U.S. tells Google computers can qualify as drivers(reuters.com)
reuters.com
U.S. tells Google computers can qualify as drivers
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-alphabet-autos-selfdriving-exclusive-idUSKCN0VJ00H
194 comments
Is this the beginning of algorithmic personhood, then?
Algorithmic personhood seems like a pretty good path forward for all the inevitable legal questions this will stir up. You could prosecute the individual instance of the algorithm when it breaks a law, and if that's successful charge its employer for something like negligent training or negligent hiring.
If the give legal personhood to the algorithm, then in a case of an accident you'd charge it. If you're charging the manufacturer anyway, you don't need to give the algorithm personhood, any more than for any other device.
The distinction still makes sense because it allows for graduation. If I drive too fast in a company car, I get the ticket and the company walks free, but if I crash because the company forced me to drive overnight for 10 hours straight, while I might still loose my license, the company is definitely on the hook for something.
How would that apply to self-driving cars, though?
well, the argument is, i think, in one situation the error resides on the individual, on the other the error resides in the organization. i don't think this would be really comparable to AI drivers unless each car differed significantly enough to establish them as actually separate. if i use the same equation 100 times, and its wrong every 1 time, it cant be called an accurate equation.
And the next step would be to allow algorithms to have bank accounts, earn money for their work and then be charged, prosecuted and put in "jail" for X number of CPU cycles.
What if its process is already chroot jailed?
Have a look at Ethereum. It already allows programs to control money. Soon, much more.
I've been to Etherium's website, I've looked over the wikipedia entry, but I still don't understand what it actually is. Best I can figure, it's a replacement for "the internet".
I'm pretty technically literate, but I have to admit I'm at a complete loss as to why this project matters (let alone what it does). Could you enlighten me?
I'm pretty technically literate, but I have to admit I'm at a complete loss as to why this project matters (let alone what it does). Could you enlighten me?
I agree, the current website does not explain it very well.
Let me try.
The Ethereum vision encompasses three components: P2P messaging, a file distribution layer and Blockchains. I described them in more detail here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/3npsoz/ethereum_i... In practice, this is actually more complex, but should suffice as an introduction.
The Ethereum developers are mostly focused on the Blockchain component. On-chain accounts can be associated with program code and state, the environment specifies a turing complete virtual machine, called Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Transactions can call these programs (also called "smart contracts") and contracts can call other contracts as well. To avoid infinite loops, every execution step in the EVM incurs a fee ("gas cost") that is collected by the miner of the new block that include the transaction. If a transaction does not supply enough gas (paid in Ether, the networks currency), the fees are collected anyway and all changes are undone. The validity of the program state is guaranteed with a consensus algorithm. It is replicated across all nodes. So if you want to censor the program, you have to attack the entire network. This makes them reasonably independent of human control and thus allows them to control arbitrary state, including the networks currency.
But how can the contract communicate with the rest of the world? It can only do so using transactions. For example, it could incentivise transactions that supply it with information, or could use other contracts to schedule micropayments to some service.
Contracts could also be used to reference content addressed data (have a look at ipfs.io, these are basically the other two components) and thereby act as a (domain) name system.
All in all, this decentralises storage, state and communication and is the most futuristic thing I know of. It took me weeks to understand how these components relate to each other, but it was worth it.
Let me try.
The Ethereum vision encompasses three components: P2P messaging, a file distribution layer and Blockchains. I described them in more detail here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/3npsoz/ethereum_i... In practice, this is actually more complex, but should suffice as an introduction.
The Ethereum developers are mostly focused on the Blockchain component. On-chain accounts can be associated with program code and state, the environment specifies a turing complete virtual machine, called Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Transactions can call these programs (also called "smart contracts") and contracts can call other contracts as well. To avoid infinite loops, every execution step in the EVM incurs a fee ("gas cost") that is collected by the miner of the new block that include the transaction. If a transaction does not supply enough gas (paid in Ether, the networks currency), the fees are collected anyway and all changes are undone. The validity of the program state is guaranteed with a consensus algorithm. It is replicated across all nodes. So if you want to censor the program, you have to attack the entire network. This makes them reasonably independent of human control and thus allows them to control arbitrary state, including the networks currency.
But how can the contract communicate with the rest of the world? It can only do so using transactions. For example, it could incentivise transactions that supply it with information, or could use other contracts to schedule micropayments to some service.
Contracts could also be used to reference content addressed data (have a look at ipfs.io, these are basically the other two components) and thereby act as a (domain) name system.
All in all, this decentralises storage, state and communication and is the most futuristic thing I know of. It took me weeks to understand how these components relate to each other, but it was worth it.
Thanks for the "for dummies" version! I think I might actually have an idea for an application that would benefit from this infrastructure. :)
Very interesting! commenting to come back later and read up
Isn't this how HFT works?
No, a human or group of humans is responsible for the HFT algorithm.
Are there not instances of parents being held legally responsible for their child's actions? I'm not setting you up. I don't know the answer to that question but if the answer is yes, that could be an analogy.
Yes, but my point is that the only reason to grant legal personality to a "thing" is if you want to shield its owner from liability. If you're still holding the manufacturer liable for infractions committed by the algorithm, you don't need it.
Ah, but aren't companies themselves entities such that their owners and creators are liable about their actions in certain cases, but not in others?
Not a lawyer and not a founder, but as I understand it, it goes something like:
- If I own a company and it is insolvent or incapable of fulfilling some contract, I am probably not in trouble, the company is. It might still depend on the specifics, though.
- If I own a company and it does something illegal without my knowledge or intent, such as say produce unsafe products, I might be in trouble, or I might not be, depending on how unsafe, why and whether I can be found have been negligent in allowing it. The company itself definitely is in trouble, though, since it has clearly violated the law.
- If I own a company and I willingly task it, or even allow it, to do something illegal, with full knowledge of the illegal actions in question, then I am probably in trouble too.
Operating through a company doesn't make me immune from the law, and neither should working through an algorithm. On the other hand, full personal liability for everything my company/algorithm does, when I am not in the loop at the point the decision happens, seems like the wrong standard as well.
So basically the algorithm can be found guilty of a crime. The company that created it can then be found guilty of selling a defective product (depending on whether there was any reasonable way of catching the defect). The owners can be then charged with negligence or something to that effect if the defect is something that standard industry practice or compliance with regulations should have caught, or if it was introduced deliberately.
If someone has a law background here, feel free to let me know if I am misunderstanding anything...
Not a lawyer and not a founder, but as I understand it, it goes something like:
- If I own a company and it is insolvent or incapable of fulfilling some contract, I am probably not in trouble, the company is. It might still depend on the specifics, though.
- If I own a company and it does something illegal without my knowledge or intent, such as say produce unsafe products, I might be in trouble, or I might not be, depending on how unsafe, why and whether I can be found have been negligent in allowing it. The company itself definitely is in trouble, though, since it has clearly violated the law.
- If I own a company and I willingly task it, or even allow it, to do something illegal, with full knowledge of the illegal actions in question, then I am probably in trouble too.
Operating through a company doesn't make me immune from the law, and neither should working through an algorithm. On the other hand, full personal liability for everything my company/algorithm does, when I am not in the loop at the point the decision happens, seems like the wrong standard as well.
So basically the algorithm can be found guilty of a crime. The company that created it can then be found guilty of selling a defective product (depending on whether there was any reasonable way of catching the defect). The owners can be then charged with negligence or something to that effect if the defect is something that standard industry practice or compliance with regulations should have caught, or if it was introduced deliberately.
If someone has a law background here, feel free to let me know if I am misunderstanding anything...
The thing is: what's the purpose of finding "the algorithm" guilty of a crime? A company owns assets that can be used to pay fines and damages, and as a semi-autonomous entity (in the sense that "it" still exists even if all of its owners and workers are replaced) it can be prohibited or forced to do something. An algorithm, on the other hand, owns nothing and its actions are wholly dependent on the people that program and configure it.
If the purpose is to account for freak events where the algo misbehaves for reasons that couldn't be foreseen, is that any different than a (non-autonomous) vehicle part failing despite being well-designed and maintained? This is not a new situation - an algorithm is just another car part. You don't need to give legal personality to the fuel injection pumps or the steering column in case it fails unexpectedly.
If the purpose is to account for freak events where the algo misbehaves for reasons that couldn't be foreseen, is that any different than a (non-autonomous) vehicle part failing despite being well-designed and maintained? This is not a new situation - an algorithm is just another car part. You don't need to give legal personality to the fuel injection pumps or the steering column in case it fails unexpectedly.
It's entertaining that apparently one of our signifiers of independent personhood is "Can drive a car."
This issue is only confusing to the extent this isn't considered.
>an algorithm is just another car part
Exactly. And the designer is on the hook for negligence in the usual way - but not for malicious, tragic, and/or unforseeable circumstances that may lead to death or injury.
Finding the boundary between those will keep a lot of lawyers very busy. But I don't think we need to start assigning personhood and agency to a steering system just yet.
This issue is only confusing to the extent this isn't considered.
>an algorithm is just another car part
Exactly. And the designer is on the hook for negligence in the usual way - but not for malicious, tragic, and/or unforseeable circumstances that may lead to death or injury.
Finding the boundary between those will keep a lot of lawyers very busy. But I don't think we need to start assigning personhood and agency to a steering system just yet.
With the comment that sparked off this thread, I wasn't implying the car had any sense of agency. Rather, that legal personhood might be a good way to sort out the laws.
A corporation is a legal person, which makes it a lot easier to enter a contract with one, but that doesn't imply it has rights. You can own a corporation without it being slavery.
A corporation is a legal person, which makes it a lot easier to enter a contract with one, but that doesn't imply it has rights. You can own a corporation without it being slavery.
The purpose I had in mind when I first mentioned the idea was just to provide a convenient way to reason about the law. It lets you re-use laws written with human drivers in mind, instead of having to individually recontextualize each as a type of mechanical failure. So you can charge the car with reckless driving, instead of having to show that an algorithmic failure lead to a behavior consistent with reckless driving.
It's still an abstraction over something akin to mechanical failure, like how corporate personhood is an abstraction over a group of people. It doesn't mean the algorithm has rights, any more than a fuel injection pump does. You also can't murder a corporation, even though it's a legal person.
It's still an abstraction over something akin to mechanical failure, like how corporate personhood is an abstraction over a group of people. It doesn't mean the algorithm has rights, any more than a fuel injection pump does. You also can't murder a corporation, even though it's a legal person.
