Posted on 08/16/2017 8:27:55 PM PDT by Lorianne
Over at Tesla, Google, and Uber — and now the contagion has reached Ford, General Motors, Chrysler and beyond — the smartest guys in the room are talking autonomous vehicles. Over at every hedge fund, venture-capital and wealth-management shop in the universe, the smartest guys in the room are throwing money at the concept. Why? Because it’s the Next Big Thing, that’s why. Billions of dollars are in play.
Which is why we are seeing an avalanche of faux-news stories about the coming era of driverless cars, how they’re on the streets now, how well they are doing in testing, how soon there will be nothing but driverless cars on all our roads. And all this chum in the financial water has served its purposes: the hedge fund sharks, and the Masters of the Universe they serve, are in a feeding frenzy; and the gullible public is giddy with anticipation.
Meanwhile people with a lick of common sense are saying, wait a minute, doesn’t this sound oxymoronic, like clean coal, or safe sex? In today’s world, people with licks of common sense do not get funding to answer their questions, and therefor the skeptical questions you might have about “driverless cars” are almost unanswerable. Until right now, right here:
Is there such a thing as a “driverless car?” Not yet, there isn’t. The conditions for allowing “driverless cars” on the public roads in a few states unanimously specify that the driverless car has to have a driver who is ready to instantly take control of the vehicle. Moreover, what they are driving and testing are prototypes and jury-rigs; no one has yet built an autonomous vehicle. (Tesla cars offer “auto-pilot,” but it isn’t.) So almost all the stories you have read and seen about “driverless cars” on the road are fake (some fastidious journalists write about testing cars that are capable of becoming autonomous, but most people read right through the fastidiousness).
How are the potentially driverless cars doing in their testing? Awful. For example, in the first week of March, Uber’s 43 test cars in three states logged some 20,000 miles on public roads. Their drivers had to intervene and take control away from the software, an average of once every mile. Critical interventions, required to save lives and property, were counted separately; they occurred every 200 miles. Which makes your life expectancy, as a passenger in a truly autonomous car, approximately four hours.
SNIP
They are better calculating engines than us.
Some of the calculations involved in driving involve moral values. The calculating engine would have to assign these a quantity. I believe this is unavoidable in designing headless cars. You seem to disagree. That would put our discussion at an impasse. Thanks for your replies.
It does not involve moral values. Have you ever actually faces a trolley problem while driving? No of course not. The calculating engine does not need moral values, it needs to be better at paying attention than us and avoid the accident in the first place.
Watch the Tesla autopilot fail to avoid an accident, a situation that a human driver has no problem dealing with:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQkx-4pFjus
Pretty amazing!
I know exactly what your response will be.
But Tesla has no business deploying cars using that “autopilot” system, knowing that drivers will invariably ignore warnings and put too much trust in it.
I do get your position. I see it as: 5 million accidents plus untold avoided accidents per year and zero of these involve an ethical decision.
I understand your position, but I think it is an absurd one to take.
Thanks again for your discussion.
People want 500HP big gas guzzling American muscle and $1.00 per gallon gas. The only reason that is not the only thing you see on the road and at the pumps today is left wing nanny state politics.
No it isn’t. There’s actually a demand for them. Old people who can’t drive anymore, people with long boring commutes, taxi companies (one of the companies doing the work is Uber). There IS a market for it, doesn’t matter how hard you decide to deny it, surveys are showing initial market penetration of around 10% and that’s just private.
Times have changed. People don’t want 500HP gas guzzling American muscle anymore. For one thing those cars all broke down constantly. And the rode like wagons. You’re living in the past, out here in the current self driving cars you don’t have to pay attention to so you can sleep, read, hang out on the internet or get laid are what people want.
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