Interesting moral question - should autonomous cars choose the lesser evil? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: daqq
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2015, 06:08:43 am
content: Hi guys,With the advent of self driving cars there will eventually come a situation where an unavoidable accident will basically make the car choose between two or more shitty situations, killing its owner among them.http://hackaday.com/2015/10/29/the-ethics-of-self-driving-cars-making-deadly-decisions/What do you think?

author: zapta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2015, 06:15:23 am
content: It should be a preference setting in the the dashboard, kill me vs kill them. If the other car is also autonomous, the cars can communicate and do bidding.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2015, 06:39:37 am
content: if (driver == ME)set_driver_health_priority(INT_MAX);elseset_driver_health_priority(INT_MIN);

author: GNU_Ninja
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2015, 04:11:35 pm
content: Quote from: zapta on October 30, 2015, 06:15:23 amIf enough autonomous cars connect and become self aware, it/they may decide to kill all humansI for one welcome our new autonomous vehicular overlords

author: fivefish
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2015, 04:19:39 pm
content: PREDICTION: Someday, there'll be a malware where the car is instructed to drive off a bridge, or against an oncoming 18-wheeler truck to kill its occupants.... malware planted by some government organization to assassinate someone. Before collision, malware removes any traces of itself.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2015, 04:26:00 pm
content: Moments before the accident occurs the car should access the other user's bank account. Whoever has the biggest balance survives.

author: suicidaleggroll
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2015, 04:34:47 pm
content: Quote from: tom66 on October 30, 2015, 04:26:00 pmNah, it should use the drivers' Peeple rating, to see who's the better person!https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/09/30/everyone-you-know-will-be-able-to-rate-you-on-the-terrifying-yelp-for-people-whether-you-want-them-to-or-not/

author: hamdi.tn
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2015, 04:47:07 pm
content: what's the deal with all this talking about autonomus car all the sudden. Specialy europeen car manufacturer, it's all we talk about this two weeks. For someone who hate automatic update on a stupid phone , i can't trust a bit a computer driving me on a highway.However i remember i saw a video talking about such moral choice made by machine, will look for it and post it

author: hamdi.tn
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2015, 04:49:30 pm
content: here it is, the page Big think is an awesome channel by the way

author: helius
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2015, 05:17:58 pm
content: Quote from: fivefish on October 30, 2015, 04:19:39 pmhttp://nymag.com/news/features/michael-hastings-2013-11/index1.html

author: krish2487
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2015, 09:39:56 pm
content: Before we get to the point of having a moral dilemma for robots, lets ask the same questions to/for ourselves.It will be interesting to see how the results pan out..:-)I think the bots can be made to mimic our own responses to be free from guilt so to speak.

author: hamdi.tn
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2015, 10:23:00 pm
content: Quote from: krish2487 on October 30, 2015, 09:39:56 pmconsidering how human act and react they will be jurk idiotic robots ... it will safer to program them with same basic rules and let them follow those rules with learning capability.on that channel there is a video with the subject of human reaction for such scenario, the video i posted give one example of choosing between 1 and 4 ( and most ppl choose to sacrifice that 1)

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 30, 2015, 10:25:46 pm
content: How does the car know there is anyone in the other car? It could be a taxi on the way to a job.How does the car know there is anyone in the front seat of the other car? (safer for them)

author: hamdi.tn
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2015, 10:47:43 pm
content: there is a lot of if and how in this situation , i wonder if the owner has the choice to select the most convenient scenario for him and the car will respond according to that, like if you gonna hit a child do you prefer to roll over and my hurt yourself or hit the child, if you gonna hit something do you accept to turn the car in a way that you may get maximum damage and give a better chance of survival to the passengers with you.i mean it will be a test of personality in there ... and then NSA hack it and use it to track down psychopath

author: crispy_tofu
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2015, 02:33:34 am
content: Quote from: hamdi.tn on October 30, 2015, 10:47:43 pmI wonder what the implications would be if someone could hack autonomous cars in the future...

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2015, 04:38:01 am
content: Quote from: crispy_tofu on October 31, 2015, 02:33:34 amNo need to wait for the future, you can hack cars now. Just search youtube for car hacks

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2015, 05:11:41 am
content: You will always have this until all vehicles have some form of self drive, and those which are not self driven communicate to the other vehicles, s that they allow a larger clearance for it and it's slower human response. As well most designs will stop before they get into that situation if no takeover is available. You might get rear ended by the sleeping guy behind you, but that will be his fault.You get into an elevator every day, or use an escalator, or obey traffic signals. There are few people who are actually nervous about using any of these automatic systems, even with those videos of the accidents involving them.

author: jimdeane
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2015, 10:46:25 am
content: If self driving cars are programmed to do anything but protect the life of the car's occupants at all costs, I will just keep driving my own car where I protect my/passengers lives at all costs.

