News: Random pedestrian selflessly gives life to forward science of autonomous cars.

[Leonard D Neubache]

My issue as inferred in my critique of the article is that if society is programmed (no pun intended) to view these matters with statistical apathy then corporations will make some extremely Machiavellian determinations on where profits trump lives.

The more attention and concern these issues get the more pressure will be exerted for them to reduce deaths to as close to zero as possible.

If the response is "autonomous cars kill 3% less people per mile so, meh, it's a win" then there will be no motivation for corporations to do better.

 

[Mage]

AI drivers are safer than human drivers. They pattern-match at least as well (very likely much better), and don't get drunk, high or road-rage.

What point are you making here? A few thousand people were also killed by human drivers that same day.
http://asirt.org/initiatives/informing-road-users/road-safety-facts/road-crash-statistics

Fuck that!
I also don't get drunk, high or road rage.
A materialist society seeks a gross mechanical solution to what would be a spiritual problem - remove alcohol, drugs and stress from people's lives, starting your own. Yeah, sure you will say it's impossible, because you don't believe in anything, you don't believe humans can change. Yet all successful cultures have always been made by humans who are somehow a bit better then the rest morally. If you believe humans are just biological automations then it is inevitable you will try to create more precise automations to replace humans. Atheism leads to death of a human being - not trough sudden violence but trough gradual irrelevance.

A hew thousand people were killed by human drivers that day because on that day the amount of human drivers still outnumbered the amount of AI drivers by a factor of more than ten thousand. Stop using fraudulent numbers out of context.

 

[BlueMark]

Leonard, you're giving the average person too much credit. I think it's highly unlikely that most of people in society will be able to turn off their emotionally-driven side and take the same stance of statistical apathy that the corporations have.

I don't know if there is a globalist plan to ban private car ownership. But car culture is not our friend. Cars are inefficient and unfortunately most of the US/Canada/Australia have built their cities around cars instead of people. It's not the middle class that benefits, it's the oil, auto, insurance, and financial corporations.

The proper solution was to build dense, walkable cities with the primary mode of transportation for private individuals being subways, plus commuter trains that go into the suburbs. Europe and Asia have done a better job with that. In US/CA/AU, it's too late to fix the problem directly. Our cities developed around car culture and are now too expensive and spread out to properly implement rail transportation. Autonomous cars are just a solution to this problem. I'm not an AI fanboy but in this particular case it is the lesser evil compared to car culture.

As for this particular incident, look at it another way. As unethical as Uber has been in the past, it is in their interest to make sure their AI can avoid damage to the cars. That means pedestrians, other cars, walls, curbs, etc. In this particular case, it seems like the pedestrian came out of nowhere. Would it have been the same if it'd been a human driver?

http://archive.is/Ip3BW

“It’s very clear it would have been difficult to avoid this collision in any kind of mode [autonomous or human-driven] based on how she came from the shadows right into the roadway,” Moir told the paper, adding that the incident occurred roughly 100 yards from a crosswalk. “It is dangerous to cross roadways in the evening hour when well-illuminated managed crosswalks are available,” she said.

 

[Mage]

Leonard, you're giving the average person too much credit. I think it's highly unlikely that most of people in society will be able to turn off their emotionally-driven side and take the same stance of statistical apathy that the corporations have.

I don't know if there is a globalist plan to ban private car ownership. But car culture is not our friend. Cars are inefficient and unfortunately most of the US/Canada/Australia have built their cities around cars instead of people. It's not the middle class that benefits, it's the oil, auto, insurance, and financial corporations.

The proper solution was to build dense, walkable cities with the primary mode of transportation for private individuals being subways, plus commuter trains that go into the suburbs. Europe and Asia have done a better job with that. In US/CA/AU, it's too late to fix the problem directly. Our cities developed around car culture and are now too expensive and spread out to properly implement rail transportation. Autonomous cars are just a solution to this problem. I'm not an AI fanboy but in this particular case it is the lesser evil compared to car culture.

