First off, Michigan? Really?! It's a maple tree. It declares its nationality with thousands and thousands of national flags on each and every tree. Maple trees were always just-visiting Michigan. If you want maple, know that they'll always be alive and well in their home country.
Second, maple was always arbitrary. Personally, I enjoy the less-sweet, sharper taste of birch syrup even more. You'll find them combined quite often -- that's a good stepping-stone if you need such a device.
Pfffff. Michigan maples. I mean, really. What are you thinking? What's next? British wine? Australian tea? I know: Texas tofu.
Back 30 years ago, there were shareware games. These were basically "demos" or the first level, distributed freely everywhere, and encouraged gamers to copy them to friends, in the hopes that you'd then buy the complete game.
One game in particular -- and I may never remember which -- had a splash screen. This splash screen described the shareware concept. But, instead of "press enter to continue" (this was back in the keyboard-only days), it forced the gamer to type the sentence: "I support the shareware concept" in order to continue. Simple, effective, I remember it thirty years later.
Any button can be pressed accidentally. Any two buttons can be similarly pressed in sequence. Any swipe. Any confirmation. Hey buddy, I need you to press this button too -- also goes without a second decision-maker.
On attack subs, two officers, each with a key, standing twenty feet apart, both need to turn the keys together. But what makes that so much better is what came before -- breaking the glass and revealing the code and confirming the radio transmission.
If you're going to send a message to a million humans, it's never going to be good enough to confirm the sending of that message. In this case, they wanted to send a message, so they confirmed sending the message. Any number of humans would have backed up that decision.
What they needed to do was to confirm the message itself.
So, here's my thought. For all messages that the system is going to send to the public, (i.e. not test messages) the operator simply gets to re-type the message as displayed on-screen. Five seconds to type that message. And I promise, if I were to find myself typing that message, I would have understood what I was doing.
Each letter is effectively a confirmation. So that's what, fifty confirmations of the message content itself. And of the fact that it's being sent. And of the fact that it's going out to the public -- because tests aren't confirmed like that.
The real problem now is the very simple notification fatigue. How long will it take for you to believe it next time?
Not to mention the fact that your government just terrorized its own people -- making your government a terrorist organization.
Every road that exists was built for people needing to drive it. Therefore, every road can be driven by human drivers.
Compared to the number of humans who drive any given road, you see incredibly few dashcams crash videos. Of the millions of cars through billions of intersections every day, how many crashes do you see? 10'000 per day? That's effectively nothing (in terms of driving skill success).
Choosing not to pass is a valid choice. Whether or not it's possible or easy is irrelevant. As is the skill of the driver irrelevant to this conversation. Flip a few coins, and randomly choose a road, a time, and a reasonable weather condition for that region. 99% of healthy drivers will have no problem with 99% of the existing combinations. 99% of self-driving cars will fail in at least one of 99 different ways.
In my opinion, this is little more than a dependency issue. As a human driver, I'm dependent on the quality of my vehicle, and the quality of the road. That's about it (ignoring my own fatigue, of course). But that self-driving car (talking about today's cars) depends on mapping, vision systems compatible with the environment, experience with that road, experience with everything that actually occurs on a given trip. It's just insane.
Any system that requires experience in order to do something isn't self-driving anything. It's playback, and nothing more. Dynamic playback, customized playback, co--ordinated playback, sure. But it's just another mix tape.
Self-driving is like self- anything else. It's self-learning. You can either learn to do something that you've never done before, or you can't. You might learn slower or faster, at-speed or with your four-ways on, but if you can self-learn, then you can move forward and figure it out as you go.
That's what "capacity" is all about. These machines have a lot of ability, but zero capacity beyond those abilities. That's the problem. They can't decide how to act in a confusing situation. And therefore, you can't risk putting them in a situation that may become confusing.
Put it this way. You simply can't tell your ten-year old child how to deal with each and every problem that could happen when they are home alone. At some point, you need to trust that your child can figure out how to get through a new problem that they've never encountered. Until you can trust that they can do that adequately, you don't leave them home alone.
