Slashdot Mirror
German Auto Firms Face Roadblock In Testing Driverless Car Software
An anonymous reader writes As nations compete to build the first operational autonomous car, German auto-manufacturers fear that current domestic laws limit their efforts to test the appropriate software for self-driving vehicles on public roads. German carmakers are concerned that these roadblocks are allowing U.S. competitors, such as Google, to race ahead in their development of software designed to react effectively when placed in real-life traffic scenarios. Car software developers are particularly struggling to deal with the ethical challenges often raised on the road. For example when faced with the decision to crash into a pedestrian or another vehicle carrying a family, it would be a challenge for a self-driving car to follow the same moral reasoning a human would in the situation. 'Technologically we can do fully automated self-driving, but the ethical framework is missing,' said Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn.
So, disregarding how the self-driving car decided who it is best to kill in any given situation, for me the biggest problem with self-driving cars is legal liability.
If Google wants to sell autonomous cars, Google should be liable for anything the damned thing does.
And none of this cop out where if the computer doesn't know what to do it just hands back to the human -- because that's pretty much guaranteed to fail since the human won't be able to make the context switch in time (if at all).
As far as I'm concerned, the autonomous car has to be 100% hands off by the user at all times, and the company who makes the damned thing is 100% responsible for what it does.
Why the hell would someone have to pay for insurance for something they don't have control of what it does?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
But the self-driving cars ARE capable of hitting the breaks quicker and more reliably (avoiding skidding) than a normal human would
Think about it if it were the other way around - what if humans were crappy about deciding to hit the pedestrian but computers had incredibly slow reflexes and took ten times as long to decide to hit the break. Given that example we would laugh and say no way would we let anyone with slow reflexes drive a car.
But we already do that - we let human reflexes drive a car - (Even if they have had one drink 30 minutes ago, slowing them down). The question is not and never has been will computers be perfect drivers. Instead the question is will they do
And that is something that we likely can do within the next couple of years, if we can't already do that.
So stop being obstructionists idiots bringing up the rare/never seen in the real world situations, and talk about what actually happens.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
First, this is outright cruel to say that. Second, this is only fear mongering of the car developers. They could test their cars in the US without any trouble and they have done the same in Germany. Yes they want to be allowed to put them on the road right now to show technology leadership, once, as they have been embarrassed by Japanese car manufacturers over the hybrid thing.
The trucking industry would absolutely love to do away with hundreds of thousands of long-haul drivers. The mass-transit industry, which is often contracted by the municipality to private companies, would also love to do away with bus drivers and other high occupancy drivers where they could be deemed not necessary. On top of that, removing the payroll for drivers could allow bus companies to start employing private security on bus routes where assault or vandalism is a problem without increasing their payrolls to do so.
Even low occupancy transit like taxis will do away with drivers- it will remove the human element as a risk to the passenger and will mean that the cab companies make more money as they're not simply renting cabs to drivers for a flat rate, they're collecting all of the revenue for the cab's use, and they only have to operate as many cabs as they have service demands for at any given moment, so there's less unnecessary wear and tear on the cars as drivers aren't speculatively taking cabs out.
Sure, there will be plenty of human drivers out there, but there's going to be a whole lot of automation because it will simply be much more cost-effective in many circumstances.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Humans are unable to make moral decisions in a few miliseconds. They would either freeze for a least one second and hit the next car or pedestrian depending on which comes first. If they have more time, they would try to avoid collision with the human and hit the car, because you cannot really see other people in there and you do not know how many persons are in there. Also people in the car are better protected. So the safest thing is hit the car. But beside that people know when approaching an truck trailer and they cannot stop, they should aim for the wheels and not the section in the middle. However, most people are unable to implement that so why should be cars be able to do these things?
You have hit on one of the key reasons why trying to implement human reasoning in an emergency; especially since it's usually a subconscious reaction to avoid hitting the bigger, scarier thing. yo can train people to make calm decisions in an emergency situation but that takes a lot of simulator time and practice; something most drivers sorely lack before getting a license. If you wanted to follow the human reasoning it would simply be "CRAAAP.... AVOID HITTING THE BIG THING...DAMN... A PEDESTRIAN ... OH WELL IT ISN'T THE BIG THING...."
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Well except that in Ontario Canada, you can't hit a jwalker as you'd still be totally at fault. Pedestrians have total and absolute right of way, you'd have almost a 0% chance of fighting it in court.
The trucking industry would absolutely love to do away with hundreds of thousands of long-haul drivers.
At least in America, the drivers are the trucking industry. When you see an 18 wheeler on the freeway, the chances are very high that the truck is owned by the guy driving it.
Who owns the trailers and the merchandise? It's usually not the owner of the tractor.
