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Alphabet's Waymo and Intel Are Launching Public Campaigns To Build Trust In Self-Driving Cars (theverge.com)

Alphabet's Waymo and Intel announced plans today to sponsor ads about self-driving cars. "Alphabet's Waymo is launching a public education campaign today called "Let's Talk Self-Driving" aimed at addressing the skepticism many people have about autonomous technology," reports The Verge. Meanwhile, "Intel said it would be airing its commercial starring LeBron James in the run-up to the NBA season opener on October 17th. From the report: The ad campaign will launch first in Arizona, before spreading to other states. Waymo is preparing to launch its first commercial ride-hailing service powered by its self-driving Chrysler Pacifica minivans, according to a recent report in The Information. This public education campaign would appear to be a prelude to inviting ordinary people to take a ride in a driverless vehicle. Both companies recognize that in order to make lots of money, there will need to be a robust effort to persuade people that autonomous vehicles are as safe, if not safer, than human-operated ones. Recent polls suggest that most people wouldn't take a ride in a driverless car, even if they like the idea surrounding the technology.

4 of 191 comments (clear)

  1. Trust isn't the problem by hyades1 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Traffic flow is the problem. Self-driving cars will adhere slavishly to every letter of the law, even when it creates traffic havoc. Imagine a self-driving car doing exactly the speed limit in the passing lane as it inches by a self-driving transport truck doing five kph under the speed limit.

    I believe Dennis Leary wrote a song that mentioned a situation much like it.

    --
    I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
  2. saying we will cover you in court is a better way by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    saying we will cover you in court is a better way.

    be by saying we are liable for civil stuff and if there happens to be a criminal case we will cover your costs + bail if needed.

  3. Re:How about trying to EARN trust. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    With traditional cars the failure rate ties straight in with operating costs. Failures in the deployed fleet are a poor reflection on the manufacturer and cause recalls. When we find the brake shoes are defective by design we haul them in and fix them all. It's all easy to see after the fact and we conduct a post-mortem to construct root cause and fix things. Very mechanical. Very science. Very professional. This part will continue to exist.

    Compare this with software. When software goes wrong we all point fingers at everyone else and stick our fingers in our ears. If things get bad enough the startup will shutdown or get bought out by Google who will shut it down or rebrand it. When they aren't dealing with catastrophic fires they're busy finding ways to connect the CAM bus to the latest video playing shoemebob shovelware which will get hacked tomorrow.

    Software is an immature industry. It's been that way for a very long time and there's no sign that it wants to improve beyond that. Do I trust them to make a car? No fucking chance. No fucking chance at all. I work in that industry and I *know* they can't build it right. Anything they can make will be broken 12 months later and then crippled by ineffective and destructive software updates which remove all the functionality they hadn't verified the first time around.

    The problem is the software industry is broken by design.

  4. Re:Less Talk, Have a Safe and Consistent Record by Hal_Porter · · Score: 1, Interesting

    It's not so much that Trump won the election, more that Hillary lost it.

    Trump is awful but she managed to convince people she was even worse. And spent $1.2 billion doing it. And had the support of most of media.

    So ironically it's actually not an example of advertising working. It's more the opposite - Hillary's campaign outspent Trumps and had far more support from the media. However that ended up working against her. After all she went into the campaign something like a twenty point lead and ended up almost neck and neck.

    I actually think people rebelled against the media's attempt to hard sell Clinton.

    --
    echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;