<story><title>Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-selfdriving-uber/self-driving-uber-car-kills-arizona-woman-crossing-street-idUSKBN1GV296</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>orbitur</author><text>&amp;gt; I won&amp;#x27;t be surprised if someone at some point wears a stripy outfit, and the car thinks they are a part of the road, and tries to explicitly chase them down until they are under the wheels. Or if the car suddenly decides that the road continues at a 90 degree angle off a bridge. Or that the splashes from a puddle in front is actually an oncoming car and it must swerve into the school kids crossing the perpendicular road.&lt;p&gt;Are you working on the next season of Black Mirror?&lt;p&gt;In all seriousness, my fear (and maybe not fear, maybe it&amp;#x27;s happy expectation in light of the nightmare scenarios) is that if a couple of the &amp;quot;weird and terrifying&amp;quot; accidents happen, the gov&amp;#x27;t would shut down self-driving car usage immediately.</text></item><item><author>IgorPartola</author><text>This is what&amp;#x27;s going to happen. If you&amp;#x27;ve ever seen a machine learning algorithm in action, this isn&amp;#x27;t surprising at all. Basically, they&amp;#x27;ll behave as expected some well known percentage of the time. But when they don&amp;#x27;t, the result will not be just a slight deviation from the normal algorithm, but a very unexpected one.&lt;p&gt;So we will have overall a much smaller number of deaths caused by self driving cars, but ones that do happen will be completely unexpected and scary and shitty. You can&amp;#x27;t really get away from this without putting these cars on rails.&lt;p&gt;Moreover, the human brain won&amp;#x27;t like processing these freak accidents. People die in car crashes every damn day. But we have become really accustomed to rationalizing that: &amp;quot;they were struck by a drunk driver&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;they were texting&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;they didn&amp;#x27;t see the red light&amp;quot;, etc. These are &amp;quot;normal&amp;quot; reasons for bad accidents and we can not only rationalize them, but also rationalize how it wouldn&amp;#x27;t happen to us: &amp;quot;I don&amp;#x27;t drive near colleges where young kids are likely to drive drunk&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;I don&amp;#x27;t text (much) while I drive&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;I pay attention&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;But these algorithms will not fail like that. Each accident will be unique and weird and scary. I won&amp;#x27;t be surprised if someone at some point wears a stripy outfit, and the car thinks they are a part of the road, and tries to explicitly chase them down until they are under the wheels. Or if the car suddenly decides that the road continues at a 90 degree angle off a bridge. Or that the splashes from a puddle in front is actually an oncoming car and it must swerve into the school kids crossing the perpendicular road. It&amp;#x27;ll always be tragic, unpredictable and one-off.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>IgorPartola</author><text>I am definitely not. Their version of the future is too damn bleak for me.&lt;p&gt;Your fear is very much grounded in reality. US lawmakers tend to be very reactionary, except in rare cases like gun laws. So it won&amp;#x27;t take much to have restrictions imposed like this. Granted, I believe some regulation is good; after all the reason today&amp;#x27;s cars are safer than those built 20 years ago isn&amp;#x27;t because the free market decided so, but because of regulation. But self driving cars are so new and our lawmakers are by and large so ignorant, that I wouldn&amp;#x27;t trust them to create good regulation from the get go.</text></comment>
<story><title>Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-selfdriving-uber/self-driving-uber-car-kills-arizona-woman-crossing-street-idUSKBN1GV296</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>orbitur</author><text>&amp;gt; I won&amp;#x27;t be surprised if someone at some point wears a stripy outfit, and the car thinks they are a part of the road, and tries to explicitly chase them down until they are under the wheels. Or if the car suddenly decides that the road continues at a 90 degree angle off a bridge. Or that the splashes from a puddle in front is actually an oncoming car and it must swerve into the school kids crossing the perpendicular road.&lt;p&gt;Are you working on the next season of Black Mirror?&lt;p&gt;In all seriousness, my fear (and maybe not fear, maybe it&amp;#x27;s happy expectation in light of the nightmare scenarios) is that if a couple of the &amp;quot;weird and terrifying&amp;quot; accidents happen, the gov&amp;#x27;t would shut down self-driving car usage immediately.</text></item><item><author>IgorPartola</author><text>This is what&amp;#x27;s going to happen. If you&amp;#x27;ve ever seen a machine learning algorithm in action, this isn&amp;#x27;t surprising at all. Basically, they&amp;#x27;ll behave as expected some well known percentage of the time. But when they don&amp;#x27;t, the result will not be just a slight deviation from the normal algorithm, but a very unexpected one.&lt;p&gt;So we will have overall a much smaller number of deaths caused by self driving cars, but ones that do happen will be completely unexpected and scary and shitty. You can&amp;#x27;t really get away from this without putting these cars on rails.&lt;p&gt;Moreover, the human brain won&amp;#x27;t like processing these freak accidents. People die in car crashes every damn day. But we have become really accustomed to rationalizing that: &amp;quot;they were struck by a drunk driver&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;they were texting&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;they didn&amp;#x27;t see the red light&amp;quot;, etc. These are &amp;quot;normal&amp;quot; reasons for bad accidents and we can not only rationalize them, but also rationalize how it wouldn&amp;#x27;t happen to us: &amp;quot;I don&amp;#x27;t drive near colleges where young kids are likely to drive drunk&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;I don&amp;#x27;t text (much) while I drive&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;I pay attention&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;But these algorithms will not fail like that. Each accident will be unique and weird and scary. I won&amp;#x27;t be surprised if someone at some point wears a stripy outfit, and the car thinks they are a part of the road, and tries to explicitly chase them down until they are under the wheels. Or if the car suddenly decides that the road continues at a 90 degree angle off a bridge. Or that the splashes from a puddle in front is actually an oncoming car and it must swerve into the school kids crossing the perpendicular road. It&amp;#x27;ll always be tragic, unpredictable and one-off.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jessaustin</author><text>If that&amp;#x27;s bad, what happens when the robocars get hacked?</text></comment>