Who pays the trucker? The owner of the merchandise or the trailer.
Don't forget, lots and lots of large retailers maintain their own over-the-road fleet. Sears/Kmart, Walmart, Target, Costco, Kroger, Safeway, Autozone, and that's only a drop in the bucket. They could all retrofit to an automated tractor, or at least where a pilot car or truck escorts a caravan of autonomous trucks following behind.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
It's even easier than that.
Do YOU want to be the person dragged into court because YOU wrote the program that INTENTIONALLY HIT AND KILLED someone?
No? Then write the code to be 100% neutral. The code will ONLY attempt to stop the vehicle as fast as possible.
If pedestrians are within X meters of the car then the car should slow to Y. If they get closer then the car should stop.
But the code should NEVER have the option "hit object X".
The summary doesn't really explain why that dilemma is harder for German companies to solve than American companies.
For Americans, the answer is: always hit the pedestrian(s). What the hell was anyone doing outside of a car?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
For example when faced with the decision to crash into a pedestrian or another vehicle carrying a family, it would be a challenge for a self-driving car to follow the same moral reasoning a human would in the situation
Or maybe it would follow better moral reasoning. Ours is not perfect, it's just whatever evolution came up with that gave us the best species survival rates. That doesn't mean it's really the most ethical solution.
For example, in a post-feminist society, let's assume for arguments sake that gender discrimination has been overcome, wouldn't we also do away with "women and children first" - which is a suitable survival approach in a species fighting for survival in the african prairie, but hardly for the dominant species that already is overpopulated.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
1) Cars are not technologically at a point where they have omnipresent awareness of the constituents of every vehicle around them and the locations of every pedestrian (add in crowded street-facing cafés, structural members for buildings, and everything else you could possibly think of). Neither, for that matter, are people.
2) The most brilliant philosophers still disagree over the ethics of choosing who dies when someone's gotta go. See also the Trolley Problem, most other ethical dilemmas, and generally the eternal struggle between various consequentialist and deontological systems of ethics.
3) This precise scenario is highly contrived and seems (1st approximation) to be vanishingly rare.
Given the above, maybe the question shouldn't be if a robot can make a perfect (or any) ethical decision. Maybe for now it should just be if the robot can do better than a human at not killing anyone at all in these sorts of situations. Maybe "I did my best to protect my owner from death and just happen to average out safer for everyone" will have to be ok for now.
Nothing posted to
Let's say they manage to program the car so that it can calculate which course of action will cause the least injuries/fatalities. Now you get into a situation where the only two options available are a.) evade some obstacle on the road, but thereby hit a group of five pedestrians, quite possibly severely injuring or killing them or b.) hit the obstacle, quite possibly killing the driver (you). You are alone in your car.
Now, would you drive such a car which sometimes can decide, with cold, pure Vulcan logic, to kill you?
Those made up example with the family van and the walker are laughable. Firstly out of my experience you do not have time while being in an accident to think that far as to check & see the family van is full of children. You steer , brake, and do as much as you can to avoid the walker. And the van. Secondly you really think there is even a concurrence ? The walker will get the full hit of the kinetic energy in his body. The van will absorb part of it in its structure. What sort of SICK FUCK would hit the walker rather than the van because there are children in the van ? There is no photo finish : You steer to avoid all, and if you cannot, you try to hit the target which will get the less physical damage from your damn car *if you can think that fast*. Does not matter if the walker is an old 99 guys and the van full of the brim of puppies and babies. I expect any automated car to make the same damn calculation : between hitting a car and a walker, go for the car. Hit the one with the most protection.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I should actually correct myself slightly: Wal-Mart (and others) have some in house drivers and some outsourced.
BTW, in discussions of the transport industry, don't get distracted/lied to by the companies. Some drivers think they are owner operators, when in practice, they aren't. They will lease/buy a truck from (as an example, all of the bigs do this) Schneider. As part of the lease terms, they can only accept loads from Schneider. It should be obvious that the 'owner' is an employee who has assumed much of the risk that the company would usually take on.
ShanghaiBill has a decent reply, but he misses a point: if the automated truck is cheaper, the big companies will drive that change in a heartbeat. The trick is that someone has to be convinced that they will be cheaper. They are unlikely to automatically accept that an automated truck is safer, faster, etc. One area where they are likely to be impressed is the possibility of 24 hour operations, rather than the 10 hour per day (rough) limits of human operated trucks. In addition to (possibly) being cheaper, this will allow faster shipments for more mundane goods (there are already plenty of ways to have fast shipping, but it is cost prohibitive to do for everything) which would offer them a competitive advantage. I suspect this last point will be the thin edge of the wedge.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon