<story><title>Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/teslas-push-to-build-a-self-driving-car-sparks-dissent-among-its-engineers-1503593742</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jacquesm</author><text>Airliner pilot discipline is orders of magnitude better than your average driver.</text></item><item><author>terravion</author><text>That said, aviation accident rates have been falling asymptotically while this &amp;quot;troubling trend&amp;quot; has been going on.  In the US we&amp;#x27;ve had no fatalities on domestic commercial flights since like 2009, and only the two at SFO a couple of years ago on international flights to the US.  This is on a couple of billion flights with hundreds of billions of passenger departures.</text></item><item><author>contingencies</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Wiener&amp;#x27;s Eighth and Final Law: You can never be too careful about what you put into a digital flight-guidance system.&lt;/i&gt; - Earl Wiener, Professor of Engineering, University of Miami (1980)&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;It seems that we are locked into a spiral in which poor human performance begets automation, which worsens human performance, which begets increasing automation. The pattern is common to our time but is acute in aviation. Air France 447 was a case in point.&lt;/i&gt; - William Langewiesche, &amp;#x27;The Human Factor: Should Airplanes be Flying Themselves?&amp;#x27;, Vanity Fair, October 2014&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Eventually mean&amp;#x2F;median system performance deteriorates as more and more pure slack and redundancy needs to be built in at all levels to make up for the irreversibly fragile nature of the system. The business cycle is an oscillation between efficient fragility and robust inefficiency. Over the course of successive cycles, both poles of this oscillation get worse which leads to median&amp;#x2F;mean system performance falling rapidly at the same time that the tails deteriorate due to the increased illegibility of the automated system to the human operator.&lt;/i&gt; - Ashwin Parameswaran (2012)&lt;p&gt;... from my fortune clone @ &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;globalcitizen&amp;#x2F;taoup&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;globalcitizen&amp;#x2F;taoup&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>Animats</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Requiring the driver to be awake and alert while not requiring them to actually do anything for long stretches of time is a recipe for disaster.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Everybody who&amp;#x27;s looked at this seriously agrees. The aviation industry has looked hard at that issue for a long time. Watch &amp;quot;Children of the Magenta&amp;quot;.[1] This is a chief pilot of American Airlines talking to pilots about automation dependency in 1997. Watch this if you have anything to do with a safety-related system.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=pN41LvuSz10&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=pN41LvuSz10&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>empath75</author><text>The level-2 driving that Tesla is pushing seems like a worst case scenario to me.  Requiring the driver to be awake and alert while not requiring them to actually &lt;i&gt;do&lt;/i&gt; anything for long stretches of time is a recipe for disaster.&lt;p&gt;Neither the driver nor the car manufacturer will have clear responsibility when there is an accident.  The driver will blame the system for failing and the manufacturer will blame the driver for not paying sufficient attention.  It&amp;#x27;s lose-lose for everyone.  The company, the drivers, the insurance companies, and other people on the road.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>maxcan</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m a private pilot (general aviation, single engine cessna&amp;#x27;s).  For the most part, our discipline is orders of magnitude higher than all but the best drivers.  Airline pilots are orders of magnitude better than us.  You are absolutely correct.</text></comment>
<story><title>Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/teslas-push-to-build-a-self-driving-car-sparks-dissent-among-its-engineers-1503593742</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jacquesm</author><text>Airliner pilot discipline is orders of magnitude better than your average driver.</text></item><item><author>terravion</author><text>That said, aviation accident rates have been falling asymptotically while this &amp;quot;troubling trend&amp;quot; has been going on.  In the US we&amp;#x27;ve had no fatalities on domestic commercial flights since like 2009, and only the two at SFO a couple of years ago on international flights to the US.  This is on a couple of billion flights with hundreds of billions of passenger departures.</text></item><item><author>contingencies</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Wiener&amp;#x27;s Eighth and Final Law: You can never be too careful about what you put into a digital flight-guidance system.&lt;/i&gt; - Earl Wiener, Professor of Engineering, University of Miami (1980)&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;It seems that we are locked into a spiral in which poor human performance begets automation, which worsens human performance, which begets increasing automation. The pattern is common to our time but is acute in aviation. Air France 447 was a case in point.&lt;/i&gt; - William Langewiesche, &amp;#x27;The Human Factor: Should Airplanes be Flying Themselves?&amp;#x27;, Vanity Fair, October 2014&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Eventually mean&amp;#x2F;median system performance deteriorates as more and more pure slack and redundancy needs to be built in at all levels to make up for the irreversibly fragile nature of the system. The business cycle is an oscillation between efficient fragility and robust inefficiency. Over the course of successive cycles, both poles of this oscillation get worse which leads to median&amp;#x2F;mean system performance falling rapidly at the same time that the tails deteriorate due to the increased illegibility of the automated system to the human operator.&lt;/i&gt; - Ashwin Parameswaran (2012)&lt;p&gt;... from my fortune clone @ &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;globalcitizen&amp;#x2F;taoup&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;globalcitizen&amp;#x2F;taoup&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>Animats</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Requiring the driver to be awake and alert while not requiring them to actually do anything for long stretches of time is a recipe for disaster.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Everybody who&amp;#x27;s looked at this seriously agrees. The aviation industry has looked hard at that issue for a long time. Watch &amp;quot;Children of the Magenta&amp;quot;.[1] This is a chief pilot of American Airlines talking to pilots about automation dependency in 1997. Watch this if you have anything to do with a safety-related system.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=pN41LvuSz10&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=pN41LvuSz10&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>empath75</author><text>The level-2 driving that Tesla is pushing seems like a worst case scenario to me.  Requiring the driver to be awake and alert while not requiring them to actually &lt;i&gt;do&lt;/i&gt; anything for long stretches of time is a recipe for disaster.&lt;p&gt;Neither the driver nor the car manufacturer will have clear responsibility when there is an accident.  The driver will blame the system for failing and the manufacturer will blame the driver for not paying sufficient attention.  It&amp;#x27;s lose-lose for everyone.  The company, the drivers, the insurance companies, and other people on the road.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>doingmything</author><text>Not to mention the myriad of safety and control mechanisms in place on the aircraft (redundant systems etc) and away from it (air traffic control, IVR etc)</text></comment>