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Hacked billboards make Teslas see phantom objects causing them to swerve or stop

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Re: Hacked billboards make Teslas see phantom objects causing them to swerve or stop

#211

Post by zimpenfish »

wazoox wrote: post #198

My wife nearly had an accident because of a huge ad billboard that suddenly displayed huge roaring flames, to advertise for some steakhouse. My general feeling is that these sort of intrusive, dangerous, anti-ecological (such a billboard consumes as much power as a family of 4), anti-social (one less worker to change billboards) ads should be banned, period.

I worked at a place trying to do roadside LED billboards (~2009 before they were common) and the rules about content (in the UK, at the time) were fairly strict - nothing animated, no cuts only fades even between distinct adverts, etc. From what I've seen of the fancy new ones, those rules seem to be mostly still around (in London anyway.)

Re: Hacked billboards make Teslas see phantom objects causing them to swerve or stop

#212

Post by kakwa_ »

aeroplain wrote: post #29
liquidify wrote: post #21

Why don't we build some experimental infrastructure that is designed specifically for self driving vehicles?

Having to invest is specialized infrastructure for self-driving cars defeats the whole point of them. Any money spent on infrastructure for self-driving cars would be better spent on public transportation.

They are probably ways to improve existing roads for semi-automated vehicles without creating dedicated infrastructure (which is by itself, not possible anyway, it's kind of hard to create dedicated streets in a dense city for example).

The roads could have captors/sensors/tags added gradually to them. For example, some near field devices planted in the road and broadcasting information such as the name of the road, mile mark, line number/side or traffic lights broadcasting if they are at red or yellow or green or signs such as Stops broadcasting their presence.

This would help autonomous vehicles a lot (instead of having to scan the infrastructure and deduce the environment, the infrastructure will broadcast the environment, at least the static parts, directly), while at the same time not be that costly (compared to the initial cost of the road or even its maintenance costs).

Re: Hacked billboards make Teslas see phantom objects causing them to swerve or stop

#213

Post by mattbee »

a_bonobo wrote: post #200
mattbee wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both good points - so this kind of crime would likely be indistinguishable from a random, terrifying software failure, with the blame falling on the car maker.

Very often I see these tiny articles in local newspapers, 15 sentences, that go something like 'The driver lost control of their vehicle and died in the crash'. I've had some terrifying software problems in Audis, including random shutdowns while driving due to faulty sensors, how often do you think someone who 'lost control of their car', which implies that there was human error, died because their car's electronics…

Yeah! I'm sure that's happened in software in less sophisticated, but maybe more understandable ways. Lane-keeping & auto-braking software - which loads of cars have - is absolutely terrifying to think about, and I'd be fascinated to see these attacked from a research POV.

My old Celica tried to murder me on the M62 and Toyota denied the problem for years (the gas pedals got stuck under the floor mats). And that was just a really obvious (in retrospect) design flaw - for how long could a car maker viably deny safety problems in their software?

Re: Hacked billboards make Teslas see phantom objects causing them to swerve or stop

#214

Post by gridlockd »

josefx wrote: post #210
gridlockd wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your run-of-the-mill criminal has some sort of profit motive and this seems like a very roundabout way to attempt extortion. A terrorist on the other hand would probably be dissatisfied with the not-quite-catastophic outcome. If you want to cause real havoc, there are far more valuable targets to hack into.

We have idiots that call swat teams on twitch streamers. The profit is for the lulz.

Yes, any idiot can call 911 and have SWAT team dispatched, but that is a very low effort "attack".

I'm not saying that this could never possibly happen, but it's not much of a real threat exactly because effort vs reward is unfavorable.

Re: Hacked billboards make Teslas see phantom objects causing them to swerve or stop

#215

Post by gmadsen »

hughisthis wrote: post #176
newen wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. People need to stop comparing self driving cars favorably to the worst performing humans. Gives companies license to release these badly performing cars into the streets.

