Well, it is a prototype, afterall. That being said, I'd like to see manual override (joystick, yoke, etc.) for when you do need to manually manoeuver difficult terrain. And, I'm sure people will mod their vehicles to suit their tastes.
Is Google selling you it's search engine, so you can mod it? No. And I don't think they will sell their cars either. They will probably offer free Ubers to select destinations. And what class of car you get, depends on how much money the "destination" pays them to deliver you.
Yeah, but you don't have access to any of their search engine. Unless google has invented a way to prevent any modification of any kind to a physical object, you will be able to modify it if you know what you're doing.
Some people expect many self-driving cars to be owned and operated as a service by a big company, rather than being owned by the users. Like riding a bus or train, they won't let you take a wrench to it.
The way Google sees it is that even with those theoretical scenarios - where it's forced to choose between what it thinks is the least harmful - the Google car is still far smarter than a human, and, crucially, will save thousands of lives by existing in the first place.
I dislike this being described as smarter. So far, what we've seen as described is behavior that is more predictable and consistent. In the scenario described by the OP, in which the car slammed its brakes because of a jogger on the opposite side of the road...that doesn't strike me as a decision based off of what we'd traditionally consider "intelligence", but a strict adherence to a set of rules that could use a little more refinement and complexity.
Even if self-driving cars do dominate future roads, it's going to be an interesting few years of transition...human drivers are going to quickly realize that their automated counterparts are almost always going to follow the rules, allowing humans to cut them off without worry...Maybe at some point, these incidents are going to be logged as evidence (using dashboard cams that are almost certainly going to be standard on all driverless-cars) to prosecute those overly aggressive human drivers?
I dislike this being described as smarter. So far, what we've seen as described is behavior that is more predictable and consistent. In the scenario described by the OP, in which the car slammed its brakes because of a jogger on the opposite side of the road...that doesn't strike me as a decision based off of what we'd traditionally consider "intelligence", but a strict adherence to a set of rules that could use a little more refinement and complexity.
In a way, the rules are a kind of "codified intelligence", and a computer that follows them can be said to be smarter, at least if we defined that based on the results, eg. "able to take a better path to achieve the same goal" (in that case, hurting less people).
Even if self-driving cars do dominate future roads, it's going to be an interesting few years of transition...human drivers are going to quickly realize that their automated counterparts are almost always going to follow the rules, allowing humans to cut them off without worry...Maybe at some point, these incidents are going to be logged as evidence (using dashboard cams that are almost certainly going to be standard on all driverless-cars) to prosecute those overly aggressive human drivers?
Maybe, but there's also the 'glasshole' effect - others drivers will already be anxious about driveless cars, you don't want to add reasons to make them angry at them as well.
Even self-driving cars aren't perfect. The reason you don't cut in front of a human driver is because human reaction time is finite and you're likely to get hit. The same goes for a computer driver - it has a hard limit on how much it can track and if you happen to cut in front when it's taxed... you'll get hit. You're still gambling on the other driver noticing you on time and hitting the brakes.
The trick is not caring when people cut in front of you, and even leaving extra space for them to take if they want. I'd say that traditionally falls under "wisdom" rather than "intelligence".
It's easier for a machine than a human, but it can be learned. I doubt it measurably affects my commute times.
Agreed – I have spent so much time in traffic consistently going at the average speed, not tailgating, etc. and repeating the cycle of passing and being passed by aggressive drivers who are too busy making crazy lane changes to notice that they've spent an hour not getting any further ahead.
I'm reluctant to call this "wisdom", though...I've learned not to be surprised when friends and colleagues who are otherwise near-paragons in wisdom in work and life can suddenly turn into road-ragers. For some people, getting angry in the car is not a typical characteristic but may result after a series of stresses that day.
So the machine isn't being "wise" when it avoids road rage, it's just being a machine.
I call it wisdom because the ability to remain calm and ego-less in all situations seems to be the sort of thing taught by certain religious groups who are big on meditation. But of course, it doesn't require that. Truck drivers need to learn to drive this way too.
Humans seem to need some kind of training let go of our natural instinct to punish "cheaters". A machine can just do it, as can a stone for that matter. So: artificial wisdom.
It's not just more predictable - it is smarter. Your human "intelligence" in such a situation is only as good as your snap judgments, and because a computer works so much faster it is absolutely smarter than you or I in that particular setting.
