Also, I believe we should think about it more like a fast-track trial for a terminal disease. Driverless cars would save hundreds per day (even if they're buggy) and cut CO2 emissions to sustainable levels (no range anxiety and a focus on per-mile costs make electric cars the obvious choice).
Fast track for terminal cases? Let's get a little risky.
Dangerous. You keep using that word. I don't believe it means what you think it means.
You regulate first, then ease off the regulations as safety is demonstrated. I could not disagree any more strongly. You let people and businesses exercise freedom and intervene if and when there is a problem. Consider that EVERY new innovation has safety implications. Broadly applied, this mentality would seize the works entirely.
I agree that such a statute is pretty sensible. But let's explore that a little.
Say Google has 100 cars and wants to move as fast as possible. Humans only want to work first shift and need breaks every few hours. So these prototypes get tested for around 6 hours per day, when the potential is that they can be tested 24 hours per day. With a simple, sensible statute, you've reduced the testing capability by 75%. And for what purpose? Google's cars have never caused an accident or injury, so any problem is by definition imagined.
You just cut the rate of testing by 75% because of an imagined problem. I say that is unjustified.
There are lots of reasons to hasten the wide adoption of driverless cars:
1. Climate change: driverless cars mean no range anxiety and focus on per-mile costs: perfect for electric cars 2. Human-caused traffic fatalities: lots. even a rushed and buggy algorithm saves hundreds of lives per day.
Smart regulation, operator licenses, et al make a lot of sense and it's very tempting to say they should be implemented with our best guesses at the moment. But considering that (a) there have been zero algorithm-caused problems, and (b) there are immense and immediate benefits to implementation, why not let things develop hands off and only intervene when there is a real, live, actual, non-imaginary, in-the-field problem?
I think scaling this one will be painfully slow already. You have cost, technical, safety, and market obstacles all dragging down implementation. The best way to solve those problems is to iterate quickly and not get locked into a solution early by a (temporary or not) regulatory environment.
Yes, government can't predict the future. Neither can anyone else.
When a non-gov't predicts wrong, he loses. When a gov't predicts wrong, it holds back tech by a decade. Gov't should know this and approach these things with some caution and humility.
We also can't have unregulated self driving cars on public roads either.
This would be better than wrong regulation. No regulation means that each car company is exposed to civil liabilities and brand damage, which is all the incentive they need to keep things pretty safe. If I were a dictator, I would wait and see and only write laws to stop real live problems that arise or to mandate good practices already in place by some vendors.
You're in tech, I assume. I also assume that your current project has competitors and your solution has some differentiating aspects. What if, one day, your state government decides the competitor's solution is better and proscribes all differentiating aspects. That is exactly what's happening here: no market experimentation is allowed for things like "no steering wheel" or "dashboard footrests". Why? Because, in the imagination of several nontechnical bureaucrats, these things may cause problems some day.
Let me repeat myself, technical innovation for driverless cars in 2025 will be restricted by the imagination of a few nontechnical bureaucrats in 2015.
Let me repeat myself, technical innovation for driverless cars in 2025 will be restricted by the imagination of a few nontechnical bureaucrats in 2015.
Any time a government gets involved with predicting the future, they get it embarrassingly wrong. Every one of these guides reads like the following: "We support self driving cars, so here is the exact product everyone must release and the one path to market that everyone must take." So the consumer gets the 5 year old scripted vision of non technical bureaucrats on a power trip. Innovation in the sector slows to utility-pace. When an industry manages to escape this yoke (e.g. mobile), the pace of innovation is dizzying expressly because the future is unscripted and the path there is allowed to be messy.
UK gov't 1910: Ok, you can have a horseless carriage, but you have to keep the horses so as not to confuse other drivers. Also, only mechanics can drive them. Good governance is to wait for problems before applying solutions. Bad governance is to let no nothing bureaucrats exercise their inner petty fascist.
Would you use a transporter machine as is currently understood to be possible, i.e. destructive scanning of source and remote reconstitution from local matter?
Science plows fertile high ground when it humbly insists that all of its assertions are up for debate and will be constantly changed to adapt to new knowledge. Don't give that up by crowding out contrary views.
Becoming dogmatic in the face of dogmatism means that real problems with biology won't be addressed honestly, such as the taxonomy mess, the mysteriousness of gene expression, etc.
I'm in the same boat. I try to use google now, and >50% of "hands-free" interactions eventually require hands. Many times, voice control requires more looking at the phone because you have to watch it like a hawk to catch all the errors.
Standards are probably the best thing to come out of regulation. I would love it if those standards were written after anyone knew what the heck the new industry was going to look like! It would be like the 1910 CA legislature mandating turn-crank starters because that solution made the best sense at the time.