"Operating through a company doesn't make me immune from the law, and neither should working through an algorithm."
That might be technically true but in reality it quite often does. See nearly all bankers from 2K8 melt down for good examples of how money and power buy immunity in what is really an economically based caste system.
Do you really think if this was some garage start-up and not Google that they would have been granted anything but a swift kick in the ass out the office door of whatever bureaucrat handled this?
That might be technically true but in reality it quite often does. See nearly all bankers from 2K8 melt down for good examples of how money and power buy immunity in what is really an economically based caste system.
Do you really think if this was some garage start-up and not Google that they would have been granted anything but a swift kick in the ass out the office door of whatever bureaucrat handled this?
Could it not also be used to constrain liability? If "Joe" has its license suspended, the manufacturer can slightly alter the algorithm and name it "Sue" and continue on.
I'm sure the car manufacturer would love that, but why would the legislative body - and society in general - create such a system?
Sounds reasonable to me.
Or perhaps every running instance would have to have a certain amount of insurance. You wouldn't be able to spin up arbitrary numbers of self driving cars, just like the average person needs to satisfy requirements before they can drive.
Judge and jury can then be algorithms, too!
Probably not. It's an interpretation that the word "driver" in one particular legal context does not necessarily mean a person, not a decision that computer programs are people.
This simply seems to be (without the text of the letter, just several news reports) an interpretation of law which is a basis for NHTSA to subsequently rewrite vehicle safety equipment requirements to support fully autonomous vehicles at the federal level.
Because of the way legal definitions are context-specific, it doesn't necessarily mean anything to anynof the other laws regarding drivers, much less anything outside of that domain.
This simply seems to be (without the text of the letter, just several news reports) an interpretation of law which is a basis for NHTSA to subsequently rewrite vehicle safety equipment requirements to support fully autonomous vehicles at the federal level.
Because of the way legal definitions are context-specific, it doesn't necessarily mean anything to anynof the other laws regarding drivers, much less anything outside of that domain.
Not in the traditional individual sense, I think. All AI drivers across the whole world will seamlessly exchange and synchronize with each other their learning experiences, resulting in self-driving vehicles that improve at an exponential rate.
It's basically an AI collective, whose 'brain' scatters across data centers around the world.
It's basically an AI collective, whose 'brain' scatters across data centers around the world.
No way will the driving get exponentially better with the dataset size, probably closer to logarithmically actually, really fast in the beginning and progressively much much much slower
To be honest, I'd be worried about security vulnerabilities from a system that was exchanging and synchronizing data in the cloud. It seems unlikely that the first generation of self driving vehicles will be able to update its behavior in real time from other vehicles' experience. If there is any cloud connectivity at all, I'd expect it at first to be solely outgoing data that is sent to and aggregated by some central brain. Then, when the owner of a vehicle wants to update its AI, they manually download a certified patch or bundle of data that incorporates what the central brain has learned from all the cars. These upgrade patches would probably have to be constantly vouched for by debug vehicles that drive all over the streets of the world before being released.
>Not in the traditional individual sense, I think. All AI drivers across the whole world will seamlessly exchange and synchronize with each other their learning experiences, resulting in self-driving vehicles that improve at an exponential rate.
That's a nice picture of free-form learning from inputs, but the reality could be quite more rigid.
I'd expect something more like gathering "black box" style information of the situation (the analogous of a stack trace or core dump), and having programmers trying to improve the algorithms, while also taking into account all the safety issues that could go wrong, than some "let's change my behavior because I was penalized" neural-net/ML way.
That's a nice picture of free-form learning from inputs, but the reality could be quite more rigid.
I'd expect something more like gathering "black box" style information of the situation (the analogous of a stack trace or core dump), and having programmers trying to improve the algorithms, while also taking into account all the safety issues that could go wrong, than some "let's change my behavior because I was penalized" neural-net/ML way.
It's already happening for google's driverless car program. I highly recommend the Ted talk about how driverless cars see the world. Fascinating.
Algorithmic personhood already happened via corporations.
Corporations are legal persons, but they aren't algorithms (or even concrete programs), so they don't represent algorithmic personhood.
You could make the argument that their behavior is algorithmic, at least that's a part of what HFT banks on.
Conversely, what if the corporate shareholders were primarily algorithmic traders?
Conversely, what if the corporate shareholders were primarily algorithmic traders?
> You could make the argument that their behavior is algorithmic, at least that's a part of what HFT banks on.
Human decision makers -- either individuals acting on their own behalf or humans acting as decision-makers in a corporation -- may choose to use algorithms to make decisions, and may choose to give programs that concretely instantiate algorithms minute-to-minute control of their resources. That doesn't mean that the personhood -- of the individual or corporation -- transfers to the algorithm or the concrete instance.
> Conversely, what if the corporate shareholders were primarily algorithmic traders?
Algorithmic traders are legal persons -- either corporations or individuals -- using computer programs to make and execute trading decisions.
Human decision makers -- either individuals acting on their own behalf or humans acting as decision-makers in a corporation -- may choose to use algorithms to make decisions, and may choose to give programs that concretely instantiate algorithms minute-to-minute control of their resources. That doesn't mean that the personhood -- of the individual or corporation -- transfers to the algorithm or the concrete instance.
> Conversely, what if the corporate shareholders were primarily algorithmic traders?
Algorithmic traders are legal persons -- either corporations or individuals -- using computer programs to make and execute trading decisions.
Corporations aren't persons, they're legal constructs. And no, a person is not a legal construct.
Within the USA, legally speaking, corporations are treated as people:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood
With some limits, I bet. Can you jail a corporation? In many cases law enforcement is based on the ability of the state to limit personal freedom, through the use of force if needed. I wonder who'll be responsible if a self driven car kills somebody. Obviously not the passenger, especially if Google gets this "no controls" policy passed. But Google and the other car makers won't sell any of those cars if some of their people has to spend jail time for any major accident that sooner or later will inevitably happen. A possibility is that it will be legislated to be similar to what happens when a bridge collapses and kills somebody. An investigation and the engineers will go on trial. But that's strikingly different from what happens to human drivers.
(BTW, who's going to pay speed fines? They shouldn't happen but I'm sure they will)
(BTW, who's going to pay speed fines? They shouldn't happen but I'm sure they will)
The whole point of corporations is juridical personhood -- that's not a US quirk.
Sure, but the US is especially bonkers with regard to the rights that person has.
Apparently corporations can have religious beliefs in the US.
Apparently corporations can have religious beliefs in the US.
My understanding has it that this is a disingenuous misconstrual of what happened in the Hobby Lobby case. It's not that the corporation has religious beliefs. It's that the owners do - where that set of owners is sufficiently small and sufficiently homogeneous that that's reasonably well defined. And that those beliefs don't lose protection just because they are acting through their corporation instead of acting as an individual.
I have, at least, misgivings about the ultimate decision - and certainly disagree with the religious beliefs claimed by the owners of Hobby Lobby - but I think we should deal with the actual arguments.
I have, at least, misgivings about the ultimate decision - and certainly disagree with the religious beliefs claimed by the owners of Hobby Lobby - but I think we should deal with the actual arguments.
Well if company can be people, and companies can copyright/patent/own/protect algorithms they've developed, I guess it makes sense an associative properties sort of way that algorithms can be people...
Does that mean we can copyright people, so long as that can be described by an algorithm?
Would owning "Joe" make me a slave holder?
[deleted]
IBM's Watson for president 2016
http://watson2016.com/
I'm curious to see if some vehicles AI develop road-rage over a course of period as it goes through self optimization.
While I get the humor in your comment, I'd be curious if 'relaxing' some of the behavior parameters would result in some not-very-useful conclusions from testing:
"Tests indicate most efficient driving technique to include lots of honking, flashing high beams, and spraying winshield wiper fluid onto cars following too close on the highway."
"Tests indicate most efficient driving technique to include lots of honking, flashing high beams, and spraying winshield wiper fluid onto cars following too close on the highway."
In situations which usually induce anger in people on the roads, it seems more likely that any resulting behaviours resembling road rage only disadvantage the driver, if the goal is safety.
So if anything, wouldn't any sort of sufficiently global optimisation only veer the ai away from behaviours resembling road rage over time?
So if anything, wouldn't any sort of sufficiently global optimisation only veer the ai away from behaviours resembling road rage over time?
how do you define safety programmatically so the vehicle knows what's considered 'safe'? Measurement of g-force in sudden deceleration, acceleration, lateral movement? Heart beat per minute of passengers?
Most passenger cars are far more capable than average drivers can exploit, so there is quite a bit of room for cars to drive very aggressively from human's perspective, but completely 'safe' from machine's perspective.
Most passenger cars are far more capable than average drivers can exploit, so there is quite a bit of room for cars to drive very aggressively from human's perspective, but completely 'safe' from machine's perspective.
Going one step further, some AI will be designed to be aggressive; for example, law enforcement, military, security escorts, etc. -- I'm guessing that will it is very likely that you're right that some consumer AI will be aggressive, if it become too common, it'll be shut down.
And Joe is owned by a corporation, which is considered a person, my friend.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood
wonder if i can swap out my driver mid-ride depending on neighborhood, weather conditions or my mood...
You already sort of can; 'sport mode' in most cars is effectively you, as the car's puppeteer, changing out the one persona for another of the AI "puppet" your commands execute through.
Can an algorithm have mens rea?
One might choose to define mens rea as the difference between a bug and a feature.
The specific letter from NHTSA to Google:
http://isearch.nhtsa.gov/files/Google%20--%20compiled%20resp...
... along with an abbreviation I have yet to see previously:
>> self-driving vehicles (SDVs)
... and their definition of a Level 4 vehicle:
>> Google describes its vehicles as having what NHTSA's May 2013 Preliminary Statement of Policy Concerning Automated Vehicles calls Level 4 Full Self-Driving Automation. According to that Statement, a Level 4 vehicle:
>> is designed to perform all safety-critical driving functions and monitor roadway conditions for an entire trip. Such a design anticipates that the driver will provide destination or navigation input, but is not expected to be available for control at any time during the trip. This includes both occupied and unoccupied vehicles. By design, safe operation rests solely on the automated vehicle system.
http://isearch.nhtsa.gov/files/Google%20--%20compiled%20resp...