I find the human vs machine scenarios that tend to dominate these discussions less interesting than the machine vs machine scenarios. There's going to be a huge shakeout as the auto industry transitions to self-driving cars and companies are going to do desperate things to stay in business. There will absolutely be self-driving cars that are marketed on their superior "safe" speed and supposed better AI to get through traffic quickly but in practice just means they cut off overly cautious cars all the time.
Agree. I think the way it will shake out is having a standardized communication protocol for driverless cars that allows them to tap into collective intelligence to make decisions together. This will probably be mandated, with testing to ensure that in certain scenarios all AIs respond in the same predictable way. Competing AIs sounds like it could quickly get out of hand.
I don't think driverless cars will act as individual units for a very long time when the opportunity to have them operate collectively can produce meaningful efficiency gains. For example, drafting on freeways to reduce drag, or being in communication with local streetlights to shape traffic patterns. That's one of the great benefits of moving away from human controlled cars - collective intelligence is possible.
It's "boring" for the same reason people get "bored" in buses, subways and trains. That doesn't mean they don't use those because they are boring. If it gets 3x cheaper to travel by self-driving taxi vs driving your own car, people will choose them in droves.
In fact, look at self-driving taxis or cars as your personal and private "bus" or limo, if you will.
I'd rather see self-driving buses and trains that run on clean renewable energy than self-driving cars. But Google won't do that because there's no individual trackability with mass transportation. And remember, Google is an advertising media company, and their business is individual surveillance of all human behavior. Hard to do in mass transportation. Easy to do, in fact, a bonanza, when done in individual vehicles. I fully expect Google to pursue this vigorously: target who's in these cars, where they're going, what their life history is, interests, aspirations, friends, etc, and then upsell the hell out of them while the car's moving -- hey, we're about to ride by your favorite store and we know you've been searching for prices on XYZ, well this store will offer you and you alone a special 20% off if we pull over now. In fact they'll run out to the car and hand an XYZ to you, you can go home with it today, and hey we'll take care of the credit card transaction, what do you say? Shall we swing by and get that XYZ you've been after for 1.6732 years? Tap here for yes, or here for no.....
> I'd rather see self-driving buses and trains that run on clean renewable energy than self-driving cars.
That's certainly where this is going, but the problem with mass transit is bootstrapping.
Currently, I take one of the Amtrak trains regularly, not terribly fast, but I'm not driving. However, I still need a car at either end of the train for the short hop to house/office.
If I could summon a self-driving car, I would take the train more often. In addition, if I could summon a self-driving car, I wouldn't worry about keeping a strict schedule at the office (very few places have trains/subways that run with enough frequency that you don't have to pay attention to schedule).
This sounds like a conspiracy theory to me. A much more plausible reason why this is being targeted at individual vehicle taxi-like behavior is that it's a lot more cost effective to use human drivers for public transportation because the ratio of passengers to drivers is much higher. I doubt it would be worth the cost of the research to do away with all the bus drivers in the country; the expensive part is maintenance.
Why do you think it's harder to track mass transportation? Things like clipper cards, credit cards, etc will be able to log the data. If they also offered wifi it will help as well.
Don't know why they didn't do mass transportation, but my guess is legislation and unions. Getting rid of personal cars and human driving taxis is private industry. Mass transportation will have a large percentage be public sector workers and union workers.
If this is the path of least resistence and is proven to work, they will most likely go after mass transportation as well.
Google don't need to do trains because other companies have been progressing this since the 1960s — the Victoria Line on the London Underground opened with the first automatic train operation in 1968. There are now many similar systems.
Buses are more complicated than cars (city driving, people at stops etc), so doing cars first makes sense.
Agree on the buses vs trains. Infrastructure is already there for modern train systems to be automated.
>Buses are more complicated than cars (city driving, people at stops etc), so doing cars first makes sense.
I don't think this is a valid argument. I see self driving cars operating in Mountain View (a city, albeit not a crazy driving city like SF or Boston), these cars are aware of people as stated in the article, the condition of people at stops can start with stopping at... well stops ->recognizing people that are waiting there. Maybe prepayment to figure out how many people should have boarded.