It's that simple. It's all decision-making. Can you make a decision when you simply don't know -- because you're moving at 120kph with others doing the same. There's no time to ask for help. You can't always slam on the brakes. You can't expect a passenger, blissfully unaware, to suddenly understand the context of the situation. It's up to you, and you alone.
Dude, you're saying that machines are better driving on roads than humans. You've absolutely zero evidence of that, given that there are no machines capable of driving on arbitrary roads at arbitrary times/climates/scenarios.
You've based your entire philosophy on something that's never been done.
There IS nothing better than a human driver, because there is nothing other than a human driver. Let me know when there is. We can talk again then.
I agree with a lot of what you've said, but I'll adjust a definition therein.
It may be a "human error" to crash as a result of blinding fog -- drive slower, don't drive, change lights, change street lighting, whatever. But that's not human error because we accept a certain amount of certain types of risks, otherwise we wouldn't be able to do anything cost-effectively.
With that definition adjustment, I actually don't consider most of what you've described as human error. We've built a system designed to be safe in most scenarios, and designed to have members fail in some scenarios. That's fine by me.
I promise, any AI driving will also have failure scenarios -- like driving into the sun on a snow-covered day.
The difference is, as I've always said, I'm perfectly fine with the reasonable failure of another human being, as the cause of my injury. I'm not ok with the reasonable failure of a machine, as the cause of my injury -- even if it's statistically less frequent.
So sorry you're a senior disabled person who lives alone with no friends and no neighbors and no one to help you.
Those of us like me -- healthy, young-ish, homeowners -- depend on at least a hundred people every year for the very basics of living.
I can't fix a serious plumbing issue, and you can't plunge a toilet remotely either, by the way.
I can't diagnose why my car keeps blowing a fuse, and since it's the anti-theft system fuse, you'd need to be a dealer to reprogram the keys anyway.
I might be able to clean my furnace and my fire place and my air conditioner twice a year, but I wouldn't be able to fix what might need fixing, nor be certain that I didn't break it trying to clean it.
I don't repair porcelain tiles.
I can paint, and I can even make small drywall repairs, but I can't do large drywall repairs.
Electrician, I am not, so anything beyond a simple outlet or basic switch, and I'm S.O.o.L..
I don't walk on rooves.
I don't pave driveways, although sealing is easy.
I cut grass, but not trees.
I cook, but don't repair kitchen appliances.
This concept of needing to be able to control every device with ease is a naive attitude of the I.T. industry. It's ridiculous. Do you hem your own pants? Most people buy pre-washed lettuce.
Plenty of accidents are caused by plenty of reasons. Start excluding the exceptions, like weather, breakage, environmental distractions, procedural failures, and acts of god, and your "plenty" becomes pretty small. Take that "plenty", and divide it by the number of non-incidents, and you can call your "plenty" virtually zero.
Millions of cars through billions of intersections every day in my city alone. Maybe ten accidents of consequence for 10 million people. 1 in a million.
You're very correct. In your country, healthcare isn't a right, it isn't a luxury. It's a status symbol.
That would be all fine, in theory. I can accept the concept that not dying in the streets is a status symbol -- hey, it would certain motivate me to work harder.
The problem is that, in practice, you pay more taxes than we do. You get far less out of those taxes too. And, overall, while you have far more "control" over what you do and don't get, and over what you do and don't deserve, you wind up all getting a whole lot less than we do.
I don't know what else to say. You pay more, you get less, you have more and bigger problems.
Personally, I couldn't imagine a scenario where I get hurt, and my first thought is anything but calling an ambulance. I stub my toe, and 9-1-1 is my first thought. But all healthcare is no-cost or near no-cost here. My family doctor is a ten-minute drive, available at a moment's notice, and free. The drugstore across the hall is peanuts.
I can't imagine worrying about my pain and my pocketbook at the same time.
All of these vision AIs are programmed backwards -- for convenience. This random object looks "more like" a speed limit sign and "less like" a stop sign. Great. No body cares about how much "like" something another something appears.