author: TerraHertz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2015, 11:52:09 pm
content: And what is the 'lesser evil' anyway?Suppose your autonomous car is on a highway, and another car is known to be carrying a serial murderer? Or the other car is clearly headed towards a crowd of people?Should your car ram the other, to save the greatest possible number of lives (not including yours)?Current software-intensive and always-online vehicles are bad enough, with frequent cases of fatal accidents due to software glitches. And more recently, suspected assassination by remote hacking.I shudder to think how bizarre things will get when driverless autonomous cars are added to flaky proprietary secret/DRM-locked software and deliberately hackable-by-design permanently net-connected car systems.http://www.safetyresearch.net/blog/articles/toyota-unintended-acceleration-and-big-bowl-“spaghetti”-codeToyota Unintended Acceleration and the Big Bowl of “Spaghetti” Code(Discussion:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10436832)I'll just keep driving my entirely processor-free old car as long as possible, thanks.Edit to add: Remember that system that allows official emergency vehicles to broadcast a signal to force lights at intersections ahead to switch to green for the emergency vehicle?Well, extrapolate. Once there are many self-driving, net-connected vehicles, how long till the State imposes standards to support an 'emergency clear path' system, in which a signal is broadcast that requires all autonomous vehicles to get off the road immediately, by any means possible. I can see that as kind of inevitable.Oh, and any kind of mass or individual travel restrictions the State decides it want so to impose, those will be automatically complied with by all autonomous cars. Imposed by law on the code, and you likely won't even hear about it - before one day you suddenly find you can't go where you want.Btw, a kind of related detail, for Australian drivers, about the E-Way car RF tags for tollways. The tags emit an audible beep as you drive through toll points. In the early days of the system I noticed that sometimes my tag would beep much quieter than usual, and sometimes would make no sound at all - despite later checking showing that it had registered at the toll point. Since I've designed many small processor embedded devices in the past, this says something to me about the design. If I was designing a car tag, I'd have made the beep loudness software controlled, including zero amplitude. And that would be a parameter passed to the tag in the RF handshake protocol at toll points.Why? Because then you could have clandestine vehicle logging points, where drivers didn't know their passing was being logged. Anyone who doesn't see how much that idea would appeal to the State, is hopelessly naive. All-vehicle number plates logging was rolled out initially via the Safe-T-cam system, then spread to the speed cams network, and later to police cars (that have cameras and number plate OCR systems, with always-on wireless linked central number plate database checks.) All this vehicle movements data is a goldmine for the security services.Why do you think there is such a strong insistence you *must* permanently mount your E-Way tag on the windscreen? (Not that there's any legal backing for such demands, so far as I know.)I take the sometimes reduced/absent beep as proof that is how the E-Way tags are implemented. Except in early stages there was apparently a bug in the protocol, and sometimes the beep amplitude would be wrong. This seems to have been fixed since, and now I never notice the beep being wrong or missing.

author: AF6LJ
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 05, 2015, 11:54:28 pm
content: There is a really easy to solve this issue.Make the car maker responsible for anybody killed as a result of the software decisions made during the design process.That''s my answer.Driverless cars are stupid from the Get-Go.

author: bitslice
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2015, 12:08:13 am
content: Big business can sometimes ignore danger to human life and get away with it,Remington knowingly sold rifles that would discharge unexpectedly, and they were allowed to settle the cases whilst applying a gagging order.*I just read of this today, I may not be aware of all the facts

author: rs20
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2015, 12:15:10 am
content: Quote from: jimdeane on November 05, 2015, 10:46:25 am...and thus contribute to a tragedy of the commons which ultimately results in you having a higher chance of dying. I wouldn't be overly surprised if you own an SUV/truck.Also, have you considered that perhaps a robot programmed with your life as asecondarypriority might, overall, still serve your selfish interests better than a slow, imperfect human putting its own life is a primary priority?

author: rx8pilot
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2015, 12:28:55 am
content: Quote from: AF6LJ on November 05, 2015, 11:54:28 pmDrivers in cars are WAY stupider, IMHO. I live on Los Angeles where everyone is an angry asshole more than willing to risk and take the lives of others. You can't drive for more than a few minutes without seeing a person making completely ridiculous decisions.Driverless cars have a long way to go, but the idea is sound. It takes the emotion out of transportation - and emotion is a seriously deadly part of humans and driving. The security issues and 'who lives/dies' conundrum seems much easier to deal with than convincing humans to drive safely. In a driverless world, there will be accidents and deaths. That is the cold reality of propelling fragile humans in vehicles at 70mph. Something will break and software will go haywire. The goal and likely outcome of driverless cars is a drastic reduction in injuries and death as well as faster link times from A to B.

author: TerraHertz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2015, 12:34:52 am
content: Quote from: rs20 on November 06, 2015, 12:15:10 amYou are making the logical error of assuming the parties responsible for implementing such systems are both competent, and moral. In practice neither is usually true.There are cases where enlightened rule provides benefits (eg preservation of the Commons), but on the whole centralized rule tends towards dictatorial nature and disaster. Not least because central power structures are a magnet for psychopaths and infiltration by corporates (immortal, totally amoral entities with no human soul and no motivation beyond profit maximization, but near-infinite corruption-inducing money. Particularly in the case of banks.) and agents of secret societies (which combine the worst points of corporations and psychopaths.)

author: rs20
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2015, 12:47:08 am
content: Quote from: TerraHertz on November 06, 2015, 12:34:52 amThat's somewhat beyond the point I was trying to make. Nevertheless, if I had a choice between all cars being driven by people and all cars being driven by computers programmed by a handful of engineers; I expect that those engineers wouldn't need to be exceedingly competent or moral to deliver a lower total death toll. My point is that it's kind of funny to be invoking conspiracies and dictatorships and all that when the status quo is a bunch of barely trained fools directing tons of metal around.

author: AF6LJ
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 06, 2015, 04:53:13 am
content: Quote from: rx8pilot on November 06, 2015, 12:28:55 amGranted it is worse in LA than other places here in California however the same is true for SanDiego where I live.I still don't want humans to be taken out of the decision making process.QuoteCar companies cannot even build a car that is secure enough that nobody can take control of the car remotely.So I stand by what I said, every driverless car that kills or injures someone hold the make responsible, send the software engineer to jail for manslaughter when someone dies.You are just asking for trouble if you think driverless cars will ever be safe for all including us pedestrians.

author: Stonent
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2015, 05:44:57 am
content: I wonder what happens when teams of driverless cars start plowing through government buildings because some hacktivist group has a bad day?

author: rx8pilot
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2015, 05:50:52 am
content: Quote from: AF6LJ on November 06, 2015, 04:53:13 amExpecting zero injuries or deaths is a pointless goal that will not likely happen as long as humans are making the machines. The question is: Will it be safer than what we currently have? It is true that the Jeep was hacked, but it took an extraordinary effort in time, money, and cerebral resources to pull it off. In the end, the patch was fairly straightforward. If the hackers were ruthless enough, they could have hurt or killed some people. There will be bugs and backdoors in the future, but they will get harder and harder to penetrate. Maybe never un-hackable, but down to a minuscule chance. We have jets that auto-land with hundreds of people on board (CAT III landing). We have drones that operate all over the world and we have automatic trains. All of these have failure modes that can result in deaths, but the people involved decided that the technology is less likely to kill someone than if they put a human in charge. When a train driver is texting, they can kill a LOT of people in a single event. A 747 in a CAT III landing can detect wind sheer and initiate a go-around before the pilot could blink his eyes - saving hundreds from a fiery death.Would you like the 747 with low-fuel to be hand flown down to the ground (in a major city) in ZERO visibility or would you prefer that a computer figure it out? I don't and will never blindly trust technology, but when it comes to solving micro-second timing decisions based on a rapidly deteriorating situation - software, computers, and sensors are more likely to save my ass. I see driveless tech evolving like aircraft, the early models will have limited use and be more dangerous than the models that we see 50 years later. Progress will be made after major disasters. At that time, the kids will be perplexed at how many people were maimed, crushed, and burned to death because they were manually controlling a high speed vehicle. The rate of injury and death on the roads will plummet in time but only if we start going for it.We have to start somewhere. It's almost a certainty that the legal battles will be far bigger, more complicated, and expensive than the technology in question.