Ah, Google does have an "idiot detector". I knew they'd need that. I was once thinking in terms of classifying other moving objects using RPG categories. A bike messenger is "chaotic good" - they may break rules but are trying to avoid collisions. Act predictably and let them avoid you. Drunks are "chaotic neutral" - expect random behavior, don't try to predict their movement, allow lots of extra clearance and leave room for evasive action. Cars or pedestrians trying to cut you off, harass you, or cause a collision are "chaotic evil" - take evasive action and leave area, or emergency stop.
They need a London nutcase detector for the UK. That's a whole different case. I was on a bus a couple of weeks ago and a completely naked man proceeded to walk in front of it and take a selfie of the bus and himself with his phone.
BBC always seems to add commentary where there is no need for commentary. It's like they are trying to stir up controversy just to sell people on the stories. Personally, I don't think there's anything boring about a car driving itself. The fact that it is so safe, is actually really exciting. If it is proved that these cars are better, safer drivers than humans that is something really exciting. Can you imagine human driving being illegal in 20 years because it's so unsafe? How's that for excitement. There's no reason for BBC to try so hard to appeal to our emotion. The story is great in and of itself.
The headline is clearly written to attract clicks, but in the article body, I felt this was more tongue-in-cheek than stirring up controversy. The author repeatedly concludes that, though the driving style may be different, this "boringness" is actually a very positive feature.
> It was slow. It was cautious. It was safe, a more attentive driver than any human could possibly ever be.
> And later that evening, as I snaked my way back to San Francisco on the four-to-five lane wide Interstate 880, I wished it was the Google car driving me home.
...
> That's a terrible complaint, isn't it? The impeccable standards are a sign the technology is really quite magnificent.
...
> The way Google sees it is that even with those theoretical scenarios - where it's forced to choose between what it thinks is the least harmful - the Google car is still far smarter than a human, and, crucially, will save thousands of lives by existing in the first place.
> Riding in a Google car may be slow and boring, but the effect it will have on the world certainly isn't.
Personally, I don't think it needs to be there at all. There are other ways to make it more interesting, like imagining a world where it's illegal for humans to drive, than to lazily call the cars boring just to troll.
Interesting question I read in another thread on this. Suppose a driverless car is going for a collision scenario, and its computer gets the choice between hurting the driver but no one else, or protecting the driver but hurting several people. What should it take ? Does your car have a responsibility toward you its owner, or should it go for "the greater good" of saving the most lives possible ? And what if it's not your car but one you rent per use "a la Uber", which will probably come to exists rather soon ?
It does not apply to the google car since the way I understand it their maximum emergency level is "full stop", but it's something that would probably come up at some point, and I'm not sure what the "right" answer is, if there is even one.
Especially when you consider that it may not be certain who the "other people" are. It may have a probabilistic model that says there's a 45% chancce it's hurtling towards a mother pushing a stroller and that it has a 100% that it has a driver sitting in the seat. If it's two actions endanger either the driver or the mother, what kind of calculus should it do?
I was staying on raw numbers without factoring the "some people may deserve saving/protection more than others", because that's yet another can of worms ...
I think too much has been made out of this thought experiment. Practically, I don't think driverless cars would have any strategy other than "full stop". There are too many variables to consider for any other strategy. Of course there will always be Bayesian priors that these cars will use to avoid such situations to ever happen in the first place.
It seems like there's a pretty simple solution to this, based on the definition of "ownership" that so many products are trending towards lately: you don't own the car. Even if you've technically purchased it outright, all you really have is a perpetual and transferable license to use a car that's really owned by google. The car has a responsibility toward its true owner - google - to do the least damage to their reputation and their company, so if it has to choose between killing its occupant or killing four other potential google customers, it's going to choose the occupant.
This just sidesteps the question because Google won't be the only manufacturer. If Toyota's self driving car and Google's self driving car are headed into a collision and Google's AI says "kill Googlecar occupant" and Toyota's AI says "kill Googlecar occupant" then no one's going to buy licenses to drive Googlecars.
When I was learning to drive my dad told me that if I was going to have to have an accident to hit the softer thing, like instead of hitting a tree hit a car.. Like 2 lane road and an approaching car crosses over and there is no option..
We could ask a human driver the same questions, but no country (that I know of) insists that people be able to answer questions like "You have to choose between killing your spouse sitting next to you and three kids walking across the street. What will you do?" before getting their driver's license.
(In any case, the "correct" answer would be "Why the F--- should I be in such a situation, and what should I have done differently to avoid being in such a situation?")