... along with an abbreviation I have yet to see previously:
>> self-driving vehicles (SDVs)
... and their definition of a Level 4 vehicle:
>> Google describes its vehicles as having what NHTSA's May 2013 Preliminary Statement of Policy Concerning Automated Vehicles calls Level 4 Full Self-Driving Automation. According to that Statement, a Level 4 vehicle:
>> is designed to perform all safety-critical driving functions and monitor roadway conditions for an entire trip. Such a design anticipates that the driver will provide destination or navigation input, but is not expected to be available for control at any time during the trip. This includes both occupied and unoccupied vehicles. By design, safe operation rests solely on the automated vehicle system.
In case people are wondering:
"SDV" has been in use since at least 2011: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=10460039591121716...
The level classifications appear to date from 2013: http://www.nhtsa.gov/About+NHTSA/Press+Releases/U.S.+Departm...
"SDV" has been in use since at least 2011: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=10460039591121716...
The level classifications appear to date from 2013: http://www.nhtsa.gov/About+NHTSA/Press+Releases/U.S.+Departm...
In case more people are wondering still:
"SDV" is not an acronym but an initialism. TIL that in today's thread about TIL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11069206
"SDV" is not an acronym but an initialism. TIL that in today's thread about TIL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11069206
Wow, I'm surprised the legal world is catching up to this so quickly. You would think that the law would be a larger barrier than it has been so far.
There's a lot of money involved, and that always greases the skids.
Also worth mentioning that Hoover might be posthumously jealous regarding the amount of dirt Google might have on, well...everybody.
> Also worth mentioning that Hoover might be posthumously jealous regarding the amount of dirt Google might have on, well...everybody.
No, it's not really worth mentioning, unless you're implying that Google is blackmailing government employees to expedite rule changes. If you are seriously suggesting that, own it.
Hoover would be jealous of any tech companies, from Apple (remember the Fappening?), Twitter (how many Carlos Dangers are out there?), Mobile Operators to your garden variety ISP, but most of all - the NSA. In fact, if he were alive and in charge of the FBI today he'd wrangle up an ongoing "inter-agency information sharing" set up, and would not be jealous of anyone at all.
No, it's not really worth mentioning, unless you're implying that Google is blackmailing government employees to expedite rule changes. If you are seriously suggesting that, own it.
Hoover would be jealous of any tech companies, from Apple (remember the Fappening?), Twitter (how many Carlos Dangers are out there?), Mobile Operators to your garden variety ISP, but most of all - the NSA. In fact, if he were alive and in charge of the FBI today he'd wrangle up an ongoing "inter-agency information sharing" set up, and would not be jealous of anyone at all.
Sure, they have not yet succumbed to the temptation. There is something unique about a company with their market share in internet search, browser, email, phone handsets, maps/gps, ad clicks etc, though. The sort of triangulated dossier you could put together would be impressive.
Edit: "Our new Privacy Policy makes clear that, if you’re signed in, we may combine information you've provided from one service with information from other services."
Edit: "Our new Privacy Policy makes clear that, if you’re signed in, we may combine information you've provided from one service with information from other services."
I'll triple down on my sinking ship.
I, personally, wouldn't be shocked if a company lobbying for something with potential controversy (Uber, an e-Cig company, whatever) used the data at their disposal to advance their cause.
It might start short of blackmail, sure. My e-cig company is going to face a panel of government officials. Might I check my sales records to see if any of them are customers, to help identify someone on the panel that might be more sympathetic? If I had access to other data, might I push farther?
It's not that I think Google is particularly more evil than any other corporate entity. It's the scale that scares me. Aside from the products I mentioned, there's also Google Fiber, a fleet of camera equipped cars, the Nest home products, and more. And not much in between all that and something scary other than corporate policy and personal ethics.
I, personally, wouldn't be shocked if a company lobbying for something with potential controversy (Uber, an e-Cig company, whatever) used the data at their disposal to advance their cause.
It might start short of blackmail, sure. My e-cig company is going to face a panel of government officials. Might I check my sales records to see if any of them are customers, to help identify someone on the panel that might be more sympathetic? If I had access to other data, might I push farther?
It's not that I think Google is particularly more evil than any other corporate entity. It's the scale that scares me. Aside from the products I mentioned, there's also Google Fiber, a fleet of camera equipped cars, the Nest home products, and more. And not much in between all that and something scary other than corporate policy and personal ethics.
This is progress, but not much. Driving, licensing of drivers, and regulation of auto insurance is almost wholly dictated at the state level. What the federal government considers to be "a driver" is nearly irrelevant.
I'm sorry but you're quite wrong. We still have federal regulations that disallow smart directional dimming headlights because the regulation dictates high beams need be activated by a binary switch.
The biggest, slowest sticklers to this progress thing are at the federal level. This is a huge deal.
The biggest, slowest sticklers to this progress thing are at the federal level. This is a huge deal.
It's relevant for the purposes of federally-mandated vehicle safety standards, is it not?
Pretty much all the NHTSA enforces is whether or not a safety feature is present in a vehicle. They could, for example, require that all new vehicles be equipped with an AEBS, but they don't typically tell states that they must allow certain vehicles on the road, and in fact individual states are generally allowed to adopt extra standards on top of the federal ones.
It's interesting that drug policy gets pushed to a federal level—because drugs "potentially cross state lines"—car safety policy doesn't. Are there really no states where the majority of traffic is from out-of-state vehicles?
What can be federally regulated seems to be entirely a function of the supreme court makeup at the time that it is tested in court.
Not sure that example works. We have states "legalizing" marijuana which is illegal at the federal level.
Maybe D.C., but as is well known, their opinion generally doesn't count...
To be fair, that's probably a good thing. Every state has slightly different difficulties that the AI will probably have to learn to overcome. Though it might slow down technological progress, it's probably a safer way to roll out.
specialLaws(1)
[deleted]
if you spend any real amount of time on a bike interacting with traffic you quickly come to realize that 99.5% of the humans behind the wheel shouldn't be driving, so it's hard to see where there would be any noticeable difference in quality of operations between human and autonomous.......
It's interesting to read the accident reports for autonomous vehicle testing. Most of them go something like, "The autonomous vehicle stopped when legally required, and the human-driven car behind it didn't notice and rammed the autonomous vehicle."
People come up with all sorts of crazy failure modes for autonomous vehicles. What if the sensors fail open at the same time another car is speeding and the sun is at a 37 degree angle and a family of ducks is crossing the road.... Meanwhile the current gold standard can't be counted on to stop when the vehicle in front stops.
People come up with all sorts of crazy failure modes for autonomous vehicles. What if the sensors fail open at the same time another car is speeding and the sun is at a 37 degree angle and a family of ducks is crossing the road.... Meanwhile the current gold standard can't be counted on to stop when the vehicle in front stops.
By the same token many many cyclists should get their own heads out of their asses and obey the traffic laws as they are supposed to do.
I've never had a cyclist blow a red light and nearly run me down in a crosswalk. I've never had a cyclist cross a double yellow and nearly hit me head on because they can't stay within the lines. I've never had a cyclist merge into me and nearly flatten me because they apparently think yielding to traffic already on the road is optional.
Sure, cyclists violate the law, but let's get our priorities straight.
Sure, cyclists violate the law, but let's get our priorities straight.
> I've never had a cyclist blow a red light and nearly run me down in a crosswalk.
Wait really? This happens to me several times daily in NYC. Hell, yesterday evening it happened going the wrong way on a one-way road.
Wait really? This happens to me several times daily in NYC. Hell, yesterday evening it happened going the wrong way on a one-way road.
I'm not in NYC, and cyclists are somewhat less common where I live.
sigh....sure there's a "10%" on the bike side. but the scale of that "10%" is infinitesimally small in comparison to the level of incompetence in motor vehicles, and moreover a bike isn't an (n) thousand pound kinetic energy weapon.
this is a tired argument that lacks any basis in fact. what is supported by fact is that we annually kill tens of thousands of people each year in this country (USA) as a result of driver incompetence, i.e. distracted, drunk, etc, etc.......
this is a tired argument that lacks any basis in fact. what is supported by fact is that we annually kill tens of thousands of people each year in this country (USA) as a result of driver incompetence, i.e. distracted, drunk, etc, etc.......
In all 50 states, people on bikes are required to follow the same laws as other drivers.
Yet, I have seen a bike riders pass several parked cars to flat out fly though mid cycle red lights. Drive down the center line passing slow cars on both sides. Do 20+MPH down a sidewalk past driveway exists with limited visibility etc etc.
That's way past 10%.
Bikes are required to take a full traffic lane and obey traffic laws, or use a bike lane. Anything else is both illegal and begging to be hit.
PS: I have personally seen 2 minor bike-car accidents both times the bike was breaking the law. [Car making right hand turn bike passed them on the right side, car pulling out bike hit them on sidewalk]. And a host of near misses where the bike was breaking the law every single time.
Yet, I have seen a bike riders pass several parked cars to flat out fly though mid cycle red lights. Drive down the center line passing slow cars on both sides. Do 20+MPH down a sidewalk past driveway exists with limited visibility etc etc.
That's way past 10%.
Bikes are required to take a full traffic lane and obey traffic laws, or use a bike lane. Anything else is both illegal and begging to be hit.
PS: I have personally seen 2 minor bike-car accidents both times the bike was breaking the law. [Car making right hand turn bike passed them on the right side, car pulling out bike hit them on sidewalk]. And a host of near misses where the bike was breaking the law every single time.
Out of all my years driving, I've never been really concerned over a bicyclist, even when they go through stop signs, or hang on my lumber rack. Yes, a lot don't obey traffic laws to a tee, but it's a bike. They do not have the mass, nor size of a automobile. They just haven't been a concern for myself.
I honestly don't get the outrage towards bicyclists. I think it's more psychological? Personally, I have found the most out of shape individuals complain about cyclists the most.
I honestly don't get the outrage towards bicyclists. I think it's more psychological? Personally, I have found the most out of shape individuals complain about cyclists the most.
I think it's more hypocrisy, if you're going to get out of shape due to drivers not obeying the laws then you better damn well follow them yourself.
I've almost hit bicyclist blowing stop signs multiple times. While they don't have the mass of a car you can bet that in the case of an injury there's a high probability that the driver is still going to be on the hook for insurance + damages.
I've almost hit bicyclist blowing stop signs multiple times. While they don't have the mass of a car you can bet that in the case of an injury there's a high probability that the driver is still going to be on the hook for insurance + damages.
If a biker's mental ruleset says "Cars need to stop at red lights. Bikes may carefully proceed through red lights.", then it's not necessarily hypocrisy IMO.