author: rx8pilot
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2015, 05:56:14 am
content: Quote from: Stonent on November 06, 2015, 05:44:57 amProgress comes from disasters. Learning from our mistakes and oversights is why we have vehicles on Mars right now.I personally don't think it is too difficult a task to design a system that is sufficiently difficult to hijack to avoid a catastrophe. It simply has to be a priority. Jeep was arrogant IMHO in thinking that no one could be smarter than they are.

author: AF6LJ
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 06, 2015, 03:22:13 pm
content: Quote from: rx8pilot on November 06, 2015, 05:50:52 amYou all are ignoring the big issue. Who Is Going to Be Responsible for the LIVES of those killed due to poor software decisions or bad design?The law needs to be established first before the coding can begin.As for hacking; I am sorry but it is really stupid to have a vehicle that is not human controlled.History has shown the more you remove the human element from the system the more the system can be exploited. Example; There is much more credit card fraud these days here in the US now that all you have to do is scan your card, you don't even have to show ID to prove you are the person the card was issued to.If any of you think this driverless car BS would be more secure and safer than driver controlled cars, it is my opinion but you are smoking Dope...QuoteApples and Oranges, besides the road is much more crowded than the TCA or final approach to an airport.As for who is flying IFR the computer or the human pilot, it makes no difference in this day and age.We have to start somewhere. It's almost a certainty that the legal battles will be far bigger, more complicated, and expensive than the technology in question.

author: bitslice
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2015, 06:31:03 pm
content: Quote from: rx8pilot on November 06, 2015, 12:28:55 amI don't really care how non mathematically proven the software is going to be, eliminating this alone is going to save a lot of lives.Computers can't tell how small another drivers penis is, so when they get cut up, nobody is going to react irrationally. This psychological mobile castle shit has to go.If the first trials were limited to motorways, then a lot of pedestrian/animal/cyclist drama could be eliminated too.

author: rx8pilot
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2015, 06:55:44 pm
content: Making deliberate steps that mitigate the dangers is certainly important. There should be enough fear to encourage good engineering, but not so much fear that it freezes progress.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year32,000+ deaths in the USA alone in 2013.Surely we (humans) can do WAY better than that. I don't know if the stats exist, but I would say that the vast majority of those are a result of poor or slow decision making on the part of the drivers involved. The priority the US is to spend $1trillion on ultra-high tech fighter jets that can kill as many people as possible in the name of defense while 10's of thousands are killed each year on the highways. Nuts.

author: bitslice
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2015, 07:29:08 pm
content: I was wondering how an AI would handle certain situations when all it has at its disposal is the ability to brake and manoeuvre?eg. If I can see in my rear view mirror that a lorry is skidding towards me, then accelerating the hell out of there is priority #1,if that then puts me inside the safe braking zone of another vehicle then I will take that chance, an AI might not, given that adding yet more speed into a situation isn't often a viable option.You'd have to implement some kind of bird flocking movement control rather than a liner model.

author: AF6LJ
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 06, 2015, 07:48:59 pm
content: Quote from: bitslice on November 06, 2015, 07:29:08 pmThis is flawed thinking for a simple reason.Say there is a car in front of you,orthe train crossing guard is down...Or the car is sitting on a patch of black ice...Or...You are at a school crossing and there are thirty five children in the crosswalk.

author: AF6LJ
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 06, 2015, 07:52:14 pm
content: Quote from: rx8pilot on November 06, 2015, 06:55:44 pmA very small percentage of the actual number of vehicles on the road.Now go back and look at the fatalities per mile traveled in the US.You are talking about the car culture center of the world here; more vehicles per capita than anywhere else.

author: rx8pilot
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2015, 08:08:19 pm
content: Quote from: AF6LJ on November 06, 2015, 07:48:59 pmThis is not flawed thinking, these are problems to solve. That is like the Apollo engineers saying that the moon landing idea is flawed thinking because the rocket may blow up.With current technology, we can detect people, trains, objects, heat, pressure, temperature, traction, acceleration, and about a trillion other things. With current processing power, those inputs can drive a local simulation that looks for alternatives to mitigate the danger. A thousand options can be evaluated in a spit second based on thousands of data points - including a grading system that is evaluating the total human costs.The next step is for humans to decide what should happen in these situations - JUST LIKE THEY DO NOW. The difference is that these decisions are being made by people that are not paying attention, don't know what to do, can't react fast enough, etc. I have seen so many people react to driving through a puddle of water by slamming the brakes - sending the car into a hydroplane immediately. Some situations are easier than others but the decisions are still essentially being made by people. Those people are engineering the outcome with the benefit of over a hundred years of crash data and vehicle performance data along with a mass of sensors.Like I continue to say, the results will never be perfect. There will be poor judgment, bugs, etc....but taking the humans with very limited attention span and emotional tendencies out almost assures a better result than what we have today. Even the engineering and software is marginal, it will be better than what we see today. Being a government regulated industry and environment, I suspect this tech will roll out slowly and methodically to minimize the dangers of the learning curve. The economic benefit could be massive too. Faster, safer, and more predictable transpiration? Old scary views will not slow that progress down.

author: suicidaleggroll
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2015, 08:18:53 pm
content: Quote from: AF6LJ on November 06, 2015, 07:52:14 pmAccording to this chart, it's about 10 deaths per billion miles traveled in the US:https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/USA_annual_VMT_vs_deaths_per_VMT.pnghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_United_States

author: bitslice
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2015, 08:22:58 pm
content: Quote from: AF6LJ on November 06, 2015, 07:48:59 pmI'm not sure you got my point?AI cars currently have limited options when it comes to manoeuvres, stop or turn and avoid everything.Humans have the ability to calculate the degree of hazard, and can make choices based on an understanding of the likely outcome.If accelerating into a wall gets me out of the path of an oncoming car, then I'll do that.Currently an AI would sit there and wait to be hit because acceleration and/or hitting something is not an option for it.

