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The Sci-Fi Myth of Robotic Competence
malachiorion writes: "When it comes to robots, most of us are a bunch of Jon Snow know-nothings. With the exception of roboticists, everything we assume we know is based on science fiction, which has no reason to be accurate about its iconic heroes and villains, or journalists, who are addicted to SF references, jokes and tropes. That's my conclusion, at least, after a story I wrote Popular Science got some attention—it asked whether a robotic car should kill its owner, if it means saving two strangers. The most common dismissals of the piece claimed that robo-cars should simply follow Asimov's First Law, or that robo-cars would never crash into each other. These perspectives are more than wrong-headed—they ignore the inherent complexity and fallibility of real robots, for whom failure is inevitable. Here's my follow-up story, about why most of our discussion of robots is based on make-believe, starting with the myth of robotic hyper-competence."
Given this article mere moments ago on /. indicating that Google's autonomous cars have driven 700,000 miles on public roads with no citations, it's difficult to argue that they're not more competent, if not hyper-competent, compared to human drivers (most of whom get traffic tickets, and most of whom don't drive 700,000 miles between doing so).
Article has many good valid points, though, but that point irked me.
There was an article a short while ago written by a journalist who rode in a driverless car for a stretch. There was one adjective that really stood out, an adjective that most people don't take into consideration when talking about driverless cars.
That one word: boring.
Driverless cars drive in the most boring, conservative, milquetoast fashion imaginable. They're going to be far less prone to accidents from the outset simply because they don't take the kind of chances that many of us wouldn't even begin call "risky". They drive the speed limit. They follow at an appropriate distance. They don't pull quick lane changes to get ahead of slowpokes. They don't swing around blind corners faster than they can stop upon detecting an unexpected hazard. They don't nudge through crosswalks. They don't cut off cyclists in the bike lane. They don't get impatient. They don't get frustrated. They don't get angry. They don't get sleepy. They don't get distracted. They just drive, in a deliberate, controlled, and entirely boring fashion.
The problem with so, so many of the "what if?" accident scenarios is that the people posing said scenarios presume that the car would be putting itself in the same kinds of unnecessarily hazardous driving positions that human drivers put themselves in every single day, as a matter of routine, and without a moment's hesitation.
Very, very few people drive "boring" safe. Every driverless car will. Every trip. All the time.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
I used to do software for industrial robots. Safety for the people around the robot was the number one concern, but it is amazing how easy it is for humans to give orders to a robot that will lead to it being damaged or destroyed. In practice, the robots would 'prioritize' protecting themselves rather than obeying suicidal orders.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
911 vehicles on the other hand should always value their own occupants less than than others,
The first rule taught in first responder classes is that if you become a casualty then you become worthless as a first responder. For example, as a lifeguard, if you die trying to save someone then they aren't going to survive, either. If that means you have to wait until the belligerent victim goes unconscious (and maybe unsavable) before you approach him, you wait.
The idea that every first responder vehicle must sacrifice itself and its occupants is going to result in very few people being first responders, either through choice or simple attrition.
The irony is that he's 180 degrees off from the main problem with his story, which is that he thinks robots are magic too. The reason robots will not be making ethical decisions is that they can't, not only because getting them to reason ethically would require us to agree on a system of ethics for them to follow, but because even if they had such a system, they don't have enough data to act on it with the degree of accuracy that would be required for the premise of the article to make sense. The author essentially assumes that these car-driving robots will be omniscient, or that they will be able to trust the omniscience of the robots in other cars with which they are communicating. The first supposition is nonsensical; the second is unlikely to be true, for the same reason that video game cheats are a problem.
If this ever comes up as a question than the person asking the question is obviously NOT an engineer.
Keep
It
Simple,
Stupid
The cars should be programmed to stop and revert to human control whenever there is a problem that the car is not programmed to handle.
And the car should only be programmed to handle DRIVING.
No. The car should not even be able to detect other occupants. Adding more complexity means more avenues for failure.
The car should understand obstacles and how to avoid them OR STOP AND LET THE HUMAN DRIVE.
No. Again, the car should understand obstacles and how to avoid them OR STOP AND LET THE HUMAN DRIVE. Emergency vehicles should ALWAYS be human controlled.
From TFA:
As is that entire article.
The entirety of the car's programming should be summed up as:
a. Is the way clear? If yes then go.
b. If not, are the obstacles ones that I am programmed for? If yes then go.
c. Stop.