If that same biker, when driving a car, runs through red lights then I think that is a more condemnable hypocrisy.
If that same biker, when driving a car, runs through red lights then I think that is a more condemnable hypocrisy.
Back in the 1970s/1980s cyclists had to struggle to carve out their legal place on the roadways. Part of the bargain was that they adopt certain car-like rules of the road, like riding in the same direction as traffic, not weaving in and out, obeying traffic signals, etc. Because of this, cyclists' behavior is more predictable to drivers, thus making the roads safer for cyclists.
When I see guys on fixies weaving in and out of traffic and blowing through stop signs I worry that all that progress is going out the window. These cyclists are making the roads more dangerous for themselves.
When I see guys on fixies weaving in and out of traffic and blowing through stop signs I worry that all that progress is going out the window. These cyclists are making the roads more dangerous for themselves.
As a pedestrian, I have to watch out for both. Cars at least respect crosswalks for the most part after having that drilled into them. I routinely have to take action to avoid being hit by a bicyclist who thinks that red lights are a suggestion or that the signs saying no bikes on the sidewalks are just for decoration
As a pedestrian, I've been hit and injured by more illegally-operated bikes than cars.
Now, obviously, in an accident, a car will, on average, do more bodily and property damage than a bike. So auto safety is a bigger concern.
Now, obviously, in an accident, a car will, on average, do more bodily and property damage than a bike. So auto safety is a bigger concern.
You get close to the same number by spending any amount of time behind the wheel as well.
> it's hard to see where there would be any noticeable difference in quality of operations between human and autonomous.......
It will be very noticeable, the autonomous vehicles will be at least an order of magnitude better!
It will be very noticeable, the autonomous vehicles will be at least an order of magnitude better!
When Asimov wrote about robots, he imagined them being fully sentient way before getting any legal rights (see e.g. "Evidence"). I don't think before this I would have ever bet on the process going the other way around...
Companies have more rights than human beings now and have done for a long time; I'd suggest that robots also will be considered more important for the whole of society and will therefore get considerably more rights than you might at first expect.
Adam Curtis' documentary becomes ever more relevant:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_o...
Adam Curtis' documentary becomes ever more relevant:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_o...
What rights do companies have that human beings do not?
They have a favourable taxation system (I'd love to be able to only pay tax on the money I haven't spent; instead I pay on my revenue...).
A quick Google so far reveals:
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/civil-liberties/repo...
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/06/19/corporations-over-peo...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood
Political contributions and lobbying, things like the TPP, TTIP, the IMF, etc. etc. are all pretty much set up to think about businesses over human lives.
EDIT: This is a good one...
http://www.npr.org/2014/07/28/335288388/when-did-companies-b...
A quick Google so far reveals:
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/civil-liberties/repo...
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/06/19/corporations-over-peo...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood
Political contributions and lobbying, things like the TPP, TTIP, the IMF, etc. etc. are all pretty much set up to think about businesses over human lives.
EDIT: This is a good one...
http://www.npr.org/2014/07/28/335288388/when-did-companies-b...
the American political contributions system gives way to much power to corporations & needs to be fixed
Incorporation is a legal technique that greatly the personal legal risks of the individuals who run the corporation.
>The massive reduction in risk that is inherent in the development of the modern corporation has been far from fully appreciated.
-John Kenneth Galbraith
As shown in 2008, globalized corporations are able to receive nationalized bailouts even though they are not subject to the same national restrictions of citizens.
Though they don't always get away with it, large corporations such as Lehman are able to commit massive fraud and face no jail time.
Other multinational corporations like HSBC are able to launder money for drug cartels and terrorists but face no jail time.
See also the LIBOR interest rate fraud. No jail time for anyone involved.
Bookkeeping fraud is just the tip of the iceberg. If you are interested in more nefarious activity, like that of the human rights abuses of Shell Oil which runs Nigeria, there is plenty of information out there about it. Slavery, environmental destruction, torture, execution and when any attention is brought to it, the usual punishment is a small fine which is far less than the money made by engaging in these activities.
>The massive reduction in risk that is inherent in the development of the modern corporation has been far from fully appreciated.
-John Kenneth Galbraith
As shown in 2008, globalized corporations are able to receive nationalized bailouts even though they are not subject to the same national restrictions of citizens.
Though they don't always get away with it, large corporations such as Lehman are able to commit massive fraud and face no jail time.
Other multinational corporations like HSBC are able to launder money for drug cartels and terrorists but face no jail time.
See also the LIBOR interest rate fraud. No jail time for anyone involved.
Bookkeeping fraud is just the tip of the iceberg. If you are interested in more nefarious activity, like that of the human rights abuses of Shell Oil which runs Nigeria, there is plenty of information out there about it. Slavery, environmental destruction, torture, execution and when any attention is brought to it, the usual punishment is a small fine which is far less than the money made by engaging in these activities.
Well, they De facto get to kill people.
"It noted existing regulations requiring some auto safety equipment can not be waived immediately, including requirements for braking systems activated by foot control."
I guess you just need a little motorized foot that can control a little brake.
I guess you just need a little motorized foot that can control a little brake.
Reminds me of how Thomas Peterffy's engineering team skirted the rule that all trading orders had to be entered through the keyboard. They built a robot with rubber fingers that typed entries into the keyboard.
And thus high-speed trading was born.
And thus high-speed trading was born.
Couldn't he have built a keyboard with high quality macros or multi-letter keys, too?
No, just because the car is required to include foot-operable brakes doesn't mean you're required to brake by application of a foot. You can brake however you want as long as someone in the car could activate a brake with their foot.
This. Consider how currently-deployed active stability controls, traction control systems, or even ABS operate: by operating the brakes beyond the input the driver is directly providing.
That said, dear Google, please don't take away my foot brake. I'd really rather not have the algorithm decide that the lives of the occupants of my vehicle are worth less than %{UPCOMING_SITUATION} and kill everyone without the occupants having control.
That said, dear Google, please don't take away my foot brake. I'd really rather not have the algorithm decide that the lives of the occupants of my vehicle are worth less than %{UPCOMING_SITUATION} and kill everyone without the occupants having control.
> I'd really rather not have the algorithm decide that the lives of the occupants of my vehicle are worth less than %{UPCOMING_SITUATION} and kill everyone without the occupants having control.
No offense, but that statistics show that humans are actually terrible at emergency decision making.
Just look at San Diego traffic when it rains. It's a disaster.
Adding even a small amount of algorithmically controlled cars is going to be a huge win.
The bigger issue is going to be traffic and road rage generated by cars actually obeying all the stupid traffic laws.
No offense, but that statistics show that humans are actually terrible at emergency decision making.
Just look at San Diego traffic when it rains. It's a disaster.
Adding even a small amount of algorithmically controlled cars is going to be a huge win.
The bigger issue is going to be traffic and road rage generated by cars actually obeying all the stupid traffic laws.
What the hell are you talking about? You are saying google cars are stupid enough to cause a crash but smart enough to weight the worth of people inside and outside the car and then decide which to save. How would a car even kill the occupants? Drive into a wall without braking? Why would it even do that? Our cars are designed to deform and absorb most of the energy from a crash, it's better to stay in your lane and brake as much as the car can handle and if it ends up being unavoidable then hit the car in front of you. Somehow even with all that sophistication everyone dies but a foot brake could solve all problems?
The car would not need to be "stupid" or "stupid enough" to cause a crash, sometimes a crash is unfortunately inevitable given the situation other cats put you into.
And yes, some people sometimes have to make the difficult decision between hitting another smaller car, hitting a truck, and hitting a person. I suspect these days, most people react irrationally in split seconds. However, with self-driving cars, all the data would be available and a real decision could be made...but what would be the constraints and what would you maximize? that is the scary question.
And yes, some people sometimes have to make the difficult decision between hitting another smaller car, hitting a truck, and hitting a person. I suspect these days, most people react irrationally in split seconds. However, with self-driving cars, all the data would be available and a real decision could be made...but what would be the constraints and what would you maximize? that is the scary question.
He is just saying that it's comforting to have the idea that you can always stop the car.
Tyre blows, the car starts sweering to the left into the oncoming lane, the computer can either:
1) decide that a critical error has occurred and shut down
2) apply full brakes on the remaining wheels, sending the car into a spin and killing a group of pedestrians on the pavement.
3) let the car continue, smashing into a minivan with a family inside it. The minivan is also auto-controlled but has no time to change course
4) try steering further left, hitting the barriers/trees, possibly killing its own occupants.
Now, situations 2-4 can be simulated before they happen with enough computational power. Therefore, the computer would have to take a conscious/programmed decision who to kill, and that is a huge deal morally, because at some point someone somewhere will have to write code that will literally be evaluating value of human life.
And before you say that humans would do no better in this situation - that is true, but no one will judge you for a decision you took in the split second you had, you would do what felt right at the time. The computer is programmed a certain way and you can always sue saying that if it did X then person Y would still be alive - and if there's one thing that companies fear it's litigation.
1) decide that a critical error has occurred and shut down
2) apply full brakes on the remaining wheels, sending the car into a spin and killing a group of pedestrians on the pavement.
3) let the car continue, smashing into a minivan with a family inside it. The minivan is also auto-controlled but has no time to change course
4) try steering further left, hitting the barriers/trees, possibly killing its own occupants.
Now, situations 2-4 can be simulated before they happen with enough computational power. Therefore, the computer would have to take a conscious/programmed decision who to kill, and that is a huge deal morally, because at some point someone somewhere will have to write code that will literally be evaluating value of human life.
And before you say that humans would do no better in this situation - that is true, but no one will judge you for a decision you took in the split second you had, you would do what felt right at the time. The computer is programmed a certain way and you can always sue saying that if it did X then person Y would still be alive - and if there's one thing that companies fear it's litigation.
5) apply simple ABS'd braking to the three remaining wheels, maintaining control and bringing the car to a safe stop.
Cars do no just flip over and explode for no reason. Life is not a fast and furious movie.
Cars do no just flip over and explode for no reason. Life is not a fast and furious movie.
This scenario is why a fully autonomous (and networked) grid could be a beautiful thing. You car takes option #3, but all oncoming traffic is already breaking and realigning to let you pass through the lane unharmed, and you car brings itself to a stop in the opposite shoulder.
Well, obviously the car's own occupants should always hold the highest priority for that car. Otherwise it is a terrible terrible product if the code even contains the possibility that it could ever prioritize anything over the lives of its owners.
In your scenario, smashing into another vehicle will be preferable to mowing down pedestrians; that vehicle's program just might be able to save itself, or the two vehicles might even communicate to minimize the damage to each other, and in any case a vehicle will most certainly absorb more of the impact than an exposed pedestrian could.
People on foot, who have nothing to do with the traffic, should never have to deal with the vehicles and the consequences of their programs. Number 2 from your scenario should not even be an option to the program.
In your scenario, smashing into another vehicle will be preferable to mowing down pedestrians; that vehicle's program just might be able to save itself, or the two vehicles might even communicate to minimize the damage to each other, and in any case a vehicle will most certainly absorb more of the impact than an exposed pedestrian could.
People on foot, who have nothing to do with the traffic, should never have to deal with the vehicles and the consequences of their programs. Number 2 from your scenario should not even be an option to the program.
While I agree with you, there still is a possibility of conflict in what you are saying. What if hitting a pedestrian is the only way to avoid killing occupants of the vehicle? On one hand, like you said - the vehicle should always prioritize its owners, but at the same time, it should have some overriding directive that says "never hit a pedestrian at all costs". One of those has to give - who decides which one?
The first priority should always be your occupants. Hardcoded.
Otherwise, can you imagine the first incident in which some passengers died because the code prioritized the life of someone else? Would anyone want to buy an autocar after that? "YOUR CAR COULD CHOOSE TO KILL YOU", the headlines will say.
The second priority should be the safety of pedestrians who are off the road.
Until we have computational power at the level of divine prescience, I don't think you can do much else in scenarios like the one you described, other than have a chain of basic priorities that falls back on "stop everything."
Eventually though, powerful-enough AI may be able to simulate all outcomes down to a very granular level, such as the difference between outright killing someone or just injuring their limbs to the point of crippling them for life.
Many factors will need to be considered then; who appears to be the weakest individual among the unavoidable targets? Are there any acquaintances of the owners among them? Is there a hospital nearby that could tend to their injuries? Does it look like a suicide attempt?
Otherwise, can you imagine the first incident in which some passengers died because the code prioritized the life of someone else? Would anyone want to buy an autocar after that? "YOUR CAR COULD CHOOSE TO KILL YOU", the headlines will say.
The second priority should be the safety of pedestrians who are off the road.
Until we have computational power at the level of divine prescience, I don't think you can do much else in scenarios like the one you described, other than have a chain of basic priorities that falls back on "stop everything."
Eventually though, powerful-enough AI may be able to simulate all outcomes down to a very granular level, such as the difference between outright killing someone or just injuring their limbs to the point of crippling them for life.
Many factors will need to be considered then; who appears to be the weakest individual among the unavoidable targets? Are there any acquaintances of the owners among them? Is there a hospital nearby that could tend to their injuries? Does it look like a suicide attempt?
The government might and probably will change this rule.
I can imagine that after the first couple of accidents where the algorithm decides to kill N pedestrians to save 1 driver, the government could switch to a "utilitarian" point of view - minimize the number of lost lives - and will enforce this by law.
I can imagine that after the first couple of accidents where the algorithm decides to kill N pedestrians to save 1 driver, the government could switch to a "utilitarian" point of view - minimize the number of lost lives - and will enforce this by law.
> the government could switch to a "utilitarian" point of view - minimize the number of lost lives
There's nothing "utilitarian" about this, unless you assume that:
(a) All people value their own lives equally
(b) Nobody places any value on anyone's life but their own.
(Side note: we know that both of those don't even come close to being true.)
Without those assumptions, a utilitarian point of view will show some pretty obvious biases against just killing the fewest people -- among other things, it will try to kill older people rather than younger people, and to kill people with the smallest number of relatives (who would be sad about a death in their family).
There's nothing "utilitarian" about this, unless you assume that:
(a) All people value their own lives equally
(b) Nobody places any value on anyone's life but their own.
(Side note: we know that both of those don't even come close to being true.)
Without those assumptions, a utilitarian point of view will show some pretty obvious biases against just killing the fewest people -- among other things, it will try to kill older people rather than younger people, and to kill people with the smallest number of relatives (who would be sad about a death in their family).
Right. We had an extensive discussion about this at BarCamp Philly this year. The discussion was on machine ethics and we spoke largely about these scenarios of driverless vehicles.
I made the argument that machine ethics aren't a real thing. Companies will do whatever they can to avoid litigation, then the government will step in with regulations as the closest approximation we'll get to ethical behavior.
I made the argument that machine ethics aren't a real thing. Companies will do whatever they can to avoid litigation, then the government will step in with regulations as the closest approximation we'll get to ethical behavior.
I hope one day people will actually grow to appreciate that viewpoint and care about others too. Personally, I find the concept of a car that would consciously chose to save you at the expense of 5 pedestrians to be morally wrong.
The cars just need a high speed connection to the credit bureaus, then they can optimize for minimizing the sum of the FICO scores of those killed.
More seriously, I don't understand why this is always brought up in the context of autonomous cars. How often do crashes happen where killing people is inevitable but you get to choose who dies? How often will such crashes happen when autonomous vehicles are common? How far from the theoretical optimum will it be to just say "in an emergency, brake to a stop and steer to avoid obstacles"?
I'm pretty sure this is an edge case on the edge cases. If autonomous vehicles deliver on even 10% of their promise, safety will go way up. It doesn't have to be perfect.
More seriously, I don't understand why this is always brought up in the context of autonomous cars. How often do crashes happen where killing people is inevitable but you get to choose who dies? How often will such crashes happen when autonomous vehicles are common? How far from the theoretical optimum will it be to just say "in an emergency, brake to a stop and steer to avoid obstacles"?
I'm pretty sure this is an edge case on the edge cases. If autonomous vehicles deliver on even 10% of their promise, safety will go way up. It doesn't have to be perfect.
The sticky part is, the software has to be written now. After millions of miles of exercising that code, every path will be taken.
So what do you put in the "Run over the kid, or run into a wall (or oncoming traffic)?" decision point? Somebody has to die. Just braking until you hit the kid is a pretty crappy hack.
And when the kid gets hit, the software will be examined. And the comment that says "screw it, just hit the kid" will come to light.
So what do you put in the "Run over the kid, or run into a wall (or oncoming traffic)?" decision point? Somebody has to die. Just braking until you hit the kid is a pretty crappy hack.
And when the kid gets hit, the software will be examined. And the comment that says "screw it, just hit the kid" will come to light.
The software isn't going to say "screw it, just hit the kid." It's going to be more like what I said: brake to a stop, steer to avoid obstacles. If an obstacle must be hit, then default to going straight.
This is already going to be vastly superior to human drivers, who often don't bother to brake, or flinch and steer into oncoming traffic for no particularly good reason.
After we've cut down the 30,000/year death rate from car accidents by a couple of orders of magnitude, if we get start to get desperate about improving safety and have trouble figuring out how, then maybe we can start looking at rare and bizarre occurrences like these, if they ever actually happen.
Trying to work out the precise requirements for ethics in autonomous car crash response, when we don't have more than the vaguest idea of what kind of crashes they'll get into or what kind of responses might be available, is awfully premature.
This is already going to be vastly superior to human drivers, who often don't bother to brake, or flinch and steer into oncoming traffic for no particularly good reason.
After we've cut down the 30,000/year death rate from car accidents by a couple of orders of magnitude, if we get start to get desperate about improving safety and have trouble figuring out how, then maybe we can start looking at rare and bizarre occurrences like these, if they ever actually happen.
Trying to work out the precise requirements for ethics in autonomous car crash response, when we don't have more than the vaguest idea of what kind of crashes they'll get into or what kind of responses might be available, is awfully premature.
We have an immense corpus of traffic incident reports. Its disingenuous to suggest only 'the vaguest idea'.
And the Google car can already identify a person in the road. That's critical, at least for lawsuit purposes. "You mean, it knew there was a kid in the road, and it did nothing?!"
And lawsuits will happen, the first year. Nobody cares about the vast improvement to humanity; they care that a Google car kit their kid. There's where it all fails.
And the Google car can already identify a person in the road. That's critical, at least for lawsuit purposes. "You mean, it knew there was a kid in the road, and it did nothing?!"
And lawsuits will happen, the first year. Nobody cares about the vast improvement to humanity; they care that a Google car kit their kid. There's where it all fails.
Humans are extremely good at interpreting visual information, but have long reaction times and short attention spans.
Computers are poor at interpreting visual information, but can react essentially instantaneously and can pay full attention to all of their inputs indefinitely.
Nearly all crashes are due to those human failings of long reaction times and short attention spans. Even crashes due to equipment failure tend to be greatly exacerbated by those failings.
Autonomous car crashes are going to be due to unrecoverable equipment failures, software bugs, insufficient sensor data, and sudden unpredictable changes in the environment which can't be avoided even with instantaneous reactions.
I don't think it's strange to think that the nature of autonomous crashes will be quite different from the nature of human crashes. I'm certainly not stating that insincerely. I mean, fully a third of traffic fatalities currently happen because human drivers deliberately degrade their own senses and reactions before driving. Another big chunk are because of drivers deliberately not paying attention to driving.
The confluence of factors that need to come together to even create one of these ethically difficult scenarios is so unlikely that I wouldn't be surprised if it never comes up at all. If it does, it's going to be single digits per year. And what's the lawsuit going to look like? Alleging that some Google car should have killed a nun instead of the plaintiff's child? I don't think the law even supports this idea of "you should have taken action to kill someone else instead." Even if it did, it's not going to ruin the industry.
Computers are poor at interpreting visual information, but can react essentially instantaneously and can pay full attention to all of their inputs indefinitely.
Nearly all crashes are due to those human failings of long reaction times and short attention spans. Even crashes due to equipment failure tend to be greatly exacerbated by those failings.
Autonomous car crashes are going to be due to unrecoverable equipment failures, software bugs, insufficient sensor data, and sudden unpredictable changes in the environment which can't be avoided even with instantaneous reactions.
I don't think it's strange to think that the nature of autonomous crashes will be quite different from the nature of human crashes. I'm certainly not stating that insincerely. I mean, fully a third of traffic fatalities currently happen because human drivers deliberately degrade their own senses and reactions before driving. Another big chunk are because of drivers deliberately not paying attention to driving.
The confluence of factors that need to come together to even create one of these ethically difficult scenarios is so unlikely that I wouldn't be surprised if it never comes up at all. If it does, it's going to be single digits per year. And what's the lawsuit going to look like? Alleging that some Google car should have killed a nun instead of the plaintiff's child? I don't think the law even supports this idea of "you should have taken action to kill someone else instead." Even if it did, it's not going to ruin the industry.
And this is why driverless cars will never (or at least not soon) attempt to optimise trolley-problem-style for number of human lives saved or similar. The algorithms chosen will optimise for one thing and one thing only: Legal defensibility for the car's actions.
If the passenger seat of your car had a foot brake so the passenger could decide when to brake while you were driving, would that make your driving safer?
Cars already ignore driver braking input when it would be dangerous - that's what ABS is, after all, selective releasing of the brakes on locked wheels.
I can think of plenty of circumstances where a passenger just slamming on the brakes could put a self driving car in more danger.
Still, no reason not to have a 'pull cord in case of emergency' type brake for passengers to use to signal the car to stop as soon as can be safely managed.
Cars already ignore driver braking input when it would be dangerous - that's what ABS is, after all, selective releasing of the brakes on locked wheels.
I can think of plenty of circumstances where a passenger just slamming on the brakes could put a self driving car in more danger.
Still, no reason not to have a 'pull cord in case of emergency' type brake for passengers to use to signal the car to stop as soon as can be safely managed.
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So and if these devices are hacked to injury people nobody can prevent it or is even forced to take responsibility as it's the fault of the device and not those of the owners/creators?
That can absolutely happen today and we're not freaking out about it. The bigger concern are the actual hundreds of thousands of people killed and maimed every year by the fault of other humans behind the wheel, not hypothetical evil geniuses.
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I've been following this closely and think we are headed to self driving cars a lot sooner than we think. Obama has been making sure the regulators have been getting the money, GM is working with Lyft to have self driving cars in Austin. http://popsnip.com/topic/882/Selfdriving-cars-race-towards-o...
I agree. I commonly have the debate with friends who don't follow it as much. It's widely known that Google, Uber, etc want this to happen. However, the general perception that I hear is we are still 10-20 years away. My argument is ~2020 is more realistic.
Most people I talk to don't realize Google has been working on this for a decade (or more) already and the tech is actually really good. Also, safety is a common point many people mention. When I mention how unsafe human drivers are, it's interesting to see how many people never consider that angle.
I'm hoping my current car is the last one that I own. That would require the whole self-driving-Uber thing to come to fruition within next 5 years, but I'm hopeful.
Most people I talk to don't realize Google has been working on this for a decade (or more) already and the tech is actually really good. Also, safety is a common point many people mention. When I mention how unsafe human drivers are, it's interesting to see how many people never consider that angle.
I'm hoping my current car is the last one that I own. That would require the whole self-driving-Uber thing to come to fruition within next 5 years, but I'm hopeful.
Is each car going to have to pass a driving test - how is the inspector meant to know if a computer is checking it's mirrors and indicating correctly!? ;-)
This seems to have to do with federal law which underlies NHTSA's regulation on required safety equipment, not laws regarding licensing, etc. Without something like this, regardless of state laws on autonomous vehicles, all US street-legal vehicles, even if fully autonomous, and even if the state had no requirements for human control as an option or backup, would have to be equipped for human control.
Who state law governing things like driver responsibility would treat as the driver of a fully autonomous vehicle -- and whether they would allow such a thing at all -- is a separate issue.
Who state law governing things like driver responsibility would treat as the driver of a fully autonomous vehicle -- and whether they would allow such a thing at all -- is a separate issue.
"It own itself?" "Swiss citizen, but T-A own the basic software and the mainframe." "That's a good one," the construct said. "Like, I own your brain and what you know, but your thoughts have Swiss citizenship. Sure. Lotsa luck, AI."
-- From William Gibson's "Neuromancer"
This isn't a big deal. The NHTSA defined levels of autonomous vehicles back in 2013 They are roughly:
Level 0: manual.
Level 1: some automation, maybe radar cruse control. (available now)
Level 2: smart automatic cruise control plus lane keeping (Available on several high-end cars now. Tesla is at this level, not Level 3)
Level 3: automatic driving good enough to handle ordinary driving tasks and route planning. (Google, Cadillac/CMU have this in test) but driver sometimes has to take over manually.
Level 4: full auto, all road conditions, driver not needed. (nobody really has this yet)
Now, the NHTSA is discussing modifying the federal safety standards so that, when Level 4 is achieved, vehicles which achieve will comply with federal motor vehicle standards.
Whether to allow autonomous vehicles on roads is a state matter. California DMV currently allows this in test, with manufacturer test drivers only, and requires reporting of incidents. Current DMV thinking is to stay with that for three years, see how things are going, then reevaluate. There's some whining about this from Google, but realistically, Google doesn't have the technology to go beyond that yet.
The accident reports are on line.[1] Almost all of them are from Google, and most of them involve someone rear-ending a Google car which was driving cautiously. Except for one incident.
Cruise (YC W14) had a crash with a parked car last month, driving on 7th St. in San Francisco.[2] The report indicates that the vehicle swerved to the left under automatic control, then corrected to the right, then the driver took over manual control, and then hit a parked car at 20MPH. Both vehicles damaged, no injuries. The reported location [3] is across from the SFPD's Southern Station and a popular parking place for police vehicles. They hit a parked Toyota Prius.
I've written before about the "deadly valley": automatic driving good enough that the driver stops paying close attention, but not good enough to drive reliably. Cruise just demonstrated this. You cannot rely on the human driver to suddenly take over from the automatic driving system.
[1] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/auton... [2] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/bc21ef62-6e7c-4049... [3] https://goo.gl/maps/DoNdYSV8cgq
Level 0: manual.
Level 1: some automation, maybe radar cruse control. (available now)
Level 2: smart automatic cruise control plus lane keeping (Available on several high-end cars now. Tesla is at this level, not Level 3)
Level 3: automatic driving good enough to handle ordinary driving tasks and route planning. (Google, Cadillac/CMU have this in test) but driver sometimes has to take over manually.
Level 4: full auto, all road conditions, driver not needed. (nobody really has this yet)
Now, the NHTSA is discussing modifying the federal safety standards so that, when Level 4 is achieved, vehicles which achieve will comply with federal motor vehicle standards.
Whether to allow autonomous vehicles on roads is a state matter. California DMV currently allows this in test, with manufacturer test drivers only, and requires reporting of incidents. Current DMV thinking is to stay with that for three years, see how things are going, then reevaluate. There's some whining about this from Google, but realistically, Google doesn't have the technology to go beyond that yet.
The accident reports are on line.[1] Almost all of them are from Google, and most of them involve someone rear-ending a Google car which was driving cautiously. Except for one incident.
Cruise (YC W14) had a crash with a parked car last month, driving on 7th St. in San Francisco.[2] The report indicates that the vehicle swerved to the left under automatic control, then corrected to the right, then the driver took over manual control, and then hit a parked car at 20MPH. Both vehicles damaged, no injuries. The reported location [3] is across from the SFPD's Southern Station and a popular parking place for police vehicles. They hit a parked Toyota Prius.
I've written before about the "deadly valley": automatic driving good enough that the driver stops paying close attention, but not good enough to drive reliably. Cruise just demonstrated this. You cannot rely on the human driver to suddenly take over from the automatic driving system.
[1] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/auton... [2] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/bc21ef62-6e7c-4049... [3] https://goo.gl/maps/DoNdYSV8cgq
Cadillac/CMU actually spun out into a company called Ottomatika which was acquired by Delphi.
This is refreshingly progressive news
and to think it only took an inordinate amount of lobbying by corporate interests
We who browse HN like the idea of self-driving cars, but does anyone have a nuanced perspective on their usefulness? I don't know much about AI compared to many here. It has been said that things which humans learn at very young age are hard to automate (identifying things you see, walking, social things) while things we learn as adults are easy to automate (accounting, telegraphs, file cabinets).
Car driving definitely contains elements that we learn as kids (seeing things in motion, identifying what is a human and what is a rock) while some things are learned as adults (what does that sign mean, how to count KM/H, how transmission works).
Are we really close to autonomous vehicles on the streets?
Car driving definitely contains elements that we learn as kids (seeing things in motion, identifying what is a human and what is a rock) while some things are learned as adults (what does that sign mean, how to count KM/H, how transmission works).
Are we really close to autonomous vehicles on the streets?
For one thing, the truck market seems incredibly ripe for automation. That should be a fairly easy, profit driven decision. Not many feelings involved.
Except for protests from truck drivers of course.
Except for protests from truck drivers of course.
Pay off the current generation of truck drivers and tell the next generation to not pursue a career in truck driving. That ways we won't waste millions of dollars arguing with them when what they really want is to be paid (but they'll make up bullshit reasons for about how automated truck driving is bad).
I really like this idea. Continue paying all your drivers to be ride along with the autonomous car for safety reasons and an emergency override. They'll probably get really low insurance rates for having a human assisting. And when they leave or retire don't replace them. That's about the smoothest structural unemployment transition I've ever heard. It won't happen though because just firing, and fighting the protests/lawsuits is probably cheaper.
Close as in widespread deployment, coming soon to a parking lot near you? No.
Close as in "doing proofs of concept and being adopted for experimental tasks?" Yes.
Close as in "doing proofs of concept and being adopted for experimental tasks?" Yes.
[deleted](1)
Good to see progress being made on this front! I guess this means that makes the scores
US Gov: +1 Google: +1 Tesla: +1 Uber : -1 Robots: 0xffffffff
US Gov: +1 Google: +1 Tesla: +1 Uber : -1 Robots: 0xffffffff
Is your robots' score signed or unsigned?
Looks like an open door for all kind of legal tricks for companies, the kind of trick corporate personhood achieved.
Issuing and revoking AI licenses (driver's licenses or others) seems like a very good use case for the block chain. You can predefine rules for removal etc. There's a bit of literature about automatically executed contracts on the block chain and this use case seems very similar.
Given that statistically, Google's self-driving cars are more dangerous than the average human, and if Google's computers were a driver, it's license would already be revoked, it's a little weird the government is willing to take this step.
Then again, they've contributed to about 200 members of Congress, several senior White House positions are filled by Googlers...
Then again, they've contributed to about 200 members of Congress, several senior White House positions are filled by Googlers...
I'm all for opinions in opposition of the norm but if you could provide references to your claims that would be much appreciated.
http://fortune.com/2016/01/13/google-self-driving-car-accide...
Ten of these would've been the Google car's fault. Given the mileage they've covered in 2015, and the number of accidents, they're terrible drivers statistically... to the point that a human is the safety device.
http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/toprecips.php?id=D000022008&... Congress, 2014 term. Many of the top recipients actually wrote letters on Congress letterhead begging the EU not to rule against Google, which is a fairly unprecedented action.
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/09/04/two-googlers-take-top... http://www.govexec.com/management/2014/09/white-houses-roste... Googlers take up some of the top technology positions in the White House, including "Chief Technology Officer". Eric Schmidt and other high ranking Googlers also visit the White House nearly weekly.
Think they behaved themselves? Nope: http://techpresident.com/blog-entry/white-house-deputy-cto-a...
In case you're curious how Google's using their White House positions: It's to get money. http://thehill.com/policy/transportation/265932-obama-pledge...
And some more of our taxpayer dollars. While this article carefully avoids mentioning Chromebooks, they're now the leading purchased portable computers in schools, they're pictured in the header of this blog, and it's written by their "former" Googler, who is the CTO: https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2016/01/30/computer-science-...
That's a lot of strong government ties, but are they worried about regulation? Well... for the longest time they controlled the US's regulatory body too:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/williamalden/ftc-commissioner-appear... The FTC was basically run by a paid Google shill, Joshua Wright, for the last couple of years. (The FTC reopened their investigation against Google within a month of him stepping down last year.) His pre-FTC behavior wasn't much on the ethical manner either: He was paid as a university professor to write "academic studies" supporting Google's legal views.
One would wonder by the United States has been one of the slowest and most hesitant countries to regulate and pursue legal action against Google, until one does their research. Then it stops being much of a surprise at all.
http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/toprecips.php?id=D000022008&... Congress, 2014 term. Many of the top recipients actually wrote letters on Congress letterhead begging the EU not to rule against Google, which is a fairly unprecedented action.
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/09/04/two-googlers-take-top... http://www.govexec.com/management/2014/09/white-houses-roste... Googlers take up some of the top technology positions in the White House, including "Chief Technology Officer". Eric Schmidt and other high ranking Googlers also visit the White House nearly weekly.
Think they behaved themselves? Nope: http://techpresident.com/blog-entry/white-house-deputy-cto-a...
In case you're curious how Google's using their White House positions: It's to get money. http://thehill.com/policy/transportation/265932-obama-pledge...
And some more of our taxpayer dollars. While this article carefully avoids mentioning Chromebooks, they're now the leading purchased portable computers in schools, they're pictured in the header of this blog, and it's written by their "former" Googler, who is the CTO: https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2016/01/30/computer-science-...
That's a lot of strong government ties, but are they worried about regulation? Well... for the longest time they controlled the US's regulatory body too:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/williamalden/ftc-commissioner-appear... The FTC was basically run by a paid Google shill, Joshua Wright, for the last couple of years. (The FTC reopened their investigation against Google within a month of him stepping down last year.) His pre-FTC behavior wasn't much on the ethical manner either: He was paid as a university professor to write "academic studies" supporting Google's legal views.
One would wonder by the United States has been one of the slowest and most hesitant countries to regulate and pursue legal action against Google, until one does their research. Then it stops being much of a surprise at all.
> These are encouraging numbers, says Chris Urmson, director of the self-driving project, because most of the incidents occurred early on. Only five took place during the 370,000 miles driven in 11 months of 2015, Urmson wrote in a blog posted on Medium. He expects the rate of these incidents to keep declining.
I mean sure he is biased, but the link doesn't really seem all that negative to be honest. Of course it will have issues in the early stages.
I mean sure he is biased, but the link doesn't really seem all that negative to be honest. Of course it will have issues in the early stages.
From the report that the fortune.com article links to:
> In 10 of the 13 simulated contact events, the SDC’s predicted behavior would have, in simulation, caused contact (though 2 of these involved simulated contact with traffic cones).
The 13 events happened in the 15 months from September 2014 to November 2015 (both incl). 424,331 miles driven.
Can the average driver drive 30,000 miles without making contact with a traffic cone or another car?
> In 10 of the 13 simulated contact events, the SDC’s predicted behavior would have, in simulation, caused contact (though 2 of these involved simulated contact with traffic cones).
The 13 events happened in the 15 months from September 2014 to November 2015 (both incl). 424,331 miles driven.
Can the average driver drive 30,000 miles without making contact with a traffic cone or another car?
> Can the average driver drive 30,000 miles without making contact with a traffic cone or another car?
The broken pylons at my closest bike lane and highway exit indicate that very few drivers can achieve this.
The broken pylons at my closest bike lane and highway exit indicate that very few drivers can achieve this.
That's averaged over weeks or months or however long it takes for repairs, and over however many thousands of cars pass by (the US drives trillions of miles each year).
Yes, and so is the 30,000 mile figure.
Detail:
I'm speaking in generalizations here, but it seems that small and even less traveled roads that have pylons often have these damages.
Scarily, on a run today, a "lightly" traveled road in a residential area had multiple "stop for pedestrian" signs that had been knocked down. I find this particularly scary on the (non major side street) that I live - where other than residents (300ppl) and 1 business (< 300 ppl) few people should choose to drive - loses these road pylons in a matter of days.
Detail:
I'm speaking in generalizations here, but it seems that small and even less traveled roads that have pylons often have these damages.
Scarily, on a run today, a "lightly" traveled road in a residential area had multiple "stop for pedestrian" signs that had been knocked down. I find this particularly scary on the (non major side street) that I live - where other than residents (300ppl) and 1 business (< 300 ppl) few people should choose to drive - loses these road pylons in a matter of days.
At least here in Italy no :-)
Yes. According to this pro-Google car post (which is false, when you consider human interventions to prevent accidents), the average mileage between accidents for humans is about 165,000. I've seen claims that humans average closer to 250,000 miles driven between accidents as well. http://mashable.com/2012/08/07/google-driverless-cars-safer-...
I find this statistic highly suspect. I don't know of a single person that had a car for 100,000 miles and didn't have some type of accident.
I suspect those average numbers are being skewed by the rural drivers who rack up lots of miles without interaction with other cars.
San Francisco averages 6.4 years between accidents. https://www.mainstreet.com/slideshow/most-car-accident-prone...
That matches roughly with my experience. And, while the Google car isn't driving San Francisco, the Santa Clara area isn't that much more benign.
I suspect those average numbers are being skewed by the rural drivers who rack up lots of miles without interaction with other cars.
San Francisco averages 6.4 years between accidents. https://www.mainstreet.com/slideshow/most-car-accident-prone...
That matches roughly with my experience. And, while the Google car isn't driving San Francisco, the Santa Clara area isn't that much more benign.
Even if you take Mashable's 16,550 miles driven per year figure, and multiply by 6.4, you still get over 100,000 miles. Though San Franciscans may also drive less miles per year as well, since with traffic, you spend a lot more time on the road going a lot less miles.
But then, we can also go into their statistic basing on a single insurance agency, unreported incidents not factoring in, there's definitely a lot of margin of error here.
I'm glad we're talking about it critically though, and not just glossing over the figures.
One of the other potential points is something Tesla said about Geohot's garage-built car. That it's easy to build a car that performs correctly 99% of the time, but it's exponentially harder to build a car that performs correctly 99.9999% of the time. The number of miles may be less material than even I've focused on here.
Google likes to tout the mileage figure, but it ignores the times that it's human drivers take over. The reality is, driving on straight stretches of road is easy. 99% of driving is easy. Figuring out how to evaluate how safe you are in the other 1% of that time is perhaps an even more challenging problem.
But then, we can also go into their statistic basing on a single insurance agency, unreported incidents not factoring in, there's definitely a lot of margin of error here.
I'm glad we're talking about it critically though, and not just glossing over the figures.
One of the other potential points is something Tesla said about Geohot's garage-built car. That it's easy to build a car that performs correctly 99% of the time, but it's exponentially harder to build a car that performs correctly 99.9999% of the time. The number of miles may be less material than even I've focused on here.
Google likes to tout the mileage figure, but it ignores the times that it's human drivers take over. The reality is, driving on straight stretches of road is easy. 99% of driving is easy. Figuring out how to evaluate how safe you are in the other 1% of that time is perhaps an even more challenging problem.
You're comparing apples and oranges: reported accident != knocking over a traffic cone.
Obviously the scope of the data for Google's cars are still relatively small. But there's little difference between hitting a traffic cone and hitting a small child. And even if you dismiss the two traffic cones, it's not a rosy record. Certainly nowhere near as rosy as Google paints it each time they say "1.x million miles without an accident!"
I am asking, if anything, that we take a more critical look at the statement being made every time Chris Urmson opens his mouth. Because when he brags about the safety of his cars, he's ignoring or failing to mention these incidents where humans saved him from having a very, very bad day.
I am asking, if anything, that we take a more critical look at the statement being made every time Chris Urmson opens his mouth. Because when he brags about the safety of his cars, he's ignoring or failing to mention these incidents where humans saved him from having a very, very bad day.
> But there's little difference between hitting a traffic cone and hitting a small child.
I agree with some of what you have said, but this is the most bizarre statement I have read today.
There are probably hundreds (or more) traffic cones hit for every small child hit by a car, just because there are way more cars per day passing close to traffic cones than to children.
I personally have had my car hit by others 5 times without reporting it to my insurance company (car was parked, hit and run), as the damage was less than my deductible, and I opted to just live with a few dents. Estimating the number of times a car collides with anything per mile driven is very hard.
I agree with some of what you have said, but this is the most bizarre statement I have read today.
There are probably hundreds (or more) traffic cones hit for every small child hit by a car, just because there are way more cars per day passing close to traffic cones than to children.
I personally have had my car hit by others 5 times without reporting it to my insurance company (car was parked, hit and run), as the damage was less than my deductible, and I opted to just live with a few dents. Estimating the number of times a car collides with anything per mile driven is very hard.
Yes, that's true, from a reporting/statistical standpoint. I am okay with dismissing those two incidents when evaluating this record. There's a lot of leeway on human driver statistics. As I said above, I've seen 165,000 miles per accident and 250,000 per accident reported/estimated. I've also seen the claim that human drivers go 300,000 to 500,000 miles between accidents on average, but I heavily assume those are based on underreported figures.
My intention in comparing a traffic cone to a small child is the actual safety issue. If a SDC could hit a cone, it could also hit a small child. They're small road hazards which are not generally going to be mapped by the car in advance. I don't want to dismiss the fact that the SDC would've hit a road obstacle, just because in that case the obstacle was a cheap plastic object.
My intention in comparing a traffic cone to a small child is the actual safety issue. If a SDC could hit a cone, it could also hit a small child. They're small road hazards which are not generally going to be mapped by the car in advance. I don't want to dismiss the fact that the SDC would've hit a road obstacle, just because in that case the obstacle was a cheap plastic object.
> I don't want to dismiss the fact that the SDC would've hit a road obstacle, just because in that case the obstacle was a cheap plastic object.
I think the point is that if you counted these kinds of incidents in human driver statistics, your miles per accident numbers would come way, way down.
I think the point is that if you counted these kinds of incidents in human driver statistics, your miles per accident numbers would come way, way down.
2015 isn't the first year their Self-Driving cars have been on the road. (Gotta wonder how many accidents they would've caused in 2014!) I picked a quick link while I was trying to find sources for the parent commenter's request. But the report comes from Google, to the California DMV, so you have to look at the numbers and facts, not their PR text around it.
Urmson, of course, whitewashes Google's progress, it's his job. But if you look at the number of miles between safety-related takeovers, or these 'almost accidents', and compare to the estimate of human safety provided by insurance companies, it's hard to believe these cars are yet safe enough to trust on the road. The only reason they haven't been in an accident is because trained, professional humans have intervened.
Self-Driving Cars will probably, eventually, be safer than humans, but Google's PR team has misled people on how far off that point is. Last year Urmson indicated that he wanted to have them ready for consumer use before his kid got his driver's license in four years.
That's pretty unrealistic. Don't believe little old random Internet commenter me? Take it from Robert Scoble, who's been hyping self-driving cars for the last year: https://medium.com/@scobleizer/don-t-worry-uber-lyft-drivers... He's been to see or ride in a variety of self-driving car prototypes from a number of companies working on the problem.
Urmson, of course, whitewashes Google's progress, it's his job. But if you look at the number of miles between safety-related takeovers, or these 'almost accidents', and compare to the estimate of human safety provided by insurance companies, it's hard to believe these cars are yet safe enough to trust on the road. The only reason they haven't been in an accident is because trained, professional humans have intervened.
Self-Driving Cars will probably, eventually, be safer than humans, but Google's PR team has misled people on how far off that point is. Last year Urmson indicated that he wanted to have them ready for consumer use before his kid got his driver's license in four years.
That's pretty unrealistic. Don't believe little old random Internet commenter me? Take it from Robert Scoble, who's been hyping self-driving cars for the last year: https://medium.com/@scobleizer/don-t-worry-uber-lyft-drivers... He's been to see or ride in a variety of self-driving car prototypes from a number of companies working on the problem.
> it's hard to believe these cars are yet safe enough to trust on the road
Well yeah, but is anyone expecting them to be put onto the roads in the near near future?
Well yeah, but is anyone expecting them to be put onto the roads in the near near future?
Yes, which is the scary part. Google's PR seems to keep insinuating we might be able to ride in one as early as next year, or that the law is somehow a burden to the progress of this technology.
There's already people advocating that California's laws requiring self-driving cars be driven by licensed drivers are potentially discriminatory, and Google's already complaining that their statistically-more-dangerous-than-people drivers currently require licensed drivers on the road: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-28/self-drivi...
Given where we're at, it's insane to consider California's laws anything but reasonable. We're a long way off from the necessary confidence to allow a driverless car to run without human intervention. But Google's constant indications that this law and others like it are a problem insinuates a much higher confidence in their technology than any reasonable person should have.
Frequently in these sorts of discussions I've often seen people talking about 2018 or 2019 as likely consumer release dates, which seems to be the real incredible claim needing defense.
There's already people advocating that California's laws requiring self-driving cars be driven by licensed drivers are potentially discriminatory, and Google's already complaining that their statistically-more-dangerous-than-people drivers currently require licensed drivers on the road: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-28/self-drivi...
Given where we're at, it's insane to consider California's laws anything but reasonable. We're a long way off from the necessary confidence to allow a driverless car to run without human intervention. But Google's constant indications that this law and others like it are a problem insinuates a much higher confidence in their technology than any reasonable person should have.
Frequently in these sorts of discussions I've often seen people talking about 2018 or 2019 as likely consumer release dates, which seems to be the real incredible claim needing defense.
Another thing:
> Google [...] determined that the driver prevented the self-driving car from making contact with another object 13 times.
This phrasing suggests a notably lower threshold of failure than, say, "prevented a crash" or "prevented injury" or "prevented damage".
> Google [...] determined that the driver prevented the self-driving car from making contact with another object 13 times.
This phrasing suggests a notably lower threshold of failure than, say, "prevented a crash" or "prevented injury" or "prevented damage".
Yes, but the phrasing is also Googles and they have all the incentives to spin it that way.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3268421/All-Google-s...
Thanks to the human driver they managed to avoid the accident. /s
But in all seriousness the damn car was waiting at a traffic light and yet according to you it's still a terrible driver.
Thanks to the human driver they managed to avoid the accident. /s
But in all seriousness the damn car was waiting at a traffic light and yet according to you it's still a terrible driver.
No, my consideration of the Google SDC's safety record is based on the number of accidents it would have caused (i.e. been at-fault for, from a legal standpoint) had human drivers not interrupted the program and taken manual control.
There's an additional likelihood that the odd/non-human behavior of Google's cars can make other drivers incorrectly predict their behavior, and also cause more accidents, but I'm not really factoring that into my consideration.
There's an additional likelihood that the odd/non-human behavior of Google's cars can make other drivers incorrectly predict their behavior, and also cause more accidents, but I'm not really factoring that into my consideration.
> Given that statistically, Google's self-driving cars are more dangerous than the average human,
Come to Southern California when it rains and lets see you say that.
The difference is that autonomous safety will continuously improve while human safety has actually been going backwards.
Come to Southern California when it rains and lets see you say that.
The difference is that autonomous safety will continuously improve while human safety has actually been going backwards.
I live in Chicago. Get on my level. ;)
Seriously though, you're also missing the fact that AFAIK, Google doesn't/can't drive these cars in rain. According to a Slate article in 2014, they also can't drive when it's too sunny, because it messes with the sensors. It goes without saying it's never seriously been tested in snow. From my understanding, self-driving cars are mostly tested during the day in fair weather, when humans are also at their safest as drivers. http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/10/...
Also, cars are getting safer, fatalities from cars is actually going down. I managed to find a version of this article that is less blatantly liberal propaganda, because I want to talk about the auto statistic: http://www.lowellsun.com/opinion/ci_29325302/cars-getting-sa...
Seriously though, you're also missing the fact that AFAIK, Google doesn't/can't drive these cars in rain. According to a Slate article in 2014, they also can't drive when it's too sunny, because it messes with the sensors. It goes without saying it's never seriously been tested in snow. From my understanding, self-driving cars are mostly tested during the day in fair weather, when humans are also at their safest as drivers. http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/10/...
Also, cars are getting safer, fatalities from cars is actually going down. I managed to find a version of this article that is less blatantly liberal propaganda, because I want to talk about the auto statistic: http://www.lowellsun.com/opinion/ci_29325302/cars-getting-sa...
It isn't just driving in the rain that's a problem; puddles after the rain are, too. From an article 2/6/2016:
> Some objects are hard to figure out, though. Heavy rain, for instance, confuses the cars. Google postponed The Bee’s first planned test ride because heavy rain had left puddles in the road, and the cars aren’t sure how to react when the car ahead splashes water into the air. If confused, the cars are programmed to just pull over and stop.
http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/transportation/back-seat-dr...
> Some objects are hard to figure out, though. Heavy rain, for instance, confuses the cars. Google postponed The Bee’s first planned test ride because heavy rain had left puddles in the road, and the cars aren’t sure how to react when the car ahead splashes water into the air. If confused, the cars are programmed to just pull over and stop.
http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/transportation/back-seat-dr...
Whoa, there's a huge fact in here. A Googler is clearly quoted at the bottom:
> “The day I’m very excited about is the day where we are just as safe as human drivers,” he said.
That's a distinct recognition that Google is aware their cars currently are not.
> “The day I’m very excited about is the day where we are just as safe as human drivers,” he said.
That's a distinct recognition that Google is aware their cars currently are not.
Agreed. Easy to say self-driving technology is ready to go when your test environment consists of Southern California. Now try it in the Midwest at night, with unplowed snow on the highway, and none of the lane markings visible.
I think it was Ford which said it was actually working on a system to orient the car based on objects on the side of the road, rather than lane lines, so that it'd be able to drive in snow. Of course, that probably works in light snow, but not Chicago "the landscape is no longer similar to what it was before" snow.
Until some kid finds out how to hack and hijack these cars just to enjoy a game of real life GTA. People are that stupid, look at that guy who threw a live alligator through a restaurant’s drive-through window for a laugh.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/02/0...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/02/0...
So should we eliminate alligators?
Haha .. That's actually a thoughtful, albeit rhetorical, question. ;)
No, I am fine with alligators walking the planet. I admit, my initial response is a bit stupid. The point I am trying to make is that a.) new technology brings new dangers and b.) there will be people who would like to use these as a weapon (for fun, to terrorize, to make a statement ...)
It would be stupid to outright deny new technology because of this. However you should be informed (learn about all the pros and cons) when deciding on whether or not to adapt a technology.
For instance, so many things have become painful (for good or bad reasons) for the sake of countering terrorism. So why go through all the trouble to finally just offer new toys to the bad boys?
I don't mean everything that can be used as a weapon (which is literally everything) should be forbidden but I don't see a serious debate about the benefits and perils of self driving cars and thus I don't think decision makers can make an informed decision.
No, I am fine with alligators walking the planet. I admit, my initial response is a bit stupid. The point I am trying to make is that a.) new technology brings new dangers and b.) there will be people who would like to use these as a weapon (for fun, to terrorize, to make a statement ...)
It would be stupid to outright deny new technology because of this. However you should be informed (learn about all the pros and cons) when deciding on whether or not to adapt a technology.
For instance, so many things have become painful (for good or bad reasons) for the sake of countering terrorism. So why go through all the trouble to finally just offer new toys to the bad boys?
I don't mean everything that can be used as a weapon (which is literally everything) should be forbidden but I don't see a serious debate about the benefits and perils of self driving cars and thus I don't think decision makers can make an informed decision.
Out of the 1000s of instances of Joe running around, in the wild, a handful have gotten into situations where he has had points penalized against his license following existing state law. Joe exceeds his points limit and his license is suspended after 2 days.
... This could be interesting.