Garages, beach huts, woods etc

martinsurrey

westernpromise wrote: »

My point is that your car, or all three vehicles jointly, may decide to kill you, rather than the car thieves or the driver of the illegal truck, because picking the blameless driver to die reduces the casualties to one. The software might decide, depending on what else it knows, that as the blameless driver has no dependants, she's clearly the most expendable, so another reason for her to be the one who gets to be killed in the inevitable crash.

These are not decisions I'd be prepared to entrust to software.

so you would rather it be in the hands of the bags of flesh that put you in the problem in the first place, if all cars are driver less, there would be no "scrote" overtaking...


so now from driverless cars you've got judge, jury and executioner cars thats quite a leap.

The cars will make the same decisions a driver would, but faster and better, without over reacting, without freezing in panic, without locking the wheels and flipping the car.

while I accept that the cars may make a mistake or two, currently 1700 people die in car incidents in the UK, with drivers being to blame in most cases.

DRFC1879 wrote: »

All interesting things that need to be carefully considered.


The other worry for me is the reliability of the software. Generally a couple of times a day Excel, Outlook or SAP crash on my computer. The most I can lose there is a couple of hours' unsaved work. If the car crashes it could cost me my life and there's a lot more to process than a few numbers in a spreadsheet so the technology has to be spot on.

the software running our power grid and planes, and banking and satellites run for 100,000 of hours with minor issues, as its designed for the hardware, I dont doubt its going to take time, but its not like trying to amke a home computer that has to be able to run everything, it just has to drive.

DRFC1879

Yep. Good point regarding satellites etc. Although I did see a video doing the rounds of a Volvo safety demonstration in which someone stood in front of one of their cars as it was designed to automatically stop before hitting him and he was 100% confident until he went over the bonnet!

martinsurrey

DRFC1879 wrote: »

Yep. Good point regarding satellites etc. Although I did see a video doing the rounds of a Volvo safety demonstration in which someone stood in front of one of their cars as it was designed to automatically stop before hitting him and he was 100% confident until he went over the bonnet!

just like the first head gasket made probably blew up after a mile, yet here we are, making millions of them with very few early defects.

its just the internet makes these early steps very public.

DRFC1879

Oh aye. The tone of my post was meant to be a bit jovial but that might not have come across in the reading. Probably should've put a winky, smiley, rolling around laughingy thingy on there!

westernpromise

martinsurrey wrote: »

The cars will make the same decisions a driver would.

You have absolutely no idea what decisions the car would make. None at all.

I would take whatever action preserved myself. I would not drive a car that I could not trust to do the same (but I'm not stopping you).

martinsurrey

westernpromise wrote: »

You have absolutely no idea what decisions the car would make. None at all.

either do you, but you decided they would gang up and kill the single person...

The sad fact is that while sitting at a keyboard we're all Nigel Mansell who all drive 100% of the time with 100% focus, and when faced with a split second decision, make the right one 100% of the time.

But in the real world, our decisions are the cause of most accidents and fatalities.

you still haven't dealt with the fact that with driverless cars you would not be in the position of deciding to crash into the car or lorry...

antrobus

westernpromise wrote: »

My point is that your car, or all three vehicles jointly, may decide to kill you, rather than the car thieves or the driver of the illegal truck, because picking the blameless driver to die reduces the casualties to one. The software might decide, depending on what else it knows, that as the blameless driver has no dependants, she's clearly the most expendable, so another reason for her to be the one who gets to be killed in the inevitable crash.

These are not decisions I'd be prepared to entrust to software.

Or it might not. Because the AI has no idea what you're on about because the AI has been programmed to drive the car and nothing else.

All you scenario does is prove that I was right when I said that coping with cars driven by humans is the trickier problem for a self-drive car.

mwpt

martinsurrey wrote: »

so you would rather it be in the hands of the bags of flesh that put you in the problem in the first place, if all cars are driver less, there would be no "scrote" overtaking...

The wp guy is old hat. He is raising objections to problems that don't even exist yet. Once we start sharing the road with autonomous cars his insurance costs will eventually force him to adapt.

martinsurrey

mwpt wrote: »

The wp guy is old hat. He is raising objections to problems that don't even exist yet. Once we start sharing the road with autonomous cars his insurance costs will eventually force him to adapt.

yes, and that cant come soon enough.

Conrad

martinsurrey wrote: »

The cars will make the same decisions a driver would, but faster and better, without over reacting, without freezing in panic, without locking the wheels and flipping the car.

When ALL cars are self drive I think you're correct to say we'll have fewer accidents, however I'm on about the many years of transition where software (literally atomic level atomic interactions) are trying to cope with Human road users all around them.


You imply a lot of trust in software, when you mention power stations et al, but I find as soon as you get into changing dynamic environments and Human interfacing, software can be anything but smart. Every day, even typing this message I encounter issues.


Horizon did a thing on latest AI, and a chief boffin summed it up as 'we still haven't reached the real world intelligence level of the slug'.


Just because software can crunch chess numbers fast, is really meaningless in terms of real world ability and practical intelligence.


Google browser is still trying to flog me holidays I booked months ago, talk about thick, and it's trying to flog me all those I expressly rejected.


EXAMPLE - I was aware someone was driving right up my aaa£se in icy conditions on country roads. I knew if I had to stop quite hard he could hit me. So I made a point of pumping my brake lights as I approached blind bends.
Sure enough and I kid you not, around one of them was a queue of traffic and I had to stop fast (baring in mind the ice), he ploughed straight off the road to avoid me an into a ditch.


Had I not pumped by brakes (heads up) previously he could well have been even closer to me than he was and not had time to avert hitting me.


No way will any software do this.