As for this particular incident, look at it another way. As unethical as Uber has been in the past, it is in their interest to make sure their AI can avoid damage to the cars. That means pedestrians, other cars, walls, curbs, etc. In this particular case, it seems like the pedestrian came out of nowhere. Would it have been the same if it'd been a human driver?

Dude do you realize how domesticated you are to write this - you just assume everyone will be living in a city, like proper pet for corporate masters.

Human driven cars will not disappear until the last person will be forced to abandon his countryside home and move to a big city and I hope it won't happen for a long long time.

You can't use your phone to call a public car in due time if you are not in a city.
You cannot make AI to find the best parking spot in a non - artificial environment. Without a straight sidewalk border your car will have no clue how to park best in a forest or in an open field or at lake shore, because it will have no clue what you as a human being want to do in this place. How do you unload a boat in water with a public automatic car?
You cannot make AI to select the best path if there is no path and no road or if all there is is some small dirt road not even on a map.

All the autonomous car enthusiasts assume a city life by default and an off-road situation is not even crossing their minds. They are all living in a matrix.

Also - you want all people to drive a metro - full if "vibrants" and junkie syringes and spray writings. You want to make all cars rentable and public for them to turn into same type of shitty places? No thanks I prefer my own car, where I alone control the dirt and comfort level. I try to avoid public transportation as much as I can even while living in a big city, because I believe in walls. My car is my Castle!

 

[SteezeySteve]

Throughout history there is always apprehension and resistance to adopt new tech and science.

Im young,grew up with computers,but I dont see further development in tech actually benefiting society as a hole to much and if anything being bad. Obviously people who are industrious capitalists stand to make tons of money off of these advancements and thats positive though.

Then I think about how there were people opposed to the "change" through out history who always lost and are seen as irrational for opposing that change. Im not sure if history repeats itself and we fall into that category or this time its different.

 

[questor70]

AI drivers are safer than human drivers. They pattern-match at least as well (very likely much better), and don't get drunk, high or road-rage.
What point are you making here? A few thousand people were also killed by human drivers that same day.
http://asirt.org/initiatives/informing-road-users/road-safety-facts/road-crash-statistics

This.

Two girls who go to my daughter's school were killed crossing the street near me. There was no explanation for why the driver plowed over them and yet no charges were filed. Hey, shit happens, right? This is the status quo. We tolerate it because it's what we're used to, and yet there's no way in hell human error wasn't the root cause.

Even if there were no autonomous cars, if cars were simply mandated to feature emergency braking then these girls might still be alive.

 

[Thomas More]

TBH, if you've ever lived in an area where people routinely wander into the middle of the street in front of moving traffic, you can sympathize with the AI.

Snark aside, my guess is that since she was walking with her bicycle at night in the shadows, she had a funny-looking visual profile and the AI made the same mistake a human driver would make and not understand that she was something to brake for.

Identifying cars with LIDAR is easy. Identifying people with stereoscopic cameras is probably always a little bit YOLO. Since she was crossing illegally and had a duty to yield, my prediction is a polite settlement and some technical adjustments, then nothing else happens.

Ironically, You Only Look Once (YOLO) is the name of a neural net algorithm used for computer vision object recognition in self driving cars.

YOLO!

 

[Captain Gh]

Self Driveless Car... Well here's what I think about it

[attachment=38713]

 

[Mercenary]

It is my opinion, that there are folk out there hoping beyond hope that AI will manifest itself.
Why?
Cause they foolishly think that a computer will be the salvation of mankind. Almost akin to a quasi-religion.

Worship of AI will be THE new religion.
The religion of the beast and the antichrist.

 

[Aurini]

Remember that unethical experiment Facebook pulled on it's customers a few years back, manipulating their feed to see if they could affect the users' emotions at the end of the day?

How much subtle control could you exert over a population by adjusting their driving routes to see different neighbourhoods?

I don't trust these bugmen farther than I can throw them. They're the LAST people who should be entrusted with this sort of power.

 

[Mercenary]

It is very likely that terror attacks like those in Nice, France, Berlin and London, using vans and/or trucks will continue to force the introduction of driverless cars.

 

[Mercenary]

RE: News: Random pedestrian selflessly gives life to forward science of autonomous

Also, in your driverless car permanently jacked into wifi/AI all your spoken conversations in the car will be recorded & filmed, and all your destinations logged.



