Hacker News Reader

Comment by JoeAltmaier | Hacker News Reader

Its not about when it works. Its about the first accident. Should the car have performed better? Who is liable - the owner? the manufacturer? the software company?

The good news is, when an issue is found then all the cars can be updated. The bad news is, conflicting decisions about right behavior. The trolley car problem springs to mind - can an AI car leave the road to avoid a collision? What if somebody is on the shoulder and could be hit? Which accident should the AI choose?

Different municipalities/states/judges will have different ideas. It'll be a madhouse until some groundrules are in place e.g. "An AI car shall not leave the road". Call it the 'Laws of automotive Robotics'.

View on HN

The "trolley problem" is such nonsense in this context. As if a human driver in that situation isn't going to freeze up / knee-jerk-react / not even be paying attention at the moment.

These are split second decisions and people wheel out philosophical problems?

But we would blame the person in your situation.

In the vehicle, is it still the fault of the driver, or the software company? Or insurance?

It's always insurance that pays regardless, so it isn't really a part of the equation. It also depends a lot on what kind of accident it is.

Is someone driving into you? Not much physically you can do to avoid it no matter who/what is driving.

Semi-autonomous cars can easily be blamed on the driver, because they're still in charge of the car, just being assisted, not commanded.

Is the car taking unlawful actions on it's own? Should propably fix that on the maker side. Why should any company be exempt when their product is not up to spec? The price increase to make it compliant is necessary, not a nice to have.

And with the trolley problem, you often can't compute philosophical questions with pure logic because of their fractal nature, but you can make it a legal argument. Does the car have the right to kill? If it doesen't, it can't and won't choose. It will be an accident just like any other would be.

You are a rational person. But the law is a machine. A rule has to be made, or arguments will go on endlessly.

Never mind what a person could do; the AI car will have a different expectation. And remember, there's the chance of suing Google when your mailbox is run over. Not just some schmuck.

> I was the logical choice. It calculated that I had a 45% chance of survival. Sarah only had an 11% chance. That was somebody's baby. 11% is more than enough. A human being would've known that.

-I, robot

The trolley problem is silly. Was the car putting itself into an ultimatum? That’s the fault of the car. The car can be programmed to not exceed a certain speed calculated from its stopping distance. The tradeoffs would be that it would drive more conservative but that’s really the whole point of automating cars. If the car gets itself into a trolley problem something is wrong with the car and that’s pretty clear

Then all AI cars will go about 10 MPH. Because something might dart out at any moment.

Our roads aren't built so you can 'not exceed...stopping distance'. Sure in good conditions with dry road and clear shoulders and a wide ditch, you can come up with a figure. But that's not where accidents happen. They happen in town, at intersections, driveways.

Every AI car already has to make the 'trolley car' decision, and you can bet the programmer put something in there. If something is in the road, does it dodge around? Yes or no. That's the gist of it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com