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Google Says It’s Not the Driverless Car’s Fault. It’s Other Drivers’

nytimes.com

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Re: Google Says It’s Not the Driverless Car’s Fault. It’s Other Drivers’

#81

Post by linkregister »

Shorel wrote: post #44
makeitsuckless wrote: post #19

Being a cyclist in Amsterdam, the lack of driver eye contact and understanding of body language is what worries me about the application of self driving cars. Amsterdam traffic is a chaos in which pedestrians and cyclists mix with cars, and the former two frequently (some would say always) ignore the rules. Not out of some anarchistic impulse, but for mutual convenience. Especially with cyclists, for whom coming to a…

Until you actually live surrounded by self-driving cars, your speculation is nothing more than that. As someone who also commutes by bicycle, I would vastly prefer predictable, 100% consistent car behavior.

Absolutely. All of my near-misses are due to unpredictable behavior on my part (I sometimes make mistakes; and I'm improving) or unpredictable driving. I include driver rage in the unpredictable driving category.

Re: Google Says It’s Not the Driverless Car’s Fault. It’s Other Drivers’

#82

Post by danharaj »

Retra wrote: post #56
danharaj wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you guarantee the enforcement of the rules of enforcement? The fundamental problem is a vicious circle. The abstraction of law leaks.

Every abstraction leaks. That's why they are abstractions and not 'actuals.' What you do is try it , and when it fails, you manage the failure and modify your system.

Different people have different idea what the actuality of law is. Most people (as Baudrillard would argue) don't ever work with the actuality. Others, mainly the powerful, are quite happy enough to fix failures of the law with copious amounts of force. The abstraction tends to leak bullets. It is very important to emphasize that the law is less than sacred, even an annoyance, to undermine those who will enforce it with the wrong actuality.

Re: Google Says It’s Not the Driverless Car’s Fault. It’s Other Drivers’

#83

Post by linkregister »

bholzer wrote: post #66
scrabble wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Not too long ago I had the opportunity to have a surgery performed by a robot controlled by a human surgeon. My wife was adamantly against it since there had been accidents previously with the robot other places in the world. Overall, the rate of incident was lower than the rate of incident for human surgeons, but to her that was not the important point. There are people who will definitely hold machines to high…

Surgical robots do not perform as well as traditional instruments. I've talked to a few hospital executives and all have said that in most cases, these robots only cost them money and decrease the quality of the surgical procedures. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2526934/Surge...

I know that disregarding evidence because of association is a fallacy, but can you come up with a better source? I have to strain my memory to think of an accurate article written by the newspaper you linked.

Re: Google Says It’s Not the Driverless Car’s Fault. It’s Other Drivers’

#84

Post by krapp »

Retra wrote: post #70
krapp wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he should be able to directly add that exception to the written law, and then enforce it as written. It's basically a kind of open source law. The question becomes of how to distribute authority. So basically, more or less what happens now, only with more bureaucracy and complexity? I'm sorry, but I don't see the benefit in that case.

The benefit is that you can better automate it. But if that line of reasoning were good enough, then the US made a mistake by rejecting the rule of a monarch. Democracy is rife with managerial issues.

The typical premise behind automation is to remove the (ethical and financial) burden of a human workforce while keeping the benefits provided by human labor. For most business processes this is acceptable (inevitable loss of jobs notwithstanding.)

But when your 'product' is violence on behalf of the state (in the anarcho-libertarian sense of 'violence' being any non-voluntary interaction with a person or power structure, sometimes involving actual violence) then the ability of humans to mediate, alter and affect that system becomes a feature as well as a bug. This necessarily limits the speed of the law and the degree to which it can be optimized, and remain humane, because removing humans from that system tends to merely concentrate power in the hands of the few humans necessary for it to function.

And then the questions become if humans can write the laws, and humans can update the laws, and humans are enforcing the laws, and have discretion in doing so, then what really is being automated, or optimized, other than recordkeeping? And for that matter, what does law as a programming language actually improve?

Re: Google Says It’s Not the Driverless Car’s Fault. It’s Other Drivers’

#85

Post by sschueller »

bholzer wrote: post #59
dman wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think happens in this situation currently with human drivers? Are we holding machines to different standards than we hold each other?

I think the point being made is that being the master of your own destiny is one of the most valued ideas to most of us. Letting a computer decide whether I live or die is certainly a future I don't want

Exactly.