They are assistive systems. The only thing that's badly performing are the users who misuse them and get themselves into trouble.

hard braking or swerving for clear false positives is not very assistive...

it seems to be the opposite of assistive. How can a person know all the weird things that will make a computer vision system badly fail. It shouldn't be used at all if that is the case

Re: Hacked billboards make Teslas see phantom objects causing them to swerve or stop

#217

Post by mjburgess »

bipson wrote: post #187
AdamHede wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty important. The way the guys does this is very close to how you could also fool a human by hanging up real stop signs in the wrong places, and "stupidity" people would start to respect them. The only difference here is that a mere 500 ms flash elicites a response, where a human wouldn't notice. on balance, a 500 ms response time does seem like a feature more than a bug compared to a human.

Well, which one is it now: Are self-driving computers superior to humans and make less mistakes, or is it OK for a computer to be tricked by something some humans would also not detect? Btw. I think I can tell if there is a real stop-sign or something on a billboard after some 'huh'-moment and without slamming on the brakes. And humans still go circles around AI regarding plausibility-checking very out-of-the-ordinar…

It's neither.

Self-driving cars aren't superior.

There is 1 death in 100 million miles driven on roads; self-driving cars are currently operating around 1 death per million.

Personally, I do not expect self-driving cars this century to get anywhere near human safety levels (assuming cities/etc. remain as-is).

Re: Hacked billboards make Teslas see phantom objects causing them to swerve or stop

#218

Post by pdkl95 »

katzgrau wrote: post #97
tshaddox wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that that example became well-known due to the awful decision in Schenck v. United States does not mean that it's not a good example of speech that ought not be protected. Speech that is false and intentionally causes a panic should not be protected.

> Speech that is false and intentionally causes a panic should not be protected. What is true or false isn't always clear though, even if there's a popular or official consensus. The point of having a public forum is to give new ideas a chance, as unheard of or unpopular as they may be. Of course, with that you get the risk of misinformation as well. As a society we must choose how much risk we're willing to tolerate…

> What is true or false isn't always clear

While the veracity of a statement is important, the problem is not really about "misinformation". Technologists and intellectuals are used to viewing speech as an form of information transfer. However, speech can also be performative[1]; saying "not-guilty" to a judge or "I do" during your wedding are not really about conveying information - by saying those statements you are performing an action.

Falsely shouting "fire" is a false statement, but the problem happens when that statement is also functioning as the act of reckless endangerment (or incitement to riot, or whatever). Nobody cares if someone e.g. writes an op-ed that falsely claims the theater is on fire. It's the same misinformation, but the op-ed isn't also functioning as a performative act.

Far too often in these discussions, the different form of speech are conflated. A lot of the "balancing freedom vs safety" problem is a false dilemma that becomes a lot easier to reason when speech-as-information is separated from speech-as-action[2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performativity

[2] Factoring out phatic language is also important ( https://scienceblogs.com/clock/2007/05/31/more-than-just-res... )

Re: Hacked billboards make Teslas see phantom objects causing them to swerve or stop

#219

Post by 542354234235 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #71
Buttons840 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long until someone claims one of these images designed to cause trouble for AIs is free speech? And are they right?

> How long until someone claims one of these images designed to cause trouble for AIs is free speech? And are they right? They are not, any more running someone through a printing press to kill them is “free press”. Regulating intentional harm without reference to the particular means is not a violation of free speech or other expressive rights just because someone uses a tool that could instead be used as an express…

> any more running someone through a printing press to kill them is “free press”.

This sounds like a horror movie scene, and the killer would make some terrible pun at the end.

"Extra extra, read all about it...You're dead."

Re: Hacked billboards make Teslas see phantom objects causing them to swerve or stop

#220

Post by helsinkiandrew »

I'm not sure that counts as a phantom object. That's something that looks like a stop sign, positioned where a stop sign could be.

Admittedly its only shown for half a second but I imagine a distracted driver who looked up suddenly could be equally fooled.

Having video ads on screens that drivers can see and be distracted by is the real problem.

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