You can ask any 10-year old. A stop sign is a red octagon. Any 16-year old will say it also has a white border, and white lettering in the middle. Any experienced driver will add that it appears at some sort of intersection, obstruction, or event, alongside a narrow road.
Now, if you see a red octagon, and you stop, and it turns out to be a giant lollipop, then that's good. Because a giant lollipop on the road is absolutely acting as a stop sign.
If something isn't a red octagon, then it's definitely not a stop sign.
The problem here is that google's vision AI doesn't identify an sight according to what defines a stop sign -- a red octagon on the side of the road. That's because it's highly stupid.
And the question really comes down to something much simpler. If I put a big square sign on the side of the road, blue, with yellow lettering, that says "please pause, thank you", will google treat it as a stop sign? Good bet that any driver who sees it (and can certainly be forgiven for not noticing it) will stop.
Conversely, on a highway, at 120kph, if I put a real stop sign on the side of the road, will google treat it as a stop sign? No human driver is going to slam on the brakes.
Google's not thinking. Therefore, it ain't an AI. It surely "looks like" an AI, but it's not an AI. It uses collected intelligence to determine what the object is, but it doesn't use its own intelligence to make decisions. It doesn't make decisions at all.
Show me a vision system that can take any photograph of any road, and decide whether or not it should stop the car. Doesn't need to be right or wrong, correct or incorrect, it just needs to make a decision, reliably, that makes sense. See, if it can do that, "reliably", then we can change the signs for them. We chose the signs for us for a reason. Humans see red first, so stop signs are red. If machines have trouble with octagons, and love purple, then we can give them that instead. Dual signage is common in multi-lingual communities.
But these shitty AI systems are much worse. They don't even make their classifications reliably -- because the more data they collect, the most they distract themselves. So a guaranteed "this is a stop sign, 100%" can change a year later, as it "learns", such that the very same stop sign is now only 80%. There's no fortification. There's no stubbornness. That's a problem.
Community services a) are meant to be used; and b) get better, cheaper, and more effective the more we use them.
This 7% signifies three things:
1) that some people were calling for ambulances when they didn't need any medical care en-route to the hospital. Ambulances aren't taxis. These people should have been taking taxis or asking a neighbour to drive them. You don't need to pay a stranger to help you. You live with others.
2) that there are some people calling uber when they should be calling an ambulance. Medical issues can get worse en-route, especially with added delays and random things that can happen -- accidents, weather, traffic, jostling, tripping, indigestion, et cetera. Expert medical professionals are a good idea when there's already something seriously wrong with you (serious enough for a hospital visit) simply to ensure that nothing else happens to you also. Like my doctor says, once you're sick, you can still get another sickness too.
3) your ambulances are far too expensive. Ours cost $45 - Canadian Dollars. Always. That's it. And you won't get the bill for about a month. That's a driver, two paramedics in the back with you, the ambulance itself, and nothin' but green lights all the way. It's cheaper than a taxi -- as it damn well should be! Strangers pull over, delaying their plans, whatever they are, for your medical benefit. It's probably the most beautiful thing in the history of civilization. And I think it's the greatest achievement of mankind.
Exactly. People have no idea. And I'll take that sentiment one step further.
I'm among those Canadian 55%. My parents are very successful. So to compare myself to them is a very good indicator of growth, or lack thereof.
They came from humble parents. They came from humble means. They had little stability. They had little or no access to international travel, expensive entertainment, nor random goodies. Houses broke, plumbers were expensive.
My house is (relatively) inexpensive, and plumbers are cheap or free for me. Food is everywhere, safe, plentiful, and inexpensive. I can afford to travel anywhere in the world -- flights are inexpensive, frequent, and I can afford the time away from work.
Work is easier -- I work at a desk, mostly in a nice home office, welcome to high tech jobs. I don't get injured, I don't commute, I don't compete with colleagues.
Infinite water, fantastic health care, low taxes (as it turns out, our taxes are lower than most country's, and we get so much more), nearby conveniences like stores, entertainment, restaurants, et cetera.
