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Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

nytimes.com

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Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#211

Post by joe_the_user »

clistctrl wrote: post #205
joe_the_user wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose a robot driver is 1/10th as likely to hit and kill a person as a human driver. It would still be something that would happened. And when it did, the results would very messy since the law presently sees any accident through the lens of finding a person at fault. When a robot kills (and a robot will kill if they are "out there") is the fault that of the owner or the manufacturer or the programmer?

I assume the programmer works for a company, and the manufacturer is simply building the device. If the problem was related to faulty components, then I would assume the manufacturer. A flaw in the software or design? I would then contribute it to the company that designed the bot. If the device is improperly used then it would be the owner. I think it all comes down the specifics inside the context.

All of the sorting-out approaches you mention would certainly come into play.

Normally, the programmer is in the clear but obviously there would be exceptions - if you could prove they intentionally introduced code that make the car do something bad, they would be liable. Now introduce a plaintiff's lawyer to muddy-up the definition of these terms.

Let me point out that determining liability/culability/etc in a messy accident is difficult task when you've got just two human decision makes involved. It's decided by jurors who aren't necessary geniuses but probably think they understand human reactions and decision. Introduce two or three more decision makers into the discussion and you've got a messy process indeed.

We saw how far the faulty Toyota accelerator pedal charge went. A big factor in the reactions to evidence was the spookiness of "drive by wire" (I think we've gone over how the actual cause was driver fault but consider how the complexity of the system made a lot of people less likely to believe this).

I mean, it's terribly ironic. Driving in general is one of the most dangerous activities a modern person can engage in. If robots drove our cars the way we drive our cars, the protests would be huge. In a sense, the way we've socially normalized driving is through the huge insurance and liability complex. This assures people that when someone drives wrong, they will be punished somehow. A similar or even significantly small number of accidents without person to punish would be unsatisfying socially.

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#212

Post by joe_the_user »

neilc wrote: post #163
asr wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree computers will be able to drive much better than humans, and this transition will occur at some point--the question is, when? Is the 8 years mentioned in the article anywhere close to realistic? I don't think so. Not only does the technology have to become better in the aggregate than humans, it has to become so much better there's aren't any crash situations where human drivers perform better. There also can…

Keep in mind that there are already millions of lines of code running in modern cars. The worst-case failure mode of all that code would certainly result in loss of life, and legal liability on the part of the manufacturer/insurer/etc. So really the question is just how much automation we'll see in automobiles in the future, not if.

The Toyota Pedal case certainly points towards liability demanding less code.

If there was a automation feature that prevented accidents in 90% of the situations where a human would crash but caused an accident in a situation that was 10% as likely to occur as a human crash, the result would still huge liability since the manufacturer would "definitely" be at fault in the latter case.

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#213

Post by stretchwithme »

rue wrote: post #204
stretchwithme wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we'll need multiple processors thinking independently and reaching consensus before the gas pedal is pushed and letting any single processor hit the brakes (and disengage the gas, of course). Also good would be to allow other cars to request that a car stop, perhaps even communicating with the traffic control network to make it stop. And of course, there will be the Android app the pedestrian can use as a las…

Reminds me of a 0.1-version of this application that I heard about some years ago: some guy saw a fairly fast-moving heading toward a red light with pedestrians crossing with the driver looking down at something. Guesstimating the car was about to be too close to stop in time, the guy threw his cell at the car and got the driver's attention.

it was self defense, officer

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#214

Post by candeira »

jfager wrote: post #69
mjfern wrote: post #25

The key question is why would Google produce this technology and enter the autonomous driving market? I think one of the key issues for Google, from a corporate strategy standpoint, is "freeing up people's time." Driving is one of last places where we spend significant time awake without being able to use the Internet and hence any of Google's services (except if you use a smartphone, which is now illegal in some sta…

Google currently hires people to drive their streetview cars. They could save a significant amount by automating that collection process. Beyond not having to pay drivers, you also don't have to have vehicles designed to keep their occupants safe, which could be significantly cheaper to produce, operate, and maintain. And even though it's not a core part of their business today, the first company that can offer a via…

It's the other way around too, at least for the first trips.

A human-driven Google Street View car would not only retrieve mapping data, photographs for the Street View and cellphone tower and wifi signatures for positioning; it would also serve to annotate the roads for easier navigation by autonomous vehicles.

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#215

Post by krschultz »

Groxx wrote: post #208
krschultz wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. I don't even know where to start on that one, because that is about 100% the opposite of true. I work on autonomous driving robots. Teams I have been on in the past won extremely competitive autonomous vehicle competitions. Our robots crashed all the time. ALL THE TIME! There is nothing deterministic about how autonomous systems work. In fact our algorithms were by definition random number generators! We randoml…

It's deterministic. You can run a fully-accurate simulation of your entire setup in a computer, feed in the current input data, and get the precise output in the simulation that the real one would get. That's essentially the definition of deterministic. If your machine is powerful enough, you can even do it before the real one completes its operations. Anything deterministic is predictable in this manner. That you ca…

Ok yes, if I give the robot the same exact pictures and random generator seeds, it is deterministic.

But in the field, even if it is stationary the pictures are never the same from frame to frame and everything relies on a lot a randomness, and random noise.

Simulators are almost a waste of time because the real challenge is handling that noise, NOT dealing with the information extracted after the noise. Once you have a clear view of the world, everything it is easy, it is getting the eyes to actually understand anything that is hard.

Re: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

#216

Post by erikpukinskis »

DavidSJ wrote: post #139
erikpukinskis wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an avid cyclist. I think I'd prefer a deterministic, law abiding driver to the average human. What makes me feel unsafe are the drivers who break the law (you don't know who you are) and the drivers who hate cyclists and pass us as closely as possible, throw bottles at us, etc (you do know who you are). What makes me feel unsafe is the unpredictability. I would expect a computer would just follow the rules exactl…

Where do you live that drivers through bottles at cyclists, and how common is this?

I live in San Diego. It's happened to me once or twice.
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