My only method of transport once driverless cars become obbligatory:

Roadblocks and dead bodies on the street no problem:

 

[Buck Wild]

The gov't will request--and receive--backdoor access to the software of every single autonomous car on the road (if you don't think so, I've got some swampland in NYC to sell you). If you don't find the implications of that completely chilling, then you are beyond saving.

 

[Simeon_Strangelight]

This is one of my major concerns.

Eliminating private vehicle ownership is part of the globalist plan, and it seems their strategy for that is to push driverless cars and bizarrely tout them as the solution to road congestion, as if they occupy less space than a normal car.

I foresee normal drivers being blamed for every autonomous vehicle crash (you twitched toward the right lane without indicating and ran the MekkaUber into a truck) before governments simply push to ban the sale of non-autonomous vehicles entirely. After that they just make the life of normal drivers a regulatory hell and and wait for the few hold-outs to die off.

The change can even be implemented on a purely corporate level. A few closed-door meetings between auto-industry CEOs and before you know it all autonomous vehicles are being sold at below-cost while non-autonomous vehicles have their price jacked up to cover the difference. Before long the non-autonomous range fades away "for lack of interest" while the prices on the autonomous range creep back up to profitability.

That sounds about right.

There was a great SF TV series from New Zealand named - This is not my life:



What was more interesting than the mind-altering tech shown was the lifestyle of the people. The folk had only access to electric cars of very limited range and they were mostly self-driving - of course under full surveillance with only a given carbon-quota.

Self-driving cars will come sooner or later - and it will be simply much more expensive to drive your car on your own. Some people will probably still want to do it, but would have to pay extra for insurance.

Also many have missed the fact that some European countries like Netherlands will only sell electric cars within 2030. California will follow suit in 2040. Combustion cars will be a thing that will be taxed through the roof - and so will be the range you can possible live away from the city unless you are very wealthy.

 

[CynicalContrarian]

The gov't will request--and receive--backdoor access to the software of every single autonomous car on the road (if you don't think so, I've got some swampland in NYC to sell you). If you don't find the implications of that completely chilling, then you are beyond saving.

They'll probably find a way to force the selling of Farcebook adverts inside the car at the same time...

 

[Mage]

I suspect globalists will attempt to take away people's cars just like they want to take away guns.

If cars had existed in times of founding fathers - they would without a doubt include cars in 2nd amendment or make an amendment for them specifically.

Every person who is pro gun should also be pro owning his own personal means of transportation and should defend these rights with the same passion.

The freedom to move freely, securely and privately outside other people's private property is on the same level as freedom to defend yourself and speak freely. It's just has never been significantly challenged so we have never thought about it that way.

If someone says that you are always free to move wherever you want with your feet or on a bicycle - it's the same as saying that 2nd amendment applies only to muskets.

 

[Handsome Creepy Eel]

RE: News: Random pedestrian selflessly gives life...

The claim that AI is inherently safer than a human is so staggeringly stupid that it beggars belief. Would you seriously put your and other people's lives into the hands of this?

Computers have plenty of uses and can enrich our lives in many ways, but driving is not one of them. It's an inherently unsolvable, self-defeating problem because its end result must always be either:

A) there are too many variables to track and the system routinely fails at its task, malfunctioning and wreaking havoc
or
B) you successfully track all the variables and create a monstrous, psychopathic system that can cull anyone at any moment because of "muh public policy", "resource considerations", "weighted factor analysis of the situation" or whatever else.

This is not to even mention the problems that extend far, far beyond software considerations. Why do you think RAM, hard drives and CPUs all come with product warranties? Because they're not perfect, their manufacturing processes are not perfect, their materials are not perfect, and thus are expected to routinely malfunction, crash or cease functioning.

Why replace humans with something just as unreliable, only in more subtle ways? Thanks but no thanks.

 

[CynicalContrarian]

^
Calls the service / helpdesk.

"My self-driving car just crashed."

"Hello sir, have you turned it off & on again?"

"Fool, I mean a literal crash!"