So sure, I'd say that 50 years ago, people living where my parents/I lived/live likely felt that they had a lot more control over dictating their long-term successes, feelings or control are just total bullshit. Today, I worry about nothing. I don't worry about fire, flood, famine, crime, war, finances, family, health.
I think the reason that they felt like the governor of their own success is because they didn't get anywhere near this much for free. My community gives me so much, just for being born/here, that it doesn't feel as though I've earned it -- which I haven't. So that results in a feeling of less control.
Kinda hard to complain that I don't have control over all of the good that comes flooding my way.
I'm a business owner. About five years ago, my senior employee and I split. Lifestyles changed, we went in different ways.
He felt as you do. He didn't want to leave me stranded. So he offered to keep working on one major project that was his baby. I let him because, well, it was his baby and I didn't want to suddenly take it away from him.
After about three months, we sat down and he said "you know, at some point, you're going to need to do it without me". I of course said "I was just waiting for you to be ready to give it up. today's the day".
The truth is, I'm a business owner. I can deal with whatever comes. I didn't rest my entire business on his shoulders. I'm the business owner. So, plus or minus a short bit of shuffling or suffering, I can handle it without him.
Your employer is the same way, I promise. They didn't rest the entire business, and their livelihood, and their family's mortgage, and everyone else who works there, all on your shoulders. They either have a backup plan in case you leave (or that truck thing), or they plan to figure out when it happens, or maybe they just plan to drop that client/project altogether.
Every business owner has a succession plan, and an emergency plan, good or bad, stated or secret, obvious or hidden. Their business is not your responsibility. If it were, you'd have equity. . . and a requirement of sufficient notice in a written agreement.
Do what works for you. Be nice about it. Tell them your intentions. Don't worry about hurting them. They won't get hurt.
I do conflate, almost for a living. But I do so in much that same way that when I circle a word, the circle is made big to be obvious, even though it winds up encompassing other words as a result. Similarly, indicating an angle with a short line is not as obvious as using a long line, and it must be understood that the magnitude of my line is not to scale.
So please allow me to delve into the specifics that you quibbled so well!
You mentioned my desire for an "active" authorization. You and I very much disagree about what constitutes "active". When my touch-screen phone rings, and I reach into my pocket to pull it out, sometimes I wind up answering the call, merely by reaching for the phone in my dark pocket, behind my keys, under my wallet, past the dog poo bags. My reaching was an action, and meets your definition of active. It doesn't come close to mine.
My definition of active includes a few sides. It must be your definition of active, that's side one. It must also be intentional. That basically requires that it cannot be (reasonably) done by accident. Touching a part of an object while handling the object as a whole can be done accidentally. Swiping in a straight line isn't much harder. Entering a pattern or a code would be intent, but I've seen no phone that requires anything like that to answer a ringing call.
And that hurts me. If I'm james bond, or ethan hunt, or a homeowner, or a business owner, and someone calls me, and I've left my phone on my desk as I go to the bathroom, or just face the other way, and someone calls me, my LOCKED-with-a-password phone allows any passer-by to answer that call.
So now a random person walking by my desk, even while I'm there, can grab the ringing phone and talk to the person, short of me tackling them to the ground. Maybe it's my wife, maybe it's my child. Maybe it's an automated message from my child's school saying something private. I'll never know what got divulged.
So that's intent to act in the active manner.
The third side is comprehension. I need to know both what my action is, and the consequence of my action. A big prompt that says: "click here" isn't valid. "click here to agree" is required. Otherwise "click here" could mean deny, read more, or just for fun. But, obviously, it's really not enough. click here to agree to what? The sentence before? after? the title of the document?
A long time ago, we had shareware games. And a few of them started with an screen of text explaining what shareware is, and how it's a trial in the hopes that you'll buy the full game. It didn't say "click here to agree", it said: "type the following phrase: 'I support the shareware concept' ". I'll never forget that. It becomes highly explicit, and there's no denying to what I agree.
So that's active intent with comprehension. There's one more facet. Ability -- to comprehend.