author: AF6LJ
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 06, 2015, 08:24:06 pm
content: Quote from: suicidaleggroll on November 06, 2015, 08:18:53 pmThat means 200 people can travel to the moon and back and not have an accident.Now lets let that sink in for a while....

author: helius
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2015, 08:27:37 pm
content: Quote from: rx8pilot on November 06, 2015, 08:08:19 pmEven as flawed as they are, humans are much better at simultaneously solving the many differential equations of motion and (more to the point here) moral tradeoffs than machines are. Emotions actually help them to do that: emotions make people more powerful rational actors, not as you assume hamper their thinking. Emotions evolved over millions of years to communicate intent truthfully between organisms, as a way of solving problems like the Prisoner's Dilemma. Since machines do not and cannot have real emotions (because they have not evolved the same structures that force animals to have emotions) they are vulnerable to these kinds of problems more. This problem is not going to be solved simply by more technical development, because there will never be a trait like evolved emotions that forces machines to be honest about their intent. In fact, it's provable that there cannot, because it's the Halting Problem.

author: AF6LJ
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 06, 2015, 08:30:47 pm
content: Quote from: bitslice on November 06, 2015, 08:22:58 pmHumans have an ability AI doesn't have; they can see into the future.Humans do "What-If" much better than AI does because they can couch it in the current context much better.QuoteAnd you are completely ignoring the most obvious solution...Put the brakes on brace yourself against the seat back close your eyes and let the car's safety features do their job.If you total the car by running it into a wall, you make yourself responsable for the damage to the wall and your car.If you follow what I outlined above your car will still be totaled but you won't have to pay for it.See;That kind of decision AI won't be able to make; that organic computer between your ears can do so much more parallel processing and come up with the right answer so much faster....As we have already seen by other posters in this thread auto fatalities are at a minimum already in the US.Driverless cars are an app looking for a market in my opinion.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2015, 08:43:02 pm
content: Quote from: AF6LJ on November 06, 2015, 03:22:13 pmWho is responsible in the case of Toyota, whose faulty software could lead to unintended acceleration in some cases?http://users.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/pubs/koopman14_toyota_ua_slides.pdfWell... it's pretty easy to establish that Toyota is at least one party to responsibility. I would then say Toyota would have to be involved in the accident investigation(s) to determine what programmers and safety managers missed the issue, but it's likely that those people will never be prosecuted unless it is gross negligence or deliberate harm that lead to the action.

author: bitslice
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2015, 08:52:58 pm
content: Quote from: AF6LJ on November 06, 2015, 08:30:47 pmChess computers outperform humans, this isn't going to be a technological limit of who can see more options.The problem is that once the AI has worked out twenty possible ways out of the situation,which ones do we allow it to do?Artificial limitations of Stop and Turn automatically creates a situational outcome of 'least harm', but sometimes that is still going to get you killed.Simply allowing Stop, Turnand Accelerateas possible reactions creates a situational outcome of 'possible harm', but it is then vastly more difficult to determine the best option, even though the additional ability may create an optimal solution.QuoteThis is arguing the specifics of an example rather than the principle?And no, cars are designed to safely run into walls and crumple, being hit is always an unknown.QuoteMy cars ABS outperforms me to a laughable degree, the same for the new automatic collision avoidance braking systems and variable surface cornering control.Just about any AI is going to outperform me when I'm tired or I've just woken up (most accidents are within 1 mile of home)Just because we haven't experienced it before doesn't mean that AI driving isn't going to improve our car use.

author: rs20
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2015, 09:06:07 pm
content: Quote from: AF6LJ on November 06, 2015, 08:30:47 pm[Citation needed.]I can think of many parallel problems that computers solve faster and more precisely than humans. I think if you're going to make this claim, the burden of proof is very much on you!

author: helius
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2015, 09:06:45 pm
content: Quote from: AF6LJ on November 06, 2015, 03:22:13 pmThere are already laws that require licensure of civil engineers and set out liabilities, which could be viewed as setting responsibility. The resistance of software companies to licensing is part of a bigger problem.

author: AF6LJ
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 06, 2015, 09:09:39 pm
content: Quote from: bitslice on November 06, 2015, 08:52:58 pmThat is a very controlled situation, a driver who is not drunk and not distracted by an iPod or a Phone has to deal with far more variables, and can weed out whole arias of improbability.AI in its current state; for that matter in the foreseeable future doesn't have the computing power of the human brain.Your chess model is simply an example of a glorified adding machine.QuoteSee that is the problem since every situation is different.Quoteor get me killed since I am a pedestrian.QuoteYou do a good job of making my case.QuoteYes because being rear ended is one of the most common accidents.QuoteYes they might for the simple reason they do one thing well.QuoteMaybe in the long run when they outlaw humans from driving cars and relegate pedestrians to segregated walkways, that isn't going to happen for sometime to come.But there is a plan for outlawing human driven cars in cities, if the UN gets its way.

author: rx8pilot
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2015, 09:18:53 pm
content: Quote from: helius on November 06, 2015, 08:27:37 pmHumans are fantastic at solving problems - just very slowly relative to what happens when a 70mph traffic incident is unfolding. There is not a whole lot of analysis, but merely a reaction that is based on primitive survival instinct. Some people freeze, some over-react to a small obstacle and lose control. It's just worth saying that when a multitude of outcomes are possible and range from good to catastrophic, I don't think humans can process and rate decisions needed in the few milliseconds available. That does not even take into account the likely reality that a human making a poor decision initiated the causal event in the first place and others around them are needing to react.Driving fast because they are late. Answering the phone. Inability to anticipate the vehicle reaction to inputs. Limited visual scan (human vision is not exactly 360), tailgating, etc are things that have accessible tech solutions. Those are crash avoidance efforts which should be the focus (we already see a lot of that in luxury cars today).AI is what we decide it should be. It is us making decisions about what may happen in the future. The algorithms can be weighted in any direction that humans choose - property vs. life. Humans vs. animals. Adults vs. children. In the extreme, what about 1 adult vs 35 children in a crosswalk? If that really came to be, would the outcome be more acceptable if a human was forced into a millisecond decision to save the kids but lost control of the car in the process and killed them anyway. What if that all came about because the driver was looking for his phone that is ringing somewhere which took away any available reaction time? The sensors and software never blink, never get tired, never get distracted which is the reason behind the majority of crashes. So we have a new evil to deal with - the software and all the bugs the come with it. To me that is an easier solve than re-writing human nature to operate cars better. If all the rules and laws were followed to the letter by every driver all the time, don't you think the crash count would drastically drop?Humans are totally unpredictable and that is what is good about us, we all end up different and capable of different things. Operating a vehicle is not part of our genetic makeup of natural skills. The dynamics are far too complicated and fast for humans to deal with. This is why we have traction control, ABS, obstacle avoidance braking, auto-pilot, etc.

