an entire trip.
My argument is nothing more than a fairly obvious case of Jevon's paradox. If something becomes easier or cheaper, it gets used more. Our road networks can not handle being used more.
And there are other side effects of driver-less cars as well. If driver-less cars become a thing, people will slowly retire their cars and go driver-less. As that happens, the required parking lots in malls and offices and shopping areas will drop. It will start dropping the more driver-less cars are used. This will mean that these areas can now build on these parking lots. Malls might see high rise office buildings in their lots, shopping centers might see some nice 5-over-1's. This will allow the higher density, and higher density means the average person will travel less distance, so that could be a huge win. But they can only do that if the road network can handle the congestion, and they won't be able to handle it if you don't plan ahead with public transportation.
But we'll also see the other side, where people who used to not like driving, so they only lived 1 hour away from the office, now live 2 hours away from the office because they can now read in their car.
So once again, if cities are prepared their land owners could reap enormous profits up-zoning their parking lots into highly dense highly walk-able neighborhoods, and if they don't they will lose the ability for these investments to come. It's a first-mover advantage.
Re: Can we have a less flamey discussion of self driving cars?
#27> - What might be the economic and environmental ramifications of a world with ubiquitous “robotaxis”? Personally when I hear people talking about a future where nobody owns a car because robotaxis have replaced them, it feels dystopian to me. After all, when the government of X demands all travel records in their country be handed over to their secret police; or that the people on a 'watchlist' not be permitted to t…
> The robotaxi company will have to conform to local laws.
What do you think car manufacturers have to do?
https://unlikekinds.com/article/ecall-eu-cars-emergency-call...
Re: Can we have a less flamey discussion of self driving cars?
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
> sued into the ground The consequences should be severe, but should not prevent the company from finding ways to learn from their mistakes. There's a middle ground here: if there's no consequences, then we get careless implementations without improvement. If the consequence is bankruptcy, then there's no version of the tech that would ever be released by a respectable company. So we need something in the middle, whe…
The tech is inevitable IMO, so I disagree that bankruptcy shouldn't be on the table given the potential for harm (an errant update could result in nationwide or worldwide catastrophies). You want to be the first to deliver self driving? Better make sure it works.
> The tech is inevitable IMO
That's where we disagree. I think it would be entirely possible to prevent development permanently (or almost...50-100 years or more) if the regulations are too harsh.
Even with some fatalities, I think self driving could reduce total deaths. Perfect is the enemy of the good.
Re: Can we have a less flamey discussion of self driving cars?
#29The way I see it, there's very little negativity about Waymo. All of the flame discussions are about Tesla FSD because there it's really more a matter of religion if you consider the name accurate or not.
Yeah, I don't particularly expect Waymo to achieve their goals, but they appear to be operating ethically and I don't have a problem with how they're trying to develop their self-driving tech. Other companies in the space are not like that.
Re: Can we have a less flamey discussion of self driving cars?
#30This is a moral issue. It’s only possible to have a non-flamey moral discussion if people trust each other and share some sort of moral operating system in common.
I am offended, and I think we all should be, at the way self-driving bros characterize this issue as “pro-life” (because self-driving cars that work would save lives) while ignoring that they are inherently irresponsible (because they force human drivers to interact with and adapt to the socially incompetent avatars of those tech bros in a public space).
Driving is a social act. AI cannot be made to be socially competent or to have a social status. Without that, any problem caused by self-driving cars will create rage among the humans it interacts with. They are rolling arrogance-mobiles.
Self-driving cars could work only if human drivers are outlawed and pedestrians banned and all roads standardized. And if you do all that, there is still a problem: you’ve just spent a shit ton of money to solve a tiny problem.
Solve global warming instead.