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Comment by amelius | Hacker News Reader

Even if this fails only in 0.1% of cases, given enough users this will kill babies.

(Of course you should compare this to humans, but in any case, do the math! And get a good lawyer.)

This thing will not kill babies. That's like saying seatbelts kill people because they don't save everyone in a car accident. It is precisely this attitude that prevents good things from flourishing - the idea that if something is involved however tangentially in a safety important subsystem it must have perfect results. No, we should not have this view. If something is net positive, we should promote it.

When people decide that the nannycam works, they will rely on it. Then, when it fails, their inaction will kill babies.

It is amazing/horrifying to me how many people are intent on reincenting the reasons why we have UL, the FDA, the FCC, traffic laws, seatbelts, electrical codes, fire marshals and unions.

What inactions? Apart from creating safe conditions beforehand (but perhaps that is your point), once my kid is asleep there's not much more I can do? Most of that time I'm sleeping myself.

Exactly, there's not much more you can do when you're asleep. However, this system might just nudge you awake if something happens when you're asleep. Or it won't and you would be no worse off than if you didnt have it.

It's not going to solve all problems.

Parent 1: what's that sound? Should we check it?

Parent 2: Nah, the baby monitor would have warned us.

Tesla autopilot has some disclaimers saying you should always be prepared to grab the wheel, and we all read the stories in the news ...

In other words, if you want AI to take over tasks of humans you either do it well or not at all.

It's not taking over tasks, it's helping to support those tasks. For the times when you might not be looking directly into the camera, it attempts to tell you about anything suspicious.

Tesla autopilot could steer you into a concrete wall, a baby monitor with some LLM attached to it does not directly harm the child.

This is stupid

But I love babies!!!

(I just can't eat a whole one.)

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