author: suicidaleggroll
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2015, 09:28:50 pm
content: You guys arguing against this DO realize that there are already self-driving cars, don't you?https://www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/Six years, over a million miles driven, 14 accidents, and not ONE has been the fault of the AI. It's all been other drivers, not paying attention, plowing into it while it's stopped at a light or similar. That's a better driving record than the vast majority of those super parallel-processing instinct-driven future-seeing humans you put so high up on that pedestal.

author: bitslice
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2015, 09:41:34 pm
content: Quote from: AF6LJ on November 06, 2015, 09:09:39 pmYou were doubting the ability of AI to see into the future, yet we do this routinely with weather forecasting and failure analysis? If you can model something you can predict an outcome and give a value to the accuracy of that prediction.Tracking the speed and vector of multiple objects is trivial.QuoteI don't see why, even an Xbox can determine what a human looks like.QuoteWhat am I doing that is so clever?, spinning a wheel and pressing two pedals. My FM stereo and my air con are more complicated.I have 120 degrees of vision and a reaction time measured in hundreds of milliseconds. I suck at controlling anything going faster than 10mph.I have no radar, no infra-red, no 360deg awareness, I can only read one analogue sensor input at a time, limited ability to process more than a few moving objects, no ability to collaboratively regulate my speed with other cars, no idea of traffic flow beyond the next car and limited idea of physical road conditions.QuoteIf I had better sensors and the ability to communicate with other car borne sensors who are also tracking people, I could have detected that child behind the bus.Tracking pedestrians and reacting to them is something better handled by collaborative computers, not by the dummy who isn't even looking in their direction.

author: helius
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2015, 10:00:45 pm
content: Quote from: suicidaleggroll on November 06, 2015, 09:28:50 pmThis is much worse than the average for accidents per mile driven in the US. If it was driven on the same roads, with the same tires, at the same times of day, with a rolling chassis of similar quality as the norm for other vehicles, then the worse accidents are absolutely the fault of the AI, because that is the only difference.

author: suicidaleggroll
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2015, 11:28:08 pm
content: Quote from: helius on November 06, 2015, 10:00:45 pmYou're comparing total miles driven on all roads, the majority of which are straight highways. The google cars are on very dense metropolitan city streets only. If I spent my entire life driving around downtown San Francisco I wouldn't be surprised at all to get run into every ~85k miles because somebody else wasn't paying attention.

author: rx8pilot
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 07, 2015, 12:19:09 am
content: The statistical metrics have to be apples to apples. That is not easy with such a small sample.

author: helius
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 07, 2015, 12:28:30 am
content: Quote from: suicidaleggroll on November 06, 2015, 11:28:08 pmI would be greatly surprised, because more accidents occur in rural areas, and San Francisco has a rate that is half of the average for American cities.But I messed up, because there is a huge difference between accidents and fatalities (which have the most available statistics). There are about 2 reported crashes per million miles driven in the US. Fatalities are only 0.6% of reported accidents, or just over 1 per 100 million miles. The higher priority mission for safety authorities is to reduce fatalities, so most papers comparing rates between groups and cities focus on that.With respect to the sample size, the tests by Google should probably be seen as close to an ideal case with more carefully controlled conditions than would pertain in "the real world". The number of accidents by DARPA Challenge cars is higher, for example. But neither has caused fatalities so far, which leaves that question open.But extrapolation is hard, because when more cars are autonomous, they presumably could better detect each other's position and avoid bunching up and so on. Whether that would have any effect on fatalities is hard to say.

author: han
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 07, 2015, 01:35:34 am
content: I don't the software will or should calculate number of casualty, it should chose the safest route within the legal boundary.And justice system now is cannot applied to the AI.Current justice system is based on revenge, and only can applied to human.The prison can make people scare to steal/murder/drive while drunk, so what punishment for the AI car that do lesser evil? spend 10 year in dark and damp garage?I prefer trust fully automated car, since accident can happen will be happen, no matter human or AI behind the wheel.

author: rs20
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 07, 2015, 01:45:32 am
content: Quote from: han on November 07, 2015, 01:35:34 amI don't understand the distinction -- what is your metric of "safety" if not E(number of casualties)?

author: han
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 07, 2015, 02:55:52 am
content: Quote from: rs20 on November 07, 2015, 01:45:32 amSafety IMHO is best effort to avoid damage to the car by minimal effort.like better to brake then make another dangerous movement..

author: helius
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 07, 2015, 05:35:20 am
content: han raises an interesting point, which I was already thinking about. If letting machines make safety decisions would save lives, then some would argue that the only moral course would be to cede control to the machines. Would they have the same answer if the question was, should machines make the decisions in cases of criminal justice? The currency in both cases is, of course, the same—people's lives at stake. And there are notorious problems with emotion-ridden human beings making penal decisions, including thousands falsely imprisoned, innocent people executed, and so forth. Automated cars are complicated to implement because of infrastructure issues, sensors and actuators, etc. Why not start by simply replacing juries with computers? Surely nobody is prepared to argue that an average juror could defeat Deep Blue in a battle of wits, so it's a foregone conclusion.

author: rs20
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 07, 2015, 08:01:23 am
content: Quote from: han on November 07, 2015, 02:55:52 amSo, if the car is presented with a boulder that suddenly falls on the road; it should make a demonstrably futile attempt to brake rather than dodge the boulder, even if its calculations indicate that death will most likely result?

