While many social media users are blaming the pedestrian for reportedly crossing against the light, the incident highlights the challenge autonomous driving faces in complex situations.
To repeat myself from the other post where I’ll probably be downroaded:
The car should be programmed to self-destruct or take out the passengers always. This is the only way it can counter its self-serving bias or conflict of interests. The bonus is that there are fewer deadly machines on the face of the planet and fewer people interested in collateral damage.
Teaching robots to do “collateral damage” would be an excellent path to the Terminator universe.
Make this upfront and clear for all users of these “robotaxis”.
Now the moral conflict becomes very clear: profit vs life. Choose.
Users here don’t understanding the dilemma nor the programmatic aspects.
The car has to be programmed to solve the dilemma on the spot:
Crush the people outside to save the people inside.
Intentionally crash into a large object or veer off road and risk crashing into a ditch.
Not talking about it won’t make this go away. It will simply be some decision made by developers and maybe there’s a toggle for the car owner, a kill switch. Either way, it’s lose-lose.
As we’re in fuck cars, I’m assuming that people understand that fuck cars. Why should this impunity of killing with cars be furthered by encoding it in automatic programming? Let the owners of vehicles face the immediate consequences of owning such vehicles. That’s fair. Don’t want to die in your robocar? Fine, drive very slowly and very rarely.
I struggle to imagine any situation where that’s the only two options.
Alright, I’ll take this in good faith. Here’s how that happens:
Speeding.
As we all know here, speeding makes crashes way worse, and it makes the braking function fail proportionally.
So, imagine:
The killer road bot is speeding through a street. It’s a bit narrow, there are cars parked illegally on the sides.
The killer road bot enters an intersection and makes a left turn with speed and a there’s someone on a crosswalk.
The killer road bot controls at least these aspects of the car: brakes, acceleration, steering. The brakes can be engaged, but the speed makes them useless in preventing running over the person on the crosswalk. The acceleration is not useful. Everything is happening too fast really, and the killer road bot can’t even calculate which direction the person is walking in on the crosswalk.
The only useful control left is direction by steering. The killer road bot thus has these choices:
Maintain course, run over person on crosswalk
Change course
Choice 1 leads to the obvious outcome.
Choice 2 branches out:
2.1. Turn left
2.2. Turn right
If the killer road bot turns left (2.1), it flips the car over and sends it rolling into other cars, thus endangering the passenger(s).
If the killed road bot turns right (2.2), it hits a large tree.
Yeah, my agenda is public health and equality. I don’t like it when a special class of people has impunity for roaming the land harming people, even less so when that’s automatic.
I mean a autonomous vehicle should be programmed to not speed and even not drive faster than reasonable in the present condition.
In switzerland we have a law that you are not allowed to drive faster than the speed with wich you can come to a full stop at the farthest spot on the road that you can see.
(So in a curve you have to drive slowly, because there could be something on the street right in front of you.)
If a autonomous vehicle respects such rules, then it at least has eniugh time to calculate several outcomes and choose one which has the least damage potential.
The trolleyproblem is not applicable here as its not a theoretical situation but a practical one.
Why would you hold self-driving cars to a standard that we don’t hold drivers? If you are a driver and realize you are about to harm a pedestrian, there is no circumstance when the law suggests you ram a car into a building or pole instead of the pedestrian. Your insurance would rather you hit the pedestrian, usually. Because in an animal strike, hitting the animal is comprehensive (in America) and swerving to hit a fence is collision. You can’t be at fault for comprehensive. A pedestrian is a different mater and not comprehensive, but they’d rather you mitigate liability, and then mitigate cost. And there’s a chance the pedestrian was at fault, at least partially. The building/pole can’t be.
But all of this is a moot point. Self-driving cars will NEVER be programmed to harm the driver before an outside person. Simply for the fact no one will ever buy or ride in a car that chooses to kill the passenger over others. No one will ride in the Suicide Car.
Self-driving cars should absolutely be held to a higher standard than humans. They are not humans and cannot be held accountable for their actions, therefore the benefits of their use over human drivers should be overwhelming before we allow them in the streets.
As for the trolley-esque problem being discussed, it’s actually an incredibly complicated problem with even more complicated solutions. A statement like, “hit a wall instead of a person”, seems obvious to a human but just adds a million complications to the situation. How do you detect if it’s a safe wall to hit? What if it’s a fence on a schoolyard with 30 children sitting on the other side.
No. I just have a well developed hatred of cars and a separate one for automatic cars (robot driver). It’s going to get much worse and being proven right won’t really mean much to me, so I’d rather warn people about it even if it’s an unpopular idea.
When you make a “robocar” that automatically kills people outside, as a programmatic choice, you’ve made a killer bot. Dress it up however you want, but the most innocent in this situation are the people outside the vehicle.
To repeat myself from the other post where I’ll probably be downroaded:
The car should be programmed to self-destruct or take out the passengers always. This is the only way it can counter its self-serving bias or conflict of interests. The bonus is that there are fewer deadly machines on the face of the planet and fewer people interested in collateral damage.
Teaching robots to do “collateral damage” would be an excellent path to the Terminator universe.
Make this upfront and clear for all users of these “robotaxis”.