Re: Google Says It’s Not the Driverless Car’s Fault. It’s Other Drivers’

#86

Post by sschueller »

kerryfalk wrote: post #54
sschueller wrote: post #28

Two driverless cars are about to crash into each other on a tight mountain pass (maybe a bug that couldn't for see the accident). There are 3 possible outcomes: 1. Car 1 and Car 2 crash into each other killing all passengers. 2. Car 1 with 3 passengers drives of the cliff, car 2 with 1 passenger survives. 3. Car 2 with 1 passenger drives of the the cliff, car 1 with 3 passengers survives. The cars can communicate wit…

4. Apply brakes and enable safety features for impending collision, notify police of crash and location. Why would it do anything else?

It is too late to brake, the decision has to be made between the 3 options, no other options exist.

Re: Google Says It’s Not the Driverless Car’s Fault. It’s Other Drivers’

#87

Post by sschueller »

logfromblammo wrote: post #73
sschueller wrote: post #28

Two driverless cars are about to crash into each other on a tight mountain pass (maybe a bug that couldn't for see the accident). There are 3 possible outcomes: 1. Car 1 and Car 2 crash into each other killing all passengers. 2. Car 1 with 3 passengers drives of the cliff, car 2 with 1 passenger survives. 3. Car 2 with 1 passenger drives of the the cliff, car 1 with 3 passengers survives. The cars can communicate wit…

If the cars can communicate with each other enough to negotiate which one should drive off the cliff, they can communicate with each other enough to negotiate an emergency stop for both vehicles, or even plan out a more survivable wreck. The only way to enforce the limited choice domain you presented is for the automated drivers to be operating the vehicles unsafely prior to the collision event. In that case, never m…

Would it be ethical to program an autonomous car to drive its passengers off a cliff to save for example a normal bus full of children? Would it not be the most logical and ethical thing for a computer to do in such a situation?

Re: Google Says It’s Not the Driverless Car’s Fault. It’s Other Drivers’

#88

Post by acheron »

logfromblammo wrote: post #73
sschueller wrote: post #28

Two driverless cars are about to crash into each other on a tight mountain pass (maybe a bug that couldn't for see the accident). There are 3 possible outcomes: 1. Car 1 and Car 2 crash into each other killing all passengers. 2. Car 1 with 3 passengers drives of the cliff, car 2 with 1 passenger survives. 3. Car 2 with 1 passenger drives of the the cliff, car 1 with 3 passengers survives. The cars can communicate wit…

If the cars can communicate with each other enough to negotiate which one should drive off the cliff, they can communicate with each other enough to negotiate an emergency stop for both vehicles, or even plan out a more survivable wreck. The only way to enforce the limited choice domain you presented is for the automated drivers to be operating the vehicles unsafely prior to the collision event. In that case, never m…

Since this is Google, the passengers probably only count if they have Google+ accounts.

Re: Google Says It’s Not the Driverless Car’s Fault. It’s Other Drivers’

#89

Post by bholzer »

linkregister wrote: post #83
bholzer wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surgical robots do not perform as well as traditional instruments. I've talked to a few hospital executives and all have said that in most cases, these robots only cost them money and decrease the quality of the surgical procedures. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2526934/Surge...

I know that disregarding evidence because of association is a fallacy, but can you come up with a better source? I have to strain my memory to think of an accurate article written by the newspaper you linked.

I agree, I was hesitant to even use that link, I believe the Wall Street Journal is generally considered more reputable:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/robotic-surgery-brings-higher-co...

And another from a relatively reputable healthcare company/journal:

http://www.healthline.com/health-news/is-da-vinci-robotic-su...

Re: Google Says It’s Not the Driverless Car’s Fault. It’s Other Drivers’

#90

Post by lukaslalinsky »

linkregister wrote: post #80
joeclark77 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars give us freedom. The reason that technocrats love "self-driving" cars is the same reason they love trains of all kinds: it means that "the system" controls who may go where, and when. A lot of us are skeptical of self-driving cars because a lot of their advocates want the next step to be banning private citizens from driving , which you've just confirmed, thanks.

Given the current electorate in the United States, I think it would be nigh-impossible that human-driving cars would be banned. Notwithstanding the fact that the cost to equip every vehicle on the road with self-driving technology would be wildly expensive in the short term, Americans respond vigorously to threats to freedoms that are ingrained in their culture (visceral freedoms, not freedoms that are less tangible,…

Self-driving cars will always have limitations. It's just not possible to make it ready for all kinds of road or even off-road surfaces. Fast-forward into future, if human-driven cars get banned, there will be no reason for self-driving cars to have manual controls and the only option for car will be to refuse to go into a situation it can't handle.

I very much believe in gradual improvements and that is what many large car manufacturers are doing. I can easily imagine not needing to control my car on a highway, in a city, or when parking it, but I expect the manual controls will stay there for a very very long time.

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