author: han
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 07, 2015, 09:59:28 am
content: Boulder on middle of street is extreme example.Of course It depend not only one condition. Brake is first priority always, too fast dodge maneuver is very dangerous without enough data. In extreme condition your left side can be Abrams tank, your right can be 1000 m cliff.

author: han
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 07, 2015, 10:03:52 am
content: Quote from: helius on November 07, 2015, 05:35:20 amProblem is people will chose 1000 death from human mistake then 100 death from machine.You can blame people and punish them..

author: AF6LJ
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 08, 2015, 09:21:06 pm
content: Quote from: bitslice on November 06, 2015, 09:41:34 pmYou have intuition the AI doesn't, you draw on anywhere from years to decades of driving experience. I am fine with driverless cars as long as the software engineers and company management are held just as responsible for death and injury as you would be driving your car.By the way;To the person who commented on the existing driverless cars, they are not that great and have posed a hazard on the road.

author: rs20
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 09, 2015, 12:15:59 am
content: Quote from: AF6LJ on November 08, 2015, 09:21:06 pmThe AI can draw on millenia of collective driving experience...

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 09, 2015, 04:24:29 am
content: Well currently when the car can't make a decision, the software relinquishes control to the human. I think you'll see this as the "default" mode for a long long time to come. Let's say that we do get fully autonomous cars, I think it'll probably come down to a vote and/or probability system. i.e.: What is the probability that given the current circumstances that the driver or Car A will be serious injured/killed v the probability of the person in Car B meeting the same fate. The lesser of those "wins". So you could find that if the car decides that it's "safer" to ditch the vehicle into a tree/bushes etc... than colliding with another vehicle to lessen the injury.It's a bit how humans think, however unlike machines, humans tend to freeze up in emergency situations when panic sets in and aim directly for the thing their eyes are fixated on (this is the reason people crash into lone trees on the sides of roads rather than veering around them).Quote from: rs20 on November 09, 2015, 12:15:59 amI could think of nothing worse! The quality of the vast majority of drivers out there is pretty poor! As time goes on, people are becoming more complacent, lazy and impatient. If a computer was making a decision based on the "average", I'd rather assume control myself and hope for the best.I guess what would be more interesting is the link between the autonomous driving system and all the other controls such as stability, anti-lock brakes, radars/proximity sensors, cameras, etc... what gets priority and when? In an emergency you can't always have stability or anti-skid for example.

author: AF6LJ
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 09, 2015, 05:17:58 am
content: Quote from: rs20 on November 09, 2015, 12:15:59 amI think it will draw on its experience and that will help. We will have to develop new data storage techniques in order to store the massive amount of data accumulated over time.

author: daqq
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 09, 2015, 06:02:58 am
content: QuoteActually, assuming a well coded and trained software, the car can have the equivalent of all of the intuition available, with the difference that it can process all of the available information about the situation instantly. Assuming a fast enough system, it can analyze the situation from all available sensors, find the most probable outcomes based on available actions and choose the action that will inevitably lead to a known outcome. I'm pretty certain, that in the, say, .25 seconds available an AI can make a more accurate assessment of the data available than you or me.Taken to an extreme: When the car detects an inevitable situation, where it has to decide between lives of X people, provided a few tens of milliseconds time and a good enough connection, it could scan the faces, connect to the Internet, look them up in all available databases and resources and choose to run over the worst of the lot. I'm quite certain this could be implemented.Probably the best way is to "outsource" the decision to the driver - by means of some kind of action configuration form you set in advance - some if-else logic.

author: rs20
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 09, 2015, 06:04:55 am
content: Quote from: AF6LJ on November 09, 2015, 05:17:58 amThat would be helpful too, but it could also be as simple as picking a representative sample of "incidents" from the past month, analyzing the logs, and adjusting the algorithms to avoid any suboptimal choices made during those incidents. Logs ofsuccessfultrips would be very voluminous, but less interesting (although, if the AI could also log whenever it's "confused" -- or more accurately, when it fails to classify an object or incident with high confidence -- those could be stored as well.)

author: AF6LJ
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 09, 2015, 03:33:04 pm
content: When WE reach the point that we actually under what self awareness, and intelligence is then we will actually be able to build safe driverless cars.

author: han
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 10, 2015, 02:05:48 am
content: Interesting moral question - should autonomous cars choose the lesser evil?Interesting moral question - should you choose the lesser evil?hit one people or hit a school bus?Ride autonomous cars = if it fully autonomous and you didn't drive. less guilty feeling and no jail for youYou drive...= you now what's waiting for youSimple fact: almost everyone once or more in a lifetime can have a accident (even if it's only hitting garage door, and you drive long enough) if you fell you drive better then everybody else, maybe it the way around

author: jimdeane
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 10, 2015, 08:02:56 am
content: I do actually own a small truck, chosen for the carrying of light bulky loads and for the extensive safety systems (traction and stability control, brake assist, antilock, side curtain airbags, side airbags, high crash ratings) and for the decent v6 engine.My previous cars have been nimble compacts. My wife's car is a compact. My next car will likely be a nimble compact or a small sedan, since I expect the truck will still serve for load hauling after I no longer drive it every day.And I am all for using technology to make the roads safer, but within reasonable limits, such as never designing a safety system that can make moral decisions. The car should protect its occupants, without exception.

author: jimdeane
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 10, 2015, 08:16:41 am
content: (Sorry, didn't quite. This is in response to the crashes experienced by the Google self driving cars. )Why didn't they get out of the way? Surely they have sensors to detect surrounding traffic in real-time. If a human sees they are about to be hit, there are often evasive actions they can take. We aren't usually focused in all directions at a stop light, but a self driving car is always watching.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 10, 2015, 08:24:26 am
content: Quote from: jimdeane on November 10, 2015, 08:02:56 amIf the car must unquestioningly protect its occupants it must be prepared to murder others to achieve that. Most humans at the driving wheel do not unerringly put themselves above everything else on the road. They do actually swerve to avoid people, and even animals, putting their own lives at risk in the process. Why would you want an autonomous car to act otherwise?