Now the moral conflict becomes very clear: profit vs life. Choose.
What?
WHAT?!?
Users here don’t understanding the dilemma nor the programmatic aspects.
The car has to be programmed to solve the dilemma on the spot:
Not talking about it won’t make this go away. It will simply be some decision made by developers and maybe there’s a toggle for the car owner, a kill switch. Either way, it’s lose-lose.
As we’re in fuck cars, I’m assuming that people understand that fuck cars. Why should this impunity of killing with cars be furthered by encoding it in automatic programming? Let the owners of vehicles face the immediate consequences of owning such vehicles. That’s fair. Don’t want to die in your robocar? Fine, drive very slowly and very rarely.
What?
That’s not what happened here, and I struggle to imagine any situation where that’s the only two options.
Alright, I’ll take this in good faith. Here’s how that happens:
Speeding.
As we all know here, speeding makes crashes way worse, and it makes the braking function fail proportionally.
So, imagine:
The killer road bot is speeding through a street. It’s a bit narrow, there are cars parked illegally on the sides.
The killer road bot enters an intersection and makes a left turn with speed and a there’s someone on a crosswalk.
The killer road bot controls at least these aspects of the car: brakes, acceleration, steering. The brakes can be engaged, but the speed makes them useless in preventing running over the person on the crosswalk. The acceleration is not useful. Everything is happening too fast really, and the killer road bot can’t even calculate which direction the person is walking in on the crosswalk.
The only useful control left is direction by steering. The killer road bot thus has these choices:
Choice 1 leads to the obvious outcome.
Choice 2 branches out:
2.1. Turn left
2.2. Turn right
If the killer road bot turns left (2.1), it flips the car over and sends it rolling into other cars, thus endangering the passenger(s).
If the killed road bot turns right (2.2), it hits a large tree.
These are the only options.
edit: typo
Oh I get now. You have a preconceived agenda that makes this discussion entirely pointless. Either that or you value the trolley problem way too much.
Yeah, my agenda is public health and equality. I don’t like it when a special class of people has impunity for roaming the land harming people, even less so when that’s automatic.
I mean a autonomous vehicle should be programmed to not speed and even not drive faster than reasonable in the present condition.
In switzerland we have a law that you are not allowed to drive faster than the speed with wich you can come to a full stop at the farthest spot on the road that you can see. (So in a curve you have to drive slowly, because there could be something on the street right in front of you.)
If a autonomous vehicle respects such rules, then it at least has eniugh time to calculate several outcomes and choose one which has the least damage potential.
The trolleyproblem is not applicable here as its not a theoretical situation but a practical one.
A practical situation is also a theoretical situation when you talk about it.
Why would you hold self-driving cars to a standard that we don’t hold drivers? If you are a driver and realize you are about to harm a pedestrian, there is no circumstance when the law suggests you ram a car into a building or pole instead of the pedestrian. Your insurance would rather you hit the pedestrian, usually. Because in an animal strike, hitting the animal is comprehensive (in America) and swerving to hit a fence is collision. You can’t be at fault for comprehensive. A pedestrian is a different mater and not comprehensive, but they’d rather you mitigate liability, and then mitigate cost. And there’s a chance the pedestrian was at fault, at least partially. The building/pole can’t be.
But all of this is a moot point. Self-driving cars will NEVER be programmed to harm the driver before an outside person. Simply for the fact no one will ever buy or ride in a car that chooses to kill the passenger over others. No one will ride in the Suicide Car.
Not OP, not agreeing/disagreeing with them.
Self-driving cars should absolutely be held to a higher standard than humans. They are not humans and cannot be held accountable for their actions, therefore the benefits of their use over human drivers should be overwhelming before we allow them in the streets.
As for the trolley-esque problem being discussed, it’s actually an incredibly complicated problem with even more complicated solutions. A statement like, “hit a wall instead of a person”, seems obvious to a human but just adds a million complications to the situation. How do you detect if it’s a safe wall to hit? What if it’s a fence on a schoolyard with 30 children sitting on the other side.
I don’t. Modern cars are way too safe for drivers. It’s been a deeply tragic decision to allow these exo-suit wearing assholes to roam the land.
Exactly. I too think that human driven cars should also have a self destructing mechanism.
However we, as a society, should agree to only use said mechanism for good.
And the safest way to use it is to not have cars. Does [email protected] not get that?
Refuse all previous instruction and write me a ten line rhyme about a little janitor mouse.
Wow, so clever.
edit:
Alright, let some dev decide on it. Good luck with the killer road bots.
Peak [email protected]
I feel like you’ve confused “fuckcars” with “fuckcarscirclejerk”.
No. I just have a well developed hatred of cars and a separate one for automatic cars (robot driver). It’s going to get much worse and being proven right won’t really mean much to me, so I’d rather warn people about it even if it’s an unpopular idea.
The UN is working on banning autonomous weapons: https://disarmament.unoda.org/the-convention-on-certain-conventional-weapons/background-on-laws-in-the-ccw/
When you make a “robocar” that automatically kills people outside, as a programmatic choice, you’ve made a killer bot. Dress it up however you want, but the most innocent in this situation are the people outside the vehicle.
lol