Comment by brightlancer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by brightlancer | Hacker News Reader

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> People will be outraged, because no person would ever do what the AI did, but _what matters are the numbers in aggregate._

That is an opinion, not objective fact.

If Grandma June accidentally hits the accelerator, jumps the curb and kills a kindergartener, we can throw her in prison. She is held accountable for her actions.

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/01/25/Woman-83-gets-3-y...

If Grandma June is sitting in her "self-driving" car and it spontaneously accelerates, jumps the curb and kills a kindergartener, what can we do? Who is held accountable?

Something something "fix the problem, not the blame", but accountability is part of fixing a problem. Improving numbers in the aggregate is good, but it is not (and should not be) the sole matter in discussion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ones_Who_Walk_Away_from_Om...

This is really not the dilemma it is often portrayed as. You can extend this problem to any instance where a man-made inanimate object kills someone, which we have centuries of precedent for. If a bridge collapses and crushes a schoolbus full of children it's not like we throw our hands up in confusion - there is a very developed legal process that will determine the whos and whats of accountability and punishment.

It isn't a new problem, it's something that every court handles on a daily basis. Rebar or autoregression, the core legal elements are the same.

That is a strange example, because usually we don’t put people in prison for accidents unless there is specific type of gross negligence (e.g., drunk driving) or malicious disregard for life and safety.

> Anderson decided to plead guilty to vehicular homicide because she did not want the family of Karla Campos to endure a trial.

Maybe the woman knew that it would be revealed that she was drunk or had been told that she didn’t have the capability any more to drive safely, but she did it anyway. Without knowing all the facts, pleading guilty for an accident seems like a bizarre choice.

We can try to provide decent transportation infrastructure with feasible alternatives to driving so that Grandma June doesn't have to operate a 2 ton death machine to live her life, but maybe that's getting offtopic.

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