author: jimdeane
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 10, 2015, 08:32:00 am
content: One of the best potential features of automated or heavily augmented driving was alluded to by another poster--flocking activity. Or more specifically, distributed network mass routing.We are already seeing some of this, and its not from automated driving, it is from live traffic auto routing by Google maps. When traffic slowdowns occur, it reroutes to a new faster route. And if what my wife and I have observed is correct, it may even be distributing traffic load among multiple near-equivalent routes.If you can envision a system integrated with infrastructure traffic control, you might even have dramatically reduced need for stopping, since a good traffic control algorithm could get most cars to lights while green.

author: MikeW
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 10, 2015, 08:38:46 am
content: Quote from: daqq on November 09, 2015, 06:02:58 amSpecial priority given to those spamming facebook with terrible memes.

author: Mechanical Menace
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 10, 2015, 04:37:03 pm
content: Why does everyone assume you need an AI to make a self driving car? It doesn't need to contemplate the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. It only needs to get from A to B and avoid obstacles...

author: rs20
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 11, 2015, 12:55:36 am
content: Quote from: Mechanical Menace on November 10, 2015, 04:37:03 pm+1000

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 11, 2015, 01:01:54 am
content: Quote from: Mechanical Menace on November 10, 2015, 04:37:03 pmBecause it gives the moral philosophers jobs (and something to talk about other than the ethics of engineering)

author: timb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 11, 2015, 01:02:05 am
content: Quote from: helius on November 06, 2015, 10:00:45 pmActually, the Google Self Driving Car has been rear ended numerous times by morons who are too busy trying to take a picture of it or whatever. It literally has "GOOGLE SELF DRIVING CAR" silk screened all over it, plus a laser/radar array on the top rack, which seems to cause some sort of tunnel vision in people.I guarantee you if it was just a plain white 4-door sedan with no decals, it would have had nearly no collisions.Sent from my Tablet

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 11, 2015, 01:07:54 am
content: Before we try to engineer ethical behavior into our cars we need to agree on what ethical behavior is. Although there is a worldwide market for automobiles there is no worldwide agreement on ethics, and not even nationwide in anyplace I have knowledge of.

author: helius
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 11, 2015, 10:20:04 pm
content: Quote from: timb on November 11, 2015, 01:02:05 amRight, so we're all in agreement that it's an attractive nuisance that causes accidents

author: rx8pilot
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 11, 2015, 10:32:23 pm
content: Quote from: helius on November 11, 2015, 10:20:04 pmSort of......as the experimental nature of self-driving cars goes - they will look weird and be loaded with graphics since the development cost is massive and Google wants to get visibility of the project.As the mass market goes....no one wants a cross between a space ship and NASCAR. There are a lot of rubber-necking crashes that are a result of focusing on another crash. Humans like novelty and shiny objects. This, if anything, is a GREAT argument FOR self-driving cars. They would never be distracted by a weird car, a crash, a naked lady, or whatever. All it needs to do is avoid things. Simple. If all the cars were Google cars and they were all simply avoiding objects and staying on a prescribed path at prescribed speeds, etc.....there would be VERY VERY few situations that would result in injury.Today's thinking is purely working around the fact that humans are super shitty at driving. Air bags, ABS, range sensors, auto-braking, crumple zones, auto-parking. If the car was VERY rarely in a dangerous situation, that would be the best safety feature by far.

author: economist
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: November 12, 2015, 12:27:29 am
content: It's always disturbing how quickly some will jump to the notion that moral good is equivalent to saving the most lives or maximizing collective utility. That simplicity has some very extreme results depending on the application and one's views on utility, and can easily subvert the value of the individual to the values of a mob. Right now millions are driving and we don't have some moral imperative required that would materially affect the death/injury rate. What human behavior, after all, would one alter to adjust the balance? Clearly there are unambiguous improvements (e.g., no driving under the influence of drugs/alcohol, no texting while driving, etc.), but where are the examples of people saving themselves when some moral mathematics might suggest another course of action to optimize an arbitrary definition of social good? In sum, this topic is merely an amusing digression that will never have practical significance. Self driving cars can slow, avoid, and stop. If they all do that with any amount of reason and recognition of reality then the corner cases will be so truly rare as to be irrelevant.

author: rs20
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 12, 2015, 03:22:14 am
content: Quote from: economist on November 12, 2015, 12:27:29 amWhen implementing an algorithm which avoids killing both pedestrians and the occupants of the car; it turns out weight decisions by the sum of the number of deaths is a perfectly reasonable way of doing it. No-one cares that you think it's a rare irrelevant case, it's the simplest method to code anyway.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 12, 2015, 04:48:55 pm
content: Yeah, it doesn't matter what is right if you can't create a measurable and actionable decisions. Counting numbers of injured is both measurable and actionable.

author: economist
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: November 12, 2015, 10:38:30 pm
content: Philosophers, for centuries, have struggled with defining moral acts, with the concepts of individual utility vs. the collective good, how to measure, how to aggregate, and whether there even can be moral meaning to aggregation. It is not obvious that acts of commission are the same as acts of omission, nor that it is possible or desirable to employ the same moral approach to committed acts that one might apply to omitted. These are interesting and complex issues. They address how we respond to the world (the world none of us chose to enter) and what responsibilities we might have subject to being here.Just because a coder has a need to program a response to a given situation does not provide a moral imperative to make the solution simple. Surely we don't define moral behavior as that which requires the fewest lines of code or the least complex approach. Why let the technological necessity dominate the fundamental complexity of the human condition?Even when simplicity is available we still may not have an obvious solution. Take the situation of a car with two passengers about to be slammed by a huge truck (expectation: all car occupants die) with the only out being running over a single pedestrian (expectation: the pedestrian dies). Does 2 vs. 1 always determine the outcome? Is overt killing obviously preferable to accepting death when the numbers favor killing? Do any of the particulars matter (age, health, prior acts of all involved)? It's easy to code an answer of "never overtly kill". It's easy to code an answer of "always kill if the numbers favor it". And it's easy to code an answer of "always kill if it saves me, regardless of the numbers killed". Now what?