I bet Google has plenty of skeptical safety guys there just like you. And I bet they're under a lot of pressure from the suits to prevent incidents in the field.
So far there have been zero problems, but that didn't stop them from setting up a regulatory framework. Guessing the problems of an entirely new technology and mandating rules for an entire industry is the kind of hubris that can hold up widespread adoption by 10 years.
If you were running this I bet you would sign yourself up for an ATE-heavy 100%, a sample plan of trips around town, and an exhaustive DVT (verification in the lab and validation all over the country). You'd hit all the points on the FMEA and performance requirements doc, then throw some gonzo tests in there to add a little spice.
I would say that's sufficient and you acted prudently, and engineers with production experience would say the same. Things would turn out just fine UNLESS some idiot decided to turn it into a political talking point--then common sense and a workable time-to-market flies out the window.
You make an excellent argument for simulated testing. A real world test will only give you a few scenarios, simulation will throw millions at each individual unit.
Of course you're right about real life constantly surprising people--that's why the development team is performing continuous algorithm development in the real world. I hope my automated car has a real-world-tuned algorithm in combination with a moslty-simulated per-unit system test.
It also the height of hubris for the geek to allow Google to be the sole judge of its own work.
Manufacturing in a regulated industry is a constant battle between operations an quality. Operations (with an eye toward revenue) tries to speed things up, Quality (with an eye toward recalls and audits) tries to slow things down. Both report through different paths to the CEO. The Geek in R&D will see his work checked over by a different department with a different set of metrics.
You can pick your exceptions, but the overwhelming result of this organizational method is safer and better products.
The real story is an unbroken 50-year streak of improvements in safety driven and executed by engineers. A series of recalls is nothing compared to the 60% decline in traffic deaths brought about by new safety technology and it's rapid adoption. Driverless cars are a new safety technology. Let's adopt them already!
Would 2014 America hold up seat belt installation for ten years just to make sure they are totally, exactly, 100% safe?
Slashdot Mirror
Have you ever made rules that other people have to follow? feelsgoodman.jpg
Most people have an inner fascist. Fortunately there are HOAs and school boards to satisfy them before they become the next Hitler.
Also, I believe we should think about it more like a fast-track trial for a terminal disease. Driverless cars would save hundreds per day (even if they're buggy) and cut CO2 emissions to sustainable levels (no range anxiety and a focus on per-mile costs make electric cars the obvious choice).
Fast track for terminal cases? Let's get a little risky.
Dangerous. You keep using that word. I don't believe it means what you think it means.
You regulate first, then ease off the regulations as safety is demonstrated.
I could not disagree any more strongly. You let people and businesses exercise freedom and intervene if and when there is a problem. Consider that EVERY new innovation has safety implications. Broadly applied, this mentality would seize the works entirely.
I agree that such a statute is pretty sensible. But let's explore that a little.
Say Google has 100 cars and wants to move as fast as possible. Humans only want to work first shift and need breaks every few hours. So these prototypes get tested for around 6 hours per day, when the potential is that they can be tested 24 hours per day. With a simple, sensible statute, you've reduced the testing capability by 75%. And for what purpose? Google's cars have never caused an accident or injury, so any problem is by definition imagined.
You just cut the rate of testing by 75% because of an imagined problem. I say that is unjustified.
There are lots of reasons to hasten the wide adoption of driverless cars:
1. Climate change: driverless cars mean no range anxiety and focus on per-mile costs: perfect for electric cars
2. Human-caused traffic fatalities: lots. even a rushed and buggy algorithm saves hundreds of lives per day.
Smart regulation, operator licenses, et al make a lot of sense and it's very tempting to say they should be implemented with our best guesses at the moment. But considering that (a) there have been zero algorithm-caused problems, and (b) there are immense and immediate benefits to implementation, why not let things develop hands off and only intervene when there is a real, live, actual, non-imaginary, in-the-field problem?
I think scaling this one will be painfully slow already. You have cost, technical, safety, and market obstacles all dragging down implementation. The best way to solve those problems is to iterate quickly and not get locked into a solution early by a (temporary or not) regulatory environment.
Yes, government can't predict the future. Neither can anyone else.
When a non-gov't predicts wrong, he loses. When a gov't predicts wrong, it holds back tech by a decade. Gov't should know this and approach these things with some caution and humility.
We also can't have unregulated self driving cars on public roads either.
This would be better than wrong regulation. No regulation means that each car company is exposed to civil liabilities and brand damage, which is all the incentive they need to keep things pretty safe. If I were a dictator, I would wait and see and only write laws to stop real live problems that arise or to mandate good practices already in place by some vendors.