Honestly, why are people so fascinated with these never-happens-in-a-lifetime ethical thought experiments when it comes to self-driving cars? We people aren't that good with ethical problems either, and we have no problem letting people drive.
As a cyclist I cannot wait for all cars to be self driving... I think that will give people far more confidence that they won't be plowed down by anyone on the road
Boring is perfectly acceptable as long as it's predictable. I live in DC where the traffic is terrible – and in the smartphone era people often express a preference for public transportation because it's when they catch up on Facebook, play games, etc. The transit agency has been making a concerted effort to spoil that through poor safety and reliability but I think whoever comes up with a self-driving car will sell a LOT of them around as long as they come with a gadget charger and maybe wifi or a larger screen.
This might also be a good intro for fuel efficient vehicles and alternative fuels: human drivers demand acceleration and avoid slower vehicles (never mind that 80% of their time will be going 13mph in traffic) but someone who's teleworking, playing a game or watching Netflix won't care since they'll get to work at the same time either way.
about predictability, how would driverless car deal with situations like a guy with a chainsaw running towards your car in an intersection or being trapped by motorcycle gang?
What if you were being pursued by an unknown organization, could the driverless car perform evasion driving techniques and safely get it's occupant out of harms way?
How often does that happen outside of Hollywood? Most carjackings already happen when the vehicle is already stopped and I'd bet that the fact that a self-driving car will have 360° video streaming to the police will do more to keep the occupants safe than your video game-honed fantasies.
>I'd bet that the fact that a self-driving car will have 360° video streaming to the police will do more to keep the occupants safe than your video game-honed fantasies.
You realize you're debunking one fantasy with another, right?
1. Self-driving cars have cameras
2. Once #1 is known, the odds of someone not adding the ability to record video and send it over OnStar, et al. will approach zero as soon as the insurance companies hear about it.
In fact, it's unlikely that the manufacturer wouldn't do it directly since they're going to have to survive the first wave of lawsuits any time someone gets in a crash and tries to claim it was a software bug. We've already seen this with Google's use of footage to demonstrate that crashes were caused by the other driver – I find it hard to believe they'd risk losing a lawsuit over a few dollars worth of flash memory?
>I find it hard to believe they'd risk losing a lawsuit over a few dollars worth of flash memory?
Do you find it hard to believe a car manufacturer would risk losing far more than a mere lawsuit by cheating emissions tests, despite the inevitability of getting caught? Or would design their cars in such a way as to allow the brakes to be tampered with over an open internet connection? Or would willingly allow cars on the market with a fatal mechanical flaw, because the calculus tells them paying out death settlements would cost less than a recall and redesign? Auto manufacturers consider the cost of human life and breaking the law as a matter of course, and there is always an acceptable amount of death and illegality they're willing to risk.
Nothing about this scenario requires autonomous cars anyway. They could already be packed with cameras, and streaming panoramic video to the police, yet they aren't. That 'few dollars of flash memory' would have to scale up to a few million dollars or more of something far more persistent and regulated to even be relevant - otherwise the volatility of the memory itself becomes a legal liability. It would also eat bandwidth and require infrastructure and maintenance, all of which would add to the cost of the vehicle, and subtract from its profitability.
While it may be a plausible attempt at futurism, it is far from being certain.
> Do you find it hard to believe a car manufacturer would risk losing far more than a mere lawsuit by cheating emissions tests …
That's an unrelated discussion. We're talking about whether to add an additional benefit to work which they already need to do and which is both obviously a simple addition and a benefit to both the manufacturer and purchaser, not to mention the their insurance company.
> Nothing about this scenario requires autonomous cars anyway. They could already be packed with cameras, and streaming panoramic video to the police, yet they aren't.
They haven't been in the past because those would be new, otherwise unnecessary equipment. You're forgetting that any self-driving car must have the cameras built in to work at all, which means that instead of adding a bunch of cameras you're only adding enough storage to retain footage for some time period.
Similarly, the cost of adding a cellular connection might deter some people if this was the only use but since that's rapidly becoming a common feature you're really only adding the cost of using some extra bandwidth when someone hits a panic button and it's unlikely that anyone is going to begrudge the $0.02 that'll cost in any scenario where this would be relevant.
