Posted on 01/18/2017 10:09:45 AM PST by fishtank
Self-Driving Cars Will Decide Who Lives & Who Dies
But how will they make that decision?
Contributor: Matt O'Brien
BOSTON (AP) — Imagine you're behind the wheel when your brakes fail. As you speed toward a crowded crosswalk, you're confronted with an impossible choice: veer right and mow down a large group of elderly people, or veer left into a woman pushing a stroller.
Now imagine you're riding in the back of a self-driving car. How would it decide?
(Excerpt) Read more at ien.com ...
They will be optional at first but eventually we will not have a choice. I know this sound ludicrous but it will happen.
Guess I’ll be walking then...
I have a problem with the hypothetical anyway. I mean, imagine the same scenario but a human is driving. No matter what choice he makes, is it better than the choice a self driving car (SDC) would make? And assuming the SDC can choose, would it not mean that some humans have, more carefully than a human driver making a snap decision, programmed in the best solution? Or not?
I agree with you but would add that this scenario seems to be designed to look for problems where none really exists. Like you said, this is absurdly rare and, therefore a red herring.
That's "Rock the Cash Bar".
Saw this same situation on Bull a couple weeks ago.
First time I’d seen Michael Weatherly since 86-ing NCIS a few years ago after they’d axed or killed off the Israelis, turned Mindy’s husband into god, and gelded Tony and Tim.
And Bishop. What a loser.
End of rant.
Kinda like Obummer care
Now imagine you’re riding in the back of a self-driving car. How would it decide?
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What an idiotic “what if” scenario.
Self driving cars use so many thousands of smart algorithms per second that any such car with brakes about to fail would never even be on the road in the first place. It would self park itself before it ever got started.
As leery as I am (as anyone of us are) about riding in a self driving car; I’d sooner do that than ride with some idiot who knows their brakes could fail and as a result would have to pay the “what if” game by deciding who lives and who dies.
A more reasonable scenario: A two lane road with a cliff to your right. Suddenly, a group of people dash out into the highway. Too late to brake. Do you:
A) Swerve left into oncoming traffic? Maybe killing yourself, your family, and the occupants of the car you hit head-on?
B) Swerve right off the cliff, definitely killing yourself and your family riding with you.
C) Plow right into the people on the highway, thereby killing them.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I would not ride in a self-driving car programmed for A or B. I want my family protected. I choose the manufacturer who programs C.
Yet, deliberately programming a car to choose C would open up the car manufacturer to all kinds of legal risk. It is because of programming issues like this...and their legal ramifications....that we will not have self-driving cars until the law catches up with the technology.
Guess my 1968 Ford and I will stay on the back roads then. Only way I would consider a self driving car is if I was old and frail to the point on not being capable of driving, then I will comply as I would have no other better options.
“As you speed toward a crowded crosswalk, you’re confronted with an impossible choice: veer right and mow down a large group of elderly people, or veer left into a woman pushing a stroller.”
I’m hitting the old people. They’ve led a full life, and might die tomorrow anyway for all I know. That baby in a stroller hasn’t had a chance yet.
You are driving by a park and a kid runs out in front of you chasing a ball. You cannot break in time to avoid hitting him. If you swerve right, you will hit a bunch of other kids in the park. If you swerve left, you will hit an oncoming car head on.
Which will your car choose?
Do I have time for eeny-meeny-miney-moe?
Or your vehicle’s wifi system or whatever system has a hick up, and there is no control of your self driving vehicle.
You are in your back seat with the car heading into an on coming semi truck, or into the back of a semi carrying telephone poles extending 15’ past the rear of the semi, or into a pack of Trump haters protesting several years of Trump being president.
Do I have a choice or have to ride it out.
Could I program it to hit the old Trump protesters?
If you like your car, you can keep your car.
These are the sort of false hypothetical that the left creates all the time to promote regulations.
It is easy to create silly hypotheticals to push for any regulation you want.
This is a silly hypothetical. Chances of it happening are almost nil.
Personally, I’m not holding my breath waiting for autonomous cars to take over the roads. The best technology currently out there requires a huge array of sensors to be able to navigate safely, and still have problems if visibility is limited (especially if the sensors are obscured by snow and ice).
When you hear people saying that self-driving cars would be more feasible if the lines on the road were painted better, you know the technology is not ready for prime time. If it isn’t at least capable of handling the same variety of conditions and situations as an average human driver (and the average driver is not very good, and they still have no problem figuring out where the road goes if the lines are a bit sketchy), then it’s not ready for the road.
But yeah, when it does come, we probably won’t own the cars anymore. They’ll be too complicated and expensive, with serious maintenance requirements, and liability concerns, that only corporations or maybe public utilities will be able to operate them.
That is, unless someone manages to produce real AI sometime in the next couple of years - AI that can really understand what it is seeing, rather than just running mindless algorithms.
Technology is never a substitute for good management (decision making).
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