<story><title>Former Uber Backup Driver: &apos;We Saw This Coming&apos;</title><url>https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/03/former-uber-backup-driver-we-saw-this-coming/556427/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>stale2002</author><text>Well, so level 3 can be safe under certain conditions and still be world changing.&lt;p&gt;For example, imagine a self driving truck that works perfectly, but only during the day, on highways, when it is not raining.&lt;p&gt;Such a system would still put millions out of work, as firing half of the truck drivers is possible if something works when it is sunny, on the highway.</text></item><item><author>snaily</author><text>Also known as the &amp;quot;Level 3 is inherently unsafe&amp;quot; argument. Waymo noticed this back in 2012: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;driverless.wonderhowto.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;waymo-was-right-why-every-car-maker-should-skip-level-3-0178497&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;driverless.wonderhowto.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;waymo-was-right-why-...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>twblalock</author><text>This isn&amp;#x27;t just about Uber -- all semi-autonomous cars are going to have this problem. The people behind the wheel will become distracted, increasingly so as the technology becomes better and they need to intervene less and less often. Even people who are trained to pay attention while testing self-driving cars become distracted, so we can assume the general public will become distracted too.&lt;p&gt;The only viable autonomous cars are ones that will never require human intervention, because humans aren&amp;#x27;t able to intervene effectively and may make situations worse as they snap out of a distracted state. But we can&amp;#x27;t get to full autonomy without first testing the technology, and no artificial test conditions could replicate the complexity of the real world. Society will either learn to accept some avoidable deaths during the testing phase or will ban the technology. I suspect a few more incidents will result in a ban, and we will not have fully autonomous cars for a very long time.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>femto</author><text>In the physical world there&amp;#x27;s no such thing as a system with preconditions that can &amp;quot;work perfectly&amp;quot;.  There will always be a boundary region where is is hard to say whether the precondition is present and the system is unpredictable.&lt;p&gt;What we really mean when we say a system is reliable&amp;#x2F;perfect is that the conditions which can cause failure are so rare that they can be neglected.  Any system that depends on things that are inside normal experience: rain, day&amp;#x2F;night, errant pedestrians, earthquakes, and so on can never be trusted to act reliably&amp;#x2F;perfectly.  A &amp;quot;reliable&amp;quot; system might be excused for messing up under conditions such as meteor strikes or falling space stations.</text></comment>
<story><title>Former Uber Backup Driver: &apos;We Saw This Coming&apos;</title><url>https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/03/former-uber-backup-driver-we-saw-this-coming/556427/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>stale2002</author><text>Well, so level 3 can be safe under certain conditions and still be world changing.&lt;p&gt;For example, imagine a self driving truck that works perfectly, but only during the day, on highways, when it is not raining.&lt;p&gt;Such a system would still put millions out of work, as firing half of the truck drivers is possible if something works when it is sunny, on the highway.</text></item><item><author>snaily</author><text>Also known as the &amp;quot;Level 3 is inherently unsafe&amp;quot; argument. Waymo noticed this back in 2012: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;driverless.wonderhowto.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;waymo-was-right-why-every-car-maker-should-skip-level-3-0178497&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;driverless.wonderhowto.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;waymo-was-right-why-...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>twblalock</author><text>This isn&amp;#x27;t just about Uber -- all semi-autonomous cars are going to have this problem. The people behind the wheel will become distracted, increasingly so as the technology becomes better and they need to intervene less and less often. Even people who are trained to pay attention while testing self-driving cars become distracted, so we can assume the general public will become distracted too.&lt;p&gt;The only viable autonomous cars are ones that will never require human intervention, because humans aren&amp;#x27;t able to intervene effectively and may make situations worse as they snap out of a distracted state. But we can&amp;#x27;t get to full autonomy without first testing the technology, and no artificial test conditions could replicate the complexity of the real world. Society will either learn to accept some avoidable deaths during the testing phase or will ban the technology. I suspect a few more incidents will result in a ban, and we will not have fully autonomous cars for a very long time.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>twblalock</author><text>Truck drivers do a lot more than just drive trucks: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;marginalrevolution.com&amp;#x2F;marginalrevolution&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;02&amp;#x2F;will-truckers-automated-comments.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;marginalrevolution.com&amp;#x2F;marginalrevolution&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;02&amp;#x2F;wil...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>