Comment by robotburrito | Hacker News Reader

Comment by robotburrito | Hacker News Reader

I can see it. The other day a self driving Cruise car was extremely aggressive with me, almost feeling aggressive as I tried to cross an intersection on foot. It was stop/starting quickly towards me to try and get me to walk faster it feels like.

I think that these self driving cars need some kind of feedback system for pedestrians and cyclists. Even an emoji face that shows facial expressions would help. When I see a real driver at an intersection, I feel like we come to some agreement about what is going to happen next based on our facial expressions. Or I can at least guess what may happen and take an action. With the self driving car there is 0 feed back. It's just an empty car that may or may not run me over.

Additionally, I also almost got run over by a dude head down driving in the Mission the other day, typing on his phone with both hands as his he just felt comfy having his Tesla do all the work.

At the moment all of this feels so sketchy. I hate my life being used for beta testing software lol.

> Even an emoji face that shows facial expressions would help.

At one point I saw a proposal to put cartoon eyes on self driving cars that could turn and “look” at you to achieve this effect.

Actually seems like a good idea to me!

My concern would be the potential for an alignment issue. The agent directs it's eyes to look at you - because it's communicating something accurate about the plan it's formed about how to cross the intersection? Or because it's been trained to look at people when it crosses intersections, but communicating isn't it's true objective?

(I'm not trying to imply the agent may fool you into crossing so it can mow you down, the case of "AI incompetence" so to speak is more concerning to me then "AI malice".)

100% agree with this attitude. A human whose attention is directed at you who uses their eyes for input will turn their eyes to you. The eyes are not just signalers, but the person actually needs to turn them to you to direct their attention to you, in some sense, so this is a good indicator that they have done so.

> With the self driving car there is 0 feed back. It's just an empty car that may or may not run me over.

As someone who struggles with nonverbal communication sometimes, I frequently feel this way about all vehicles both as a pedestrian and also as a driver myself.

Ice Cube admits to just chucking D-batteries at other drivers in his younger years:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Za8BtLgKv8

Maybe a carton of eggs would achieve the same message? Don't want to do what those kids in Aurora did.

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