The question shouldn’t be whether autonomous cars will kill people, but whether they’ll kill more people than human drivers. If they'll kill fewer people, then on net they're saving lives, not "sacrificing" them.
Is it ethical to build something knowing it will definitely kill random people until you perfect the technology? Will auto makers be held accountable for any wrongful deaths caused by bugs?
If your wife or child was mowed down by a normal car, would you be more supportive of autonomous ones?
If your wife or child wasn’t mowed down because the car was autonomous rather than manual (or vice-versa), would you even notice?
Yet, which of human or AI drivers get banned by 2040 depends on convincing people like you — assuming I am inferring correctly that your question is rhetorical and the answer is “no, obviously”.
I don't know if that will be enough to make the difference, but I can certainly see how it could be.
You're still making a prediction about the future. Some predictions are safer than others: I predict I will see the sun rise tomorrow. Some predictions have little rational basis in reality: I predict you will agree with me. Your prediction about automomous cars being safer than human drivers? That falls somewhere in the middle.
From my perspective, all computer vision systems are abysmal crap and spend orders of magnitude more power to accomplish results many orders of magnitude less impressive than the human brain is capable of. The human brain uses something like 10-20 watts, how much CV/ML can you do with 10-20 watts? Not much at all. There is clearly a huge disconnect between our current approach to solving the problem technologically and how the evolutionary wetware solves the problem. That gap may be bridged sometime in the future, but I'm not holding my breath. I think the problem is being approached from the wrong direction, like trying to drive a screw with a hammer. Maybe we'll still get the job done, but I do not consider that a foregone conclusion.
I just hope that, if the time comes, the decision is based on comparative improvement, instead of hysterics about whether self driving cars will ever kill anyone ever.
* A car can spare 100x that many watts.
* Why would we even want cars to calculate the way humans do? It's a very clearly flawed method.
> Why would we even want cars to calculate the way humans do?
The fact of the matter is that humans are orders of magnitude better at object recognition than computers. You may believe that will change in the near future, but that's not yet been demonstrated.
Don’t get me wrong, I am aware that current generation AI is fundamentally worse than a human brain, because if it was already as good as a human then the fact Tesla’s AI has done more miles than the average person has had heartbeats would make it essentially perfect. It isn’t perfect, so I know the AI is flawed.
But my question is, does it seem to you that this approach cannot ever become the equal of the best human (if that best human had 360 degree vision, sonar, and radar, and their nerve impulse conduction speed was way faster), and if not, why not?
Yeah, its an interesting dichotomy. I've been to funerals for people mowed down by "normal" cars. I know the stats. I'm more supportive of autonomous cars.
I also know that if the situation were reversed and the people closest to me were affected by autonomous vehicle accidents I might have an strong emotional reaction in the other direction.
The human mind just isn't rational when it comes to these things. It will take real leadership and risk taking on the part of manufacturers to get past this impasse.
IANATOMP.
Watch the show, it's great.
There are ~1.25 million car deaths per year (20-50 million injured or disabled), a lot of room for "progress" to save countless lives.
The vast majority of those occur in areas that will not see autonomous vehicles for a very long time, and have a lot of environmental challenges that make it much harder for an autonomous vehicle to outperform a human.
It’s true that the vast majority of cars won’t be autonomous for “a very long time” so the vast majority of deaths won’t be prevented. But what’s your point? That if the vast majority of the problem can’t be addressed quickly it’s not worth exploring?
On a quick search, 30% of fatalities involve alcohol. 7% involve rain (the most common condition that causes crashes).
Cars don’t actually need to be better than humans, or even as good as the average human. They just need to be better than the bottom 5th percentile, prefer safe driving, and not get distracted/drunk.
My point is that trotting out the 1.25M number when we are very far away from dealing with the vast majority of it is distracting at best. We should instead be talking about the numbers of injuries and fatalities on the countries where autonomous vehicles are most likely to be deployed, and how many of those people could have been saved.
> Cars don’t actually need to be better than humans, or even as good as the average human. They just need to be better than the bottom 5th percentile, prefer safe driving, and not get distracted/drunk.
That's very true, but orthogonal to the point of using realistic numbers.
I did not say or imply that.
> The point is thousands of people die per day at the hands of human drivers.
Yes, and thousands will die every day for quite a long time. You make it sound like autonomous vehicles are going to make a significant dent in that number.
> The sooner we can transition to autonomous vehicles, the sooner they'll start saving lives.
This is quite true. It will just be limited to lives in developed nations and a few select other major cities.