You're in tech, I assume. I also assume that your current project has competitors and your solution has some differentiating aspects. What if, one day, your state government decides the competitor's solution is better and proscribes all differentiating aspects. That is exactly what's happening here: no market experimentation is allowed for things like "no steering wheel" or "dashboard footrests". Why? Because, in the imagination of several nontechnical bureaucrats, these things may cause problems some day.
Let me repeat myself, technical innovation for driverless cars in 2025 will be restricted by the imagination of a few nontechnical bureaucrats in 2015.
Let me repeat myself, technical innovation for driverless cars in 2025 will be restricted by the imagination of a few nontechnical bureaucrats in 2015.
Does that sound bad yet?
Any time a government gets involved with predicting the future, they get it embarrassingly wrong. Every one of these guides reads like the following: "We support self driving cars, so here is the exact product everyone must release and the one path to market that everyone must take." So the consumer gets the 5 year old scripted vision of non technical bureaucrats on a power trip. Innovation in the sector slows to utility-pace. When an industry manages to escape this yoke (e.g. mobile), the pace of innovation is dizzying expressly because the future is unscripted and the path there is allowed to be messy.
UK gov't 1910: Ok, you can have a horseless carriage, but you have to keep the horses so as not to confuse other drivers. Also, only mechanics can drive them. Good governance is to wait for problems before applying solutions. Bad governance is to let no nothing bureaucrats exercise their inner petty fascist.
r/shitpost
zzZZzz
Demonstrably false. Please try again.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/14/study-finds-surprisingly-that-women-are-favored-for-jobs-in-stem/
Would you use a transporter machine as is currently understood to be possible, i.e. destructive scanning of source and remote reconstitution from local matter?
Science plows fertile high ground when it humbly insists that all of its assertions are up for debate and will be constantly changed to adapt to new knowledge. Don't give that up by crowding out contrary views.
Becoming dogmatic in the face of dogmatism means that real problems with biology won't be addressed honestly, such as the taxonomy mess, the mysteriousness of gene expression, etc.
I'm in the same boat. I try to use google now, and >50% of "hands-free" interactions eventually require hands. Many times, voice control requires more looking at the phone because you have to watch it like a hawk to catch all the errors.
Probably got caught on tape admitting to voting for Reagan in 84. That's a fire-able offense in tech.
Standards are probably the best thing to come out of regulation. I would love it if those standards were written after anyone knew what the heck the new industry was going to look like! It would be like the 1910 CA legislature mandating turn-crank starters because that solution made the best sense at the time.
I bet Google has plenty of skeptical safety guys there just like you. And I bet they're under a lot of pressure from the suits to prevent incidents in the field.
So far there have been zero problems, but that didn't stop them from setting up a regulatory framework. Guessing the problems of an entirely new technology and mandating rules for an entire industry is the kind of hubris that can hold up widespread adoption by 10 years.
If you were running this I bet you would sign yourself up for an ATE-heavy 100%, a sample plan of trips around town, and an exhaustive DVT (verification in the lab and validation all over the country). You'd hit all the points on the FMEA and performance requirements doc, then throw some gonzo tests in there to add a little spice.
I would say that's sufficient and you acted prudently, and engineers with production experience would say the same. Things would turn out just fine UNLESS some idiot decided to turn it into a political talking point--then common sense and a workable time-to-market flies out the window.
You make an excellent argument for simulated testing. A real world test will only give you a few scenarios, simulation will throw millions at each individual unit.
Of course you're right about real life constantly surprising people--that's why the development team is performing continuous algorithm development in the real world. I hope my automated car has a real-world-tuned algorithm in combination with a moslty-simulated per-unit system test.
It also the height of hubris for the geek to allow Google to be the sole judge of its own work.
Manufacturing in a regulated industry is a constant battle between operations an quality. Operations (with an eye toward revenue) tries to speed things up, Quality (with an eye toward recalls and audits) tries to slow things down. Both report through different paths to the CEO. The Geek in R&D will see his work checked over by a different department with a different set of metrics.
You can pick your exceptions, but the overwhelming result of this organizational method is safer and better products.
A test track may break the bank for a start-up with a great new algorithm
"comparatively"
This is (typically) the most dangerous thing people do all day.
Gov't won't mandate this type of car anytime soon. For the time being, it's up to consumers to adopt and the gov't to get out of the way.
The real story is an unbroken 50-year streak of improvements in safety driven and executed by engineers. A series of recalls is nothing compared to the 60% decline in traffic deaths brought about by new safety technology and it's rapid adoption. Driverless cars are a new safety technology. Let's adopt them already!
Would 2014 America hold up seat belt installation for ten years just to make sure they are totally, exactly, 100% safe?