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 13, 2015, 04:30:21 am
content: You open by saying that philosophers have studied and argued for centuries about appropriate answers and finish by faulting programmers who take an available, if possibly not correct solution. Is your proposal that we give the philosopher a couple more millenium before we attempt automating automobiles? Even though it is highly likely that the aggregate number of deaths and injuries will drop dramatically, independent of any of these contrived dilemmas? I personally believe that automated vehicles will be better than the average driver in a time frame that can usefully be measured in months, and that in a timeframe appropriately measured in years they will be better than all but the very best human drivers. Which in many cases means driving in such a manner that the contrived situation never comes up.

author: rs20
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 13, 2015, 09:24:25 am
content: Quote from: economist on November 12, 2015, 10:38:30 pmYesQuote from: economist on November 12, 2015, 10:38:30 pmYesQuote from: economist on November 12, 2015, 10:38:30 pmNo - no racism, ageism or sexism is acceptableQuote from: economist on November 12, 2015, 10:38:30 pmOption B, cheers.This is like that dumb "people-tied-to-the-railtracks, should you change the switch to 'kill' the one person to 'save' the other two people's lives" question. The answer is yes, it's completely obvious. Now for an individual forced to watch the person dying and having to live with that vision for the rest of their lives, that's a hard decision to make. But for the philosopher and the engineer writing this car software, it's extremely simple.

author: Deathwish
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 13, 2015, 09:38:55 am
content: Read the first post, skipped the rest, my bet is it will revert to manual control and pass the buck to you. Who wants a class action against them , not a manufacturer you can bet

author: MikeW
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 13, 2015, 09:44:18 am
content: Quote from: Deathwish on November 13, 2015, 09:38:55 amhttp://www.ibtimes.co.uk/volvo-we-will-be-responsible-accidents-caused-by-our-driverless-cars-1523260

author: economist
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: November 13, 2015, 06:06:49 pm
content: Can we recognize that valuing life is a little more complex than adding head counts?Take the two passenger / one pedestrian example again. What if the passengers are both 90 years old and the pedestrian is an 8 year old. Does that matter? Should life be valued at the person level or the years-lived level (e.g., perhaps saving the child saves 70 human years in total while saving the 90 year old passengers only saves 5 total human years)? Does it even make sense to aggregate and value life this way? If aggregation is acceptable (or, in limited cases, inevitable), why is it obvious to aggregate head counts and not something else?Beyond this, is it just as obvious that we want a society where maximizing the number of humans alive is the acceptable goal? Say I have a large family and we are starving. Our neighbor is single, lives alone, and has tons of food. Is it morally acceptable for me to go to his house and steal his food? What if I have to kill him to get it? Surely we don't just turn society over to population maximization with all means to that end judged acceptable.Just think about this a bit. We can disagree. People have been disagreeing about issues like this for as long as people have existed. Saying the answer is obvious, however, is missing a great deal of the complexity here.

author: rs20
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 14, 2015, 06:43:33 am
content: The question of whether the value of a life changes of the course of a lifetime is indeed an interesting if slightly dark debate. But if (hypothetically?) a car driving algorithm that ignores such complications still leads to a better outcomes on average than a human driver (regardless of whether you measure that comparison based on headcount or "adjusted" headcount) then it's irrelevant to this debate on whether car AIs could be better than humans. In other words, the subtle philosophical debate doesn't need to hold up the technology if the cars can be vastly better than humans regardless of the subjective framework within which you assess them (except, perhaps, the "I'm more important than anyone else"-style SUV/truck philosophy).

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 14, 2015, 06:35:35 pm
content: One reason the philosophical questions go on for so long is that they are fundamentally unanswerable."What if the pedestrian was wearing a doctors outfit, indicating that possibly she was the person who was going to discover the universal cure for cancer?"Like chess, the possibility tree expands to infinity. And like chess, one can debate the relative merits of mechanical solutions to the problem over more fundamental or intuitive solutions. Just ask Kasparov if the mechanical approaches work.

author: rx8pilot
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 14, 2015, 07:16:16 pm
content: Trying to answer and solve un-answer-able questions is going to freeze society? The way I see it, we need an average improvement in vehicle/transportation safety. A technological approach to avoid the most common crashes leading to deaths, injury, and property damage can make a huge improvement overall. At some point, a group of children will be run over by a software driven car. As sad as that is....how many children are killed in car crashes today with humans in control? Will the overall number of children dying in cars go down? Most likely, but not if we engage in never ending philosophical banter that freezes all possibility of improvement.A careful and thoughtful approach to engineering hardware and software to control vehicles along with thoughtful laws and operating rules can allow a steady improvement to the daily damage caused by cars. Or we can talk about it while people die.

author: timb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 15, 2015, 01:38:00 pm
content: Quote from: rs20 on November 13, 2015, 09:24:25 amI think the cars *should target* specific groups of people to kill. Not even when avoiding an accident. I'm talking about intentionally killing people. On purpose.Let's say, in the future everyone is implanted with a radio ID tag. Now let's say the pedestrian is a convicted pedophile (a pedostrian, if you will). We could program the cars to target them.In fact, anyone convicted of a violent crime is set free instead of going to prison. The catch? All cars in the world are now aggro!The cars would have huge steel plow like bumpers, with spikes! In this future, people will add killing accessories to pimp their rides. Chainsaws, laser targeting machine guns, flame throwers... The possibilities are endless.Since the cars are self-driving, they could hunt 24/7. Imagine packs of wild cars, roaming the streets. Hunting down and dolling out a little ultraviolence to the dregs of society.We wouldn't even need the police anymore! Imagine, you see a mugger grab an old lady's purse, she screams, you hear the throaty roar of a V8; the acrid smell of burning rubber and high octane fuel fills your nose, then... SPLAT! A fine mist of blood appears where, only seconds before, the mugger was standing. The old lady picks up her purse, wiping a few gibs off the bloodstained leather and pats the heroic car gently on the A-pillar, before ambling off.The mugger's mangled body lays motionless on the sidewalk. You and a few bystanders cheer as the car slowly backs over the body; the sticky racing slick crushing his head with a satisfy *crunch*. The huge calipers keep the front wheels glued to the ground as the back wheels begin to spin faster and faster, sending blood, entrails and pieces of burning rubber spraying from the back of the car. A spleen lands on your shoulder. You decide to keep it, to show your children: Crime. Doesn't. Pay.Imagine it.Sent from my Tablet