 

[BlueMark]

This thread has really gone off the rails (hah) into straw man and conspiracy territory. People have raised valid concerns about surveillance, control, computer failure, etc.

I get that AI might not be the best solution. I agree that there's potential for abuse. So I'm not going to defend AI driving here.

But keep a few things in perspective.

(1) Urban areas in the US, where most of the job opportunities are, have shown their inability to handle population growth. This is due to poor planning.

Autonomous cars are offered as a solution to the problem. They are hardly the best.

IMO the proper solution is to transition toward more high-density developments along existing rail transit lines. But there is no political will to do that.

(2) Road traffic causes so many fatalities and injuries. Let's take a look at Singapore (subway-oriented) vs Arizona (car-oriented).
Population: 5.6 million vs 6.9 million (4.6 in Phoenix metro)
Number of traffic deaths: 197 (2013) vs 962 (2016)

In Arizona, there were 196 pedestrian deaths alone, almost as many as the total road deaths in Singapore. So many people have died in Arizona because the state's major city is completely car-oriented. People have no choice but to drive.

Hell, there were 10 pedestrian deaths in Arizona in a week shortly before this incident. Where's the outrage over that?

Let me say this again if it's not clear: The real root cause behind road traffic deaths is the orientation of our transportation system in favor of road transit.

Dude do you realize how domesticated you are to write this - you just assume everyone will be living in a city, like proper pet for corporate masters.

As both a car owner and a gun owner, I am hardly the domesticated city dweller that you have in mind. I don't like a lot of things about my current city; in fact I hate those things. But the city is where it's at for access to job opportunities and women.

I used to live in the suburbs. I experienced firsthand how dehumanizing the commute was, especially after taking subways in Europe and Asia and realizing that it didn't have to be that way. I felt a lot more like a corporate pet back then, compared to being able to take the subway to work today.

Human driven cars will not disappear until the last person will be forced to abandon his countryside home and move to a big city and I hope it won't happen for a long long time.

You can't use your phone to call a public car in due time if you are not in a city.
You cannot make AI to find the best parking spot in a non - artificial environment. Without a straight sidewalk border your car will have no clue how to park best in a forest or in an open field or at lake shore, because it will have no clue what you as a human being want to do in this place. How do you unload a boat in water with a public automatic car?
You cannot make AI to select the best path if there is no path and no road or if all there is is some small dirt road not even on a map.

All the autonomous car enthusiasts assume a city life by default and an off-road situation is not even crossing their minds. They are all living in a matrix.

Nobody is trying to force autonomous cars into rural places. I don't have a problem with dense cities or rural places. It's the low-density, high-sprawl, high-traffic cities/suburbs like Los Angeles that I can't stand.

Also - you want all people to drive a metro - full if "vibrants" and junkie syringes and spray writings. You want to make all cars rentable and public for them to turn into same type of shitty places? No thanks I prefer my own car, where I alone control the dirt and comfort level. I try to avoid public transportation as much as I can even while living in a big city, because I believe in walls. My car is my Castle!

Chill out. I am very well aware of these types. They are the result of left-wing policies and lax policing, but don't blame public transportation for it. You won't see much of that in Japan or Singapore.

Every person who is pro gun should also be pro owning his own personal means of transportation and should defend these rights with the same passion.

The freedom to move freely, securely and privately outside other people's private property is on the same level as freedom to defend yourself and speak freely. It's just has never been significantly challenged so we have never thought about it that way.

Modern American car culture is a mid 20th century invention, where the costs are hidden from you -- taxes to pay for roads, laws that mandate parking spaces, etc. You don't get those things for free; of course it's different if you're living in a rural area with private roads (and more power to you if you do). Don't conflate it with freedom and the Second Amendment.

BTW the Swiss take their guns onto public transit. http://archive.is/6G4fY

 

[porscheguy]

High density housing is communism. While suburbia is a little odd, at least it can provide opportunities to commune with nature. I find endless expanses of concrete and asphalt to be soul crushing. You say commuting is dehumanizing. I say cutting yourself off from nature to work in cubicles and live in endless concrete boxes is dehumanizing.