Fixed that for you :) Although I think you're joking, coming up with scenarios like these is often exactly what people do when change is presented to them - they fill in the gaps with their imagination. Our imagination can create infinite edge cases, but its bad at predicting frequency. Just remove 'driverless car' from your statement and ask yourself the same thing. How would you get out of that?
Carjacking is regular in some countries. Riots also in France (peaceful demonstrations are logged every two weeks in my city), including turning cars upside down. It also happens to destroy a McDonalds because it represents evil American capitalism (see how far people go). It's not a remote idea that Google cars become the new symbol of American hegemony, so yes it is a good idea for the cars to have a "dodge a riot by making an emergency, full-brakes U-turn" feature. Adapting products to countries is fun.
well, my point was that stuff we consider 'hollywood' happens day to day in less wealthy parts of the world, that's what I meant, it'd be interesting to see what solutions we come up with.
And to answer somebody who said, you couldn't get out of a situation yourself, that's the whole point of trusting a driverless AI, I want it to do the impossible for me.
Imagine if you had driverless cars in the favelas, that's what I mean.
Like that simpsons episode, where the truck automatically evades danger. I wonder if it's possible to have a driverless car that is able to perform these type of 'humanly impossible' feats.
I don't see why not, a sensor monitoring the world in ultra slow motion, able to steer it's occupants to safety when it detects a threat.
Agree. As long as boring works, that's fantastic. Things like our core infrastructure, institutions, and services should be boring and predictable. That lets them fade into the background so we can focus our efforts elsewhere, and it also means that it attracts less of the impatient / selfish / spectacle-driven crowd.
Classic case is finance - people derided Canada's banking sector as being boring and not taking advantage of new fancy financial instruments, but lo and behold the financial recession hits and Canada's banks remain insulated from what happened in the US, Ireland, and other places that were exciting and flashy. [1]
This isn't to say that all of life should be boring and conservative, just that we shouldn't chase 'interesting' at the expense of 'stable and functional' in core areas of our society (or our apps).
I think manufactured driverless car would be Uber's undoing. Think of Uber as Google's trojan horse. Get people used to the idea of trusting a network outside of taxi monopoly, use uber's billion dollar war chest to twist arms of city policy makers, and flood the network with Google's driverless cars. I think this is Google's last mover advantage, this is where I think 'software is eating the world' moment comes to play, a search engine company sweeps rug under taxi monopoly globally. I'd be shit scared if I was some big conglomerate with multiple monopolies under attack from tech giants.
I think a truly revolutionary driverless technology would be if you could buy sensors and a DIY kit from walmart, hook it up to your car to turn it into a driverless car.
A pickup truck from 1970s could be soon be driverless. Let a human drive when he feel like it but let the computer take over in dangerous and emergency situations where the human mind would be overloaded with sensory information and slow reaction speeds and lack of rational thinking could cause danger.
It reminds me of the new recovery systems being implemented in F-16s, when the pilot is passed out and plane sees imminent terrain danger, it will perform a recovery maneuver automatically.
This is the future, where AI does every possible thing for us. Even thinking. Every whim, every desires, every material can be experienced virtually via haptic controls, androids, 3d printed food of any taste and texture. We live in truly exciting times.
> I think 'software is eating the world' moment comes to play
this moment made me think that strict software/hardware division is getting pretty obsolete
> I think 'software is eating the world' moment comes to play
this moment made me think that strict software/hardware division is getting pretty obsolete
62 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 142 ms ] threadAt long last we'll have "auto"-mobiles!
Interestingly, a big influence on the development of GSV was Sebastian Thrun, who worked on it in between two self-driving car projects.
I dislike this being described as smarter. So far, what we've seen as described is behavior that is more predictable and consistent. In the scenario described by the OP, in which the car slammed its brakes because of a jogger on the opposite side of the road...that doesn't strike me as a decision based off of what we'd traditionally consider "intelligence", but a strict adherence to a set of rules that could use a little more refinement and complexity.
Even if self-driving cars do dominate future roads, it's going to be an interesting few years of transition...human drivers are going to quickly realize that their automated counterparts are almost always going to follow the rules, allowing humans to cut them off without worry...Maybe at some point, these incidents are going to be logged as evidence (using dashboard cams that are almost certainly going to be standard on all driverless-cars) to prosecute those overly aggressive human drivers?
In a way, the rules are a kind of "codified intelligence", and a computer that follows them can be said to be smarter, at least if we defined that based on the results, eg. "able to take a better path to achieve the same goal" (in that case, hurting less people).
