News

9 readers

1 users here now

Breaking news and current events worldwide.

founded 2 years ago

Driverless Cars Are Worse at Spotting Kids and Dark-Skinned People, Study Says (gizmodo.com.au)

submitted 2 years ago by stopthatgirl7@kbin.social to c/news@kbin.social

5 comments fedilink hide all child comments

New research shows driverless car software is significantly more accurate with adults and light skinned people than children and dark-skinned people.

all 6 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] albinanigans@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

Great, self-driving cars can be childfree and racist, just like some human drivers!

[–] Flexaris@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Statistically there are going to be some things they will do worse at but is it significant?

[–] stopthatgirl7@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Researchers ran more than 8,000 images through the software and found that the self-driving car systems were nearly 20% better at detecting adult pedestrians than kids, and more than 7.5% better at detecting light-skinned pedestrians over dark-skinned ones. The AI were even worse at spotting dark-skinned people in low light and low settings, making the tech even less safe at night.

I’d say a 20% difference is pretty significant.

[+] snarf@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] stopthatgirl7@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I would say that’s not actually at all a relevant question, but a form of whataboutism, since this is looking at just driverless programs and comparing how they are with themselves, and what problems with programming and training models could result in that difference.

[–] Ganondorf@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

a form of whataboutism

Agreed. The argument of matching autonomous vehicle perceptions with human perception should be completely irrelevant. When an autonomous vehicle has that significant of a margin of error, who ends up being responsible for the accident? When humans are involved, the driver is responsible. Is a manufacturer liable in the event of all autonomous vehicle caused accidents? Guaranteed corporations will rally and lobby to make that not possible. The situations aren't the same and a huge selling point of autonomous vehicles has always been that they should be the safest form of piloting a vehicle.