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San Francisco protestors are disabling autonomous vehicles using traffic cones | "It's a great time" (www.techspot.com)
submitted 3 years ago by [M, B] to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Safe Streets Rebel's protest comes after automatic vehicles were blamed for incidents including crashing into a bus and running over a dog. City officials in June said...

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[–] 38 points 3 years ago (24 children)

That opinion puts a lot of blind faith in the companies developing self driving and their infinitely altruistic motives.

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  • [–] 13 points 3 years ago (11 children)

    That's one way of strawmanning your way out of a discussion.

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  • [–] 34 points 3 years ago* (10 children)

    It's not a strawman argument, it is a fact. Without the ability to audit the entire codebase of self-driving cars, there's no way to know if the manufacturer had knowingly hidden something in the code that might have caused accidents and fatalities too numerous to recount, but too important to ignore, that were linked to a fault in self-driving technology.

    I was actually trying to find an article I'd read about Tesla's self-driving software reverting to manual control moments before impact, but I was literally flooded by fatality reports.

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  • [–] 11 points 3 years ago

    Strawman arguments can be factual. The entire point is that you're responding to something that wasn't the argument. You're putting words in their mouth to defeat them instead of addressing their words at face value. It is the definition of a strawman argument.

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  • [–] 11 points 3 years ago (5 children)

    We can't audit the code for humans, but we still let them drive.

    If the output for computers driving is less than for humans and the computer designers are forced to be as financially liable for car crashes as humans, why shouldn't we let computers drive?

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  • [–] 18 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    I'm not fully in either camp in this debate, but fwiw, the humans we let drive generally suffer consequences if there is an accident due to their own negligence

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  • [+] -6 points 3 years ago

    And I'm not denying it. However, it takes a very high bar to get someone convicted of vehicular manslaughter and that usually requires evidence that the driver was grossly negligent.

    If you can show that a computer can drive as well as a sober human, where is the gross negligence?

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  • [–] 12 points 3 years ago* (1 child)

    Because there's no valid excuse to prevent us from auditing their software and it could save lives. Why the hell should we allow then to use the road if they won't even let us inspect the engine?

    A car isn't a human. It's a machine, and it can and should be inspected. Anything less than that is pure recklessness.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 years ago

    Why the hell should we allow then to use the road if they won't even let us inspect the engine?

    How do you think a car gets approved right now? Do we take it apart? Do we ask for the design calculations of how they designed each piece?

    That isn't what happens. There is no "audit" of parts or the whole. Instead, there is a series of tests to determine road worthiness that everything in a car has to pass. We've already accepted a black box for the electronics of a car. You don't need to get approval of your code to show that pressing the brake pedal causes the brake lights turn on; they just test it to make sure that it works.

    We don't audit the code already for life critical software already. It is all liability taken on by the manufacturers and verified via government testing of the finished product. What is an audit going to do when we don't it already?

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  • [–] 4 points 3 years ago* (1 child)

    It is most definitely a strawman to frame my comment as considering the companies "infinitely altruistic", no matter what lies behind the strawman. It doesn't refute my statistics but rather tries to make me look like I make an extremely silly argument I'm not making, which is the defintion of a strawman argument.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 years ago*

    The data you cited comes straight from manufacturers, who've repeatedly been shown to lie and cherry-pick their data to intentionally mislead people about driverless car safety.

    So no it's not a straw man argument at all to claim that you're putting inordinate faith in manufacturers, because that's exactly what you did. It's actually incredible to me how many of you are so irresponsible that you're not even willing to do basic cross-checking against an industry that is known for blatantly lying about safety issues.

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  • [–] -3 points 3 years ago

    It may be the case that every line of code of all self driving vehicles is not available for a public audit. But neither is the instruction set of every human who was taught to drive properly on the road today.

    I would hope that through protesting and new legislation, that we will see the industry become more safe over time. Which we simply will never be able to achieve with human drivers.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    What do you mean, I'm sure the industry whose standard practices include having the self-driving function turn itself off nanoseconds before a crash to avoid liability is totally motivated to spend the time and money it would take to fix the problem. After all, we live in a time of such advanced AI that all the news sites and magazines tell me we're on the verge of the Singularity, and they've never misled me before.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 years ago (8 children)

    You don't need to put faith into companies beyond the faith that is put into humans. Make companies just as financially liable as humans are, and you'll still see a decrease in accidents.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 years ago (7 children)

    You mean those companies who will lobby and spend a fraction of their wealth to make those lawsuits disappear?

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago (6 children)

    How is that different from the current system of large vehicular insurance companies spending a fraction of their wealth to make their lawsuits disappear?

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  • [–] 6 points 3 years ago (5 children)

    It's no different at all. We should have stronger laws for such scenarios.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (4 children)

    Ok, but in the context of letting computers drive, I feel like people want to enforce this perfect system of liability on automated systems where we already have an existing criminal and civil legal system as is that is designed to nowhere near the same standard for humans.

    Why are we willing to say that it is unacceptable that no computer can kill people on the road when almost 43,000 die in the USA due to humans driving?

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (1 child)

    Why are we willing to say that it is unacceptable that no computer can kill people on the road when almost 43,000 die in the USA due to humans driving?

    This part is bogus to me as well. My friend who used to work in self-driving said that when self driving can be "just" better than human driving, technology has won. In statistical terms, it means having slightly lesser fatalities than humans (<43k fatalities with respect to the num of human drivers).

    Now it's up for debate lesser by how much exactly. Just 5% reduction or 50% reduction. If we want to go for 99% reduction, we should stop building self-driving tech altogether.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago* (1 child)

    Uh, because software can be fixed and those deaths can be prevented? How the hell can you ask this question seriously? I can't believe how many people are willing to blatantly shill for these companies, even if it gets people fucking killed.

    And no you can't claim to be saving lives because these driverless cars very often kill people in situations that a human driver would easily navigate.

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