Even if self-driving cars do dominate future roads, it's going to be an interesting few years of transition...human drivers are going to quickly realize that their automated counterparts are almost always going to follow the rules, allowing humans to cut them off without worry...Maybe at some point, these incidents are going to be logged as evidence (using dashboard cams that are almost certainly going to be standard on all driverless-cars) to prosecute those overly aggressive human drivers?
Maybe, but there's also the 'glasshole' effect - others drivers will already be anxious about driveless cars, you don't want to add reasons to make them angry at them as well.
It's easier for a machine than a human, but it can be learned. I doubt it measurably affects my commute times.
So the machine isn't being "wise" when it avoids road rage, it's just being a machine.
Humans seem to need some kind of training let go of our natural instinct to punish "cheaters". A machine can just do it, as can a stone for that matter. So: artificial wisdom.
I don't think driverless cars will act as individual units for a very long time when the opportunity to have them operate collectively can produce meaningful efficiency gains. For example, drafting on freeways to reduce drag, or being in communication with local streetlights to shape traffic patterns. That's one of the great benefits of moving away from human controlled cars - collective intelligence is possible.
In fact, look at self-driving taxis or cars as your personal and private "bus" or limo, if you will.
That's certainly where this is going, but the problem with mass transit is bootstrapping.
Currently, I take one of the Amtrak trains regularly, not terribly fast, but I'm not driving. However, I still need a car at either end of the train for the short hop to house/office.
If I could summon a self-driving car, I would take the train more often. In addition, if I could summon a self-driving car, I wouldn't worry about keeping a strict schedule at the office (very few places have trains/subways that run with enough frequency that you don't have to pay attention to schedule).
Don't know why they didn't do mass transportation, but my guess is legislation and unions. Getting rid of personal cars and human driving taxis is private industry. Mass transportation will have a large percentage be public sector workers and union workers.
If this is the path of least resistence and is proven to work, they will most likely go after mass transportation as well.
Buses are more complicated than cars (city driving, people at stops etc), so doing cars first makes sense.
>Buses are more complicated than cars (city driving, people at stops etc), so doing cars first makes sense.
I don't think this is a valid argument. I see self driving cars operating in Mountain View (a city, albeit not a crazy driving city like SF or Boston), these cars are aware of people as stated in the article, the condition of people at stops can start with stopping at... well stops ->recognizing people that are waiting there. Maybe prepayment to figure out how many people should have boarded.
You were saying...Chaotic good characters are trying to avoid collisions... but wait...the chaotic neutrals are aswell...
I'm sorry you completely lost me with your examples.
An easier solution is just, increase the distance the higher the probability of collision, including possible re-routing.
> It was slow. It was cautious. It was safe, a more attentive driver than any human could possibly ever be.
> And later that evening, as I snaked my way back to San Francisco on the four-to-five lane wide Interstate 880, I wished it was the Google car driving me home.
...
> That's a terrible complaint, isn't it? The impeccable standards are a sign the technology is really quite magnificent.
...
> The way Google sees it is that even with those theoretical scenarios - where it's forced to choose between what it thinks is the least harmful - the Google car is still far smarter than a human, and, crucially, will save thousands of lives by existing in the first place.
> Riding in a Google car may be slow and boring, but the effect it will have on the world certainly isn't.
It does not apply to the google car since the way I understand it their maximum emergency level is "full stop", but it's something that would probably come up at some point, and I'm not sure what the "right" answer is, if there is even one.
(In any case, the "correct" answer would be "Why the F--- should I be in such a situation, and what should I have done differently to avoid being in such a situation?")
Honestly, why are people so fascinated with these never-happens-in-a-lifetime ethical thought experiments when it comes to self-driving cars? We people aren't that good with ethical problems either, and we have no problem letting people drive.
This might also be a good intro for fuel efficient vehicles and alternative fuels: human drivers demand acceleration and avoid slower vehicles (never mind that 80% of their time will be going 13mph in traffic) but someone who's teleworking, playing a game or watching Netflix won't care since they'll get to work at the same time either way.
What if you were being pursued by an unknown organization, could the driverless car perform evasion driving techniques and safely get it's occupant out of harms way?
There's so many edge cases.
You realize you're debunking one fantasy with another, right?