Personally, and I tend to believe it’s not very different than average, I don’t want less chance to be hit. I want more control and awareness, which can reduce risk fundamentally. I know that accidents happen, but I also know that chances grow by orders of magnitude if I fail to detect dangers and/or make predictions. Malfunctioning traffic lights can do much more harm than your average drunk driver. Not seeing someones intent (or steering/braking problem) does that too. If autopilots provide me a way to reduce risks by clear means on my side, I would not mind [with a great share of egoism, but that’s how it works] if on average it could harm crazy leapers even more than human drivers do. Because the road is a source of danger (due to natural physical/perception failures) and by skipping safety checks they enter a potential chaos which is un-manageable by definition. Heck, I’d better coexist with a tech that never gets tired to send me clear “fuck off” messages, than with human drivers who e.g. think they are smart enough to not brake, because “our current inertial frames render a collision unlikely anyway”, or whatever bs they believe when doing this. But it’s a false negative for me, idk for sure if they see me at all or estimate their reaction time correctly.
> By this last estimate, Autopilot has about the same to 35% lower fatal crash rates than any conventional vehicle at this time.
https://medium.com/@mc2maven/a-closer-inspection-of-teslas-a...
We've got very accurate counts. To say countless is hyperbole.
>If they'll kill fewer people
Everyone assumes ML / AI will be better drivers than humans, but I think that's just blind hope at this point.
I've seen no proof or studies that show any better logic than fusion power being about 20 years away (indefinitely).
> We've got very accurate counts.
Pointless rebuttal, the exact number isn't relevant, nor easily quoted as the number of deaths per day, month, year is fluid, evident as you've made no attempt to quantify an "accurate count" yourself.
> Everyone assumes ML / AI will be better drivers than humans, but I think that's just blind hope at this point.
You call someone out for non precision then follow up with a baseless supposition that you think people who believe autonomous drivers are safer then human drivers are hopelessly blind.
You can include the NHTSA and the U.S. Department of Transportation in your blind hopefuls who are keen on moving towards an automated driving future:
https://www.nhtsa.gov/technology-innovation/automated-vehicl...
NHTSA is no different than the DOE stating their (thusfar inaccurate) expectations for fusion. Government agencies can also express hope.
>The continuing evolution of automotive technology aims to deliver even greater safety benefits
They have a very well thought out timeline with goals and expectations. But there's no real evidence of why we should expect to hit level 5 driving in a given time frame.
It's still just a goal they hope (aim) to hit.
Unless there's a Moore's law of AI driving ability that I'm unaware of.
I'm sorry if I caused any confusion. I meant "countless" simply as in "more than a person could reasonably count". The usage I'm familiar with appears to be different from yours.
It's not a hyperbolic to use "countless" when it's one of the top 10 causes of deaths.
> NHTSA is no different than the DOE stating...
You're really into your inaccurate strawmans
2) I'm not the one making the claim that a revolutionary technology that will save millions of lives is just around the corner.
Will progress be made? Probably. Will an army of driverless cars be safer than the same number of humans driving in X years? Thats a bold statement that requires an explanation beyond "Because technology progesses."
I think the comparison to fusion is quite adept at this point. We can re-evaluate in 20-30 years.
Using the word "countless" to describe one of the leading causes of deaths is not close to a valid example of hyberbolic exaggeration.
> 2) I'm not the one making the claim that a revolutionary technology that will save millions of lives is just around the corner.
You're the only one making proclamations, hypocritical of others for not using exact numbers you wont quote yourself and proclaiming some of the smartest engineers in the world and motor vehicle institutions must be blind hopefuls for investing their efforts in automatic driving solutions to save lives.
> I think the comparison to fusion is quite adept at this point. We can re-evaluate in 20-30 years.
Says a lot that you think unproven feasible future technology is somehow an adept strawman to actual technology that's driven over 1B miles.
Tesla's AutoPilot results for the latest Q2 2019 shows it had 1 accident per 3.27 million miles vs NTHSA's recent statistics showing 1 accident per 498k miles: https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport
The state of automation is meaningful today, it's not blind hope to presume actively developed technology will improve even more with time, it would be naive to think otherwise and suggest it needs another 20-30 years to evaluate FSD's for viability.
Not that level 5 is necessary. A good level 3 would make a huge difference. If it can self-park too then it's basically everything I want.
It seems like even Tesla themselves have Trouble forecasting more than +/- 6 months out.
Predicting technological progress is hard, both in terms of timing and absolute ability. And this is before you even get into predicting the market success of a shippable product.