"We did it, Patrick! We made a technological breakthrough!"
A place for all those who loathe AI to discuss things, post articles, and ridicule the AI hype. Proud supporter of working people. And proud booer of SXSW 2024.
Why wouldn't we accept that? We accept so many deaths by human car drivers.
It won't be hard to have self-driving cars be 10 times safer, which will save many lives. But that does mean we have to accept some deaths by self-driving cars.
No deaths would be awesome, but for that we would have to completely restructure all existing traffic infrastructure. In the current case there will allways be scenarios where even the best drivers (human or robot) won't be able to avoid a collision.
In America we lose about the same amount of lives to vehicles as we do guns. (CDC numbers.) Little under half of guns deaths are suicides, almost all the rest are gang activity (yes, that's code for "brown people killing each other", doesn't make it excusable) and other things we can avoid.
Point being, vehicular death is nearly 100% random. We make guns out to be a huge danger and completely ignore car deaths. Guy shoots 4 people, nationwide news, every time. Family of 4 gets smeared off the interstate? Maybe a quick blurb in your local news.
Scariest part is all these deaths despite the radical improvements in safety I've seen in the past 5 decades. FFS, we used to be OK with drunk driving, people had hissy fits over mandatory seat belt use and airbags. I remember people arguing that anti-lock brakes were dangerous. We have crumple zones vs. cars that were basically rolling I-beams.
tl;dr: I can avoid bullets. I cannot avoid driving risk.
I agree with your general point, but
"brown people killing each other" "things you can avoid" ...by not being a brown person?
By not being in a gang was the idea. Live by the sword, die by the sword. Gun nuts use that stat to basically say, "That sort of violence doesn't count." I bring it up to highlight that, while inexcusable, it's not random like vehicular deaths.
Only if its the death of the idiot that uttered that, so, yeah, very technically true, I guess.
Yes, society has become that insensitive and dumb.
Would Waymo accept society destroying robotaxis ?
Prolly not. But to Waymo killing humans is a profit margin issue.
If a robot taxi were to hit and kill the Waymo CEO, that would be the only acceptable death.
Naw, there are a few others that would be acceptable.
Yeah and the moment that happens we'll have a bunch of burnt down robotaxis. If they don't do that to themselves first, lol.
Hrd change his tune if it was reciprocal death, and their CEOs and boardmembers were the pool, that a random dice roll would make one of them the sacrifice.
Only way I will accept it is if the board members are all held to the same degree of responsibility as a driver on the road. Your AI car ran someone over? There goes the company drivers license for a few years… Good luck keeping your AI car company afloat in that time.
That would collapse the industry overnight. Who in their right mind would take on that risk?!
I want self-driving vehicles someday. They are incapable of road rage, getting drunk, etc. There's going to be risk no matter what, but once this tech is truly mature, that risk is going to be far below what we see from humans. I foresee a time when you have to pay extra insurance to self drive, and it may even eventually be banned outside of closed tracks.
You won't accept an AI car killing someone, but you're OK with losing ~41,000 people a year to human drivers? If the former upsets you, the later should enrage you. (American numbers, probably better in places like Europe. Fewer drivers, shorter distances.)
That's a great idea.
No, we’re apathetic and resigned to it. Very different.