In fact, it's unlikely that the manufacturer wouldn't do it directly since they're going to have to survive the first wave of lawsuits any time someone gets in a crash and tries to claim it was a software bug. We've already seen this with Google's use of footage to demonstrate that crashes were caused by the other driver – I find it hard to believe they'd risk losing a lawsuit over a few dollars worth of flash memory?
Do you find it hard to believe a car manufacturer would risk losing far more than a mere lawsuit by cheating emissions tests, despite the inevitability of getting caught? Or would design their cars in such a way as to allow the brakes to be tampered with over an open internet connection? Or would willingly allow cars on the market with a fatal mechanical flaw, because the calculus tells them paying out death settlements would cost less than a recall and redesign? Auto manufacturers consider the cost of human life and breaking the law as a matter of course, and there is always an acceptable amount of death and illegality they're willing to risk.
Nothing about this scenario requires autonomous cars anyway. They could already be packed with cameras, and streaming panoramic video to the police, yet they aren't. That 'few dollars of flash memory' would have to scale up to a few million dollars or more of something far more persistent and regulated to even be relevant - otherwise the volatility of the memory itself becomes a legal liability. It would also eat bandwidth and require infrastructure and maintenance, all of which would add to the cost of the vehicle, and subtract from its profitability.
While it may be a plausible attempt at futurism, it is far from being certain.
That's an unrelated discussion. We're talking about whether to add an additional benefit to work which they already need to do and which is both obviously a simple addition and a benefit to both the manufacturer and purchaser, not to mention the their insurance company.
> Nothing about this scenario requires autonomous cars anyway. They could already be packed with cameras, and streaming panoramic video to the police, yet they aren't.
They haven't been in the past because those would be new, otherwise unnecessary equipment. You're forgetting that any self-driving car must have the cameras built in to work at all, which means that instead of adding a bunch of cameras you're only adding enough storage to retain footage for some time period.
Similarly, the cost of adding a cellular connection might deter some people if this was the only use but since that's rapidly becoming a common feature you're really only adding the cost of using some extra bandwidth when someone hits a panic button and it's unlikely that anyone is going to begrudge the $0.02 that'll cost in any scenario where this would be relevant.
Fixed that for you :) Although I think you're joking, coming up with scenarios like these is often exactly what people do when change is presented to them - they fill in the gaps with their imagination. Our imagination can create infinite edge cases, but its bad at predicting frequency. Just remove 'driverless car' from your statement and ask yourself the same thing. How would you get out of that?
well, my point was that stuff we consider 'hollywood' happens day to day in less wealthy parts of the world, that's what I meant, it'd be interesting to see what solutions we come up with.
And to answer somebody who said, you couldn't get out of a situation yourself, that's the whole point of trusting a driverless AI, I want it to do the impossible for me.
Imagine if you had driverless cars in the favelas, that's what I mean.
Like that simpsons episode, where the truck automatically evades danger. I wonder if it's possible to have a driverless car that is able to perform these type of 'humanly impossible' feats.
I don't see why not, a sensor monitoring the world in ultra slow motion, able to steer it's occupants to safety when it detects a threat.
Classic case is finance - people derided Canada's banking sector as being boring and not taking advantage of new fancy financial instruments, but lo and behold the financial recession hits and Canada's banks remain insulated from what happened in the US, Ireland, and other places that were exciting and flashy. [1]
This isn't to say that all of life should be boring and conservative, just that we shouldn't chase 'interesting' at the expense of 'stable and functional' in core areas of our society (or our apps).
[1] http://policyoptions.irpp.org/issues/the-fault-lines-of-fede...
I think a truly revolutionary driverless technology would be if you could buy sensors and a DIY kit from walmart, hook it up to your car to turn it into a driverless car.
A pickup truck from 1970s could be soon be driverless. Let a human drive when he feel like it but let the computer take over in dangerous and emergency situations where the human mind would be overloaded with sensory information and slow reaction speeds and lack of rational thinking could cause danger.
It reminds me of the new recovery systems being implemented in F-16s, when the pilot is passed out and plane sees imminent terrain danger, it will perform a recovery maneuver automatically.
This is the future, where AI does every possible thing for us. Even thinking. Every whim, every desires, every material can be experienced virtually via haptic controls, androids, 3d printed food of any taste and texture. We live in truly exciting times.
Think of Netflix...