I type for a living. I type fast. I program. Lots of letters, lots of clicks, lots of tab, space, enter. Guess how many times windows throws up a dialog box a split second before I hit enter, space, or tab-enter. I have no idea what the dialog said. I just effectively approved or denied something. I'll never know. That's not true. Because moments later, my computer reboots. I approved a reboot, mid-work-flow.
I'm sure you've seen contracts that say things like "I've consulted my own counsel/attorny or choose not to do so". You'll also find contracts that require a time period to elapse to consider the ramifications of agreeing -- because instant agreement is suspect and possibly coerced. I don't know why windows lets me click the OK/CANCEL button on a dialog box that's been open for a tenth of a second, when it knows that I couldn't possibly have read it that fast, nor even diverted my eyes from the other monitor in which I was typing. Humans have a maximum speed. It knows. It doesn't care.
So, active, with intent, comprehension, and enough time/effort to justify the action.
Learn how to prioritize "systems of components", and this is an easy decision.
If you don't want a printer that prints a lot, don't get one designed to print a lot.
If you want a printer that will last for decades, buy a printer that will last for decades (and remember to amortize the price).
I print about a page a week, on average. Maybe two. So eight years ago, I bought a high-end consumer multi-function. I chose the laser, obviously, and the small toner version, obviously. I went multi-function for the occasional scanner. Network for the not caring about software part. Small paper tray, obviously.
It's been sitting there for eight years now. Once a year I print something stupid -- like wine bottle labels, or car club flyers, or address labels. Otherwise, for work, it's about under ten pages per month.
I configured it to clean itself vigorously. So it's quite slow. When the toner is below 50% on one of the colours, it'll clean itself between each and every page. It's insanely slow. But the toner lasts twice as long. And what do I care if two pages takes two minutes.
It also looks nice, because it's small and consumery. Which is nice in an expensive home office.
The point is, this isn't hard. Spend $100, and you'll throw it out. Buy an inkjet, and you'll throw it out. Buy a black and white printer-only, and you'll eventually need something more. Spend $300 on a scanner and colour and laser and a decent brand, and the most annoying part will be finding a/the box when you want to take it with you three houses later.
I'm pushing 40. I'm in the IT world. I'd love to know that no one will discriminate against me. And that's all fine and dandy.
But there's a big difference between not hiring me because I'm 40, and being forced to spend money to advertise to me.
I also run a business. Damned if anyone's going to tell me how to spend my advertising budget. If I can (or believe that I can) get better bang for my buck by targeting what I believe is better value, then you ain't a'gonna stop me.
Besides, I'd argue that any 40 year old can easily pretend to be 25 years old to read job listings. And if a 40 year old responds to my ad in teenager-weekly, he's welcome to convince me that he's the better candidate. I'm happy to listen and I'm happy to be convinced.
Yes there's a line to be crossed where a thousand 40 year olds line up outside my door, and flood my interview time, but there's no rule that says I need to interview in sequence, nor that I need to interview absolutely everybody who shows up to the last man. So provided they aren't illegally blocking access to any responding teenagers, the more the merrier!
Actually, in-person, we may use facial-recognition to *identify* a person, but never to authenticate their request. For that, we use a signature -- because no one can accidentally give their signature, and we all understand that my signature means you can act, everything else is merely conversation.
The problem here is that the digital facial recognition isn't being used to populate "Hello Jonathan". It's being used to accept commands like "reveal private information", "spend money", "install software", "delete everything".
In the digital world, we like to put the major security up-front (the login credentials), and then the brief security last-minute (the are you sure confirmation). In the real world, we use brief security (you're here to close your account?) at the start of the conversation, and the major security (sign this waiver) at the last minute.
That's because in the real world, getting past the front door gives you physical access, but doesn't really grant you control over anybody. Sure you can steal trinkets, but you can't command someone to do something.
The signature has two benefits. The first is as mentioned above -- we know it means "go". The second is that it is VERY illegal to forge someone else's signature. There are real consequences to that. So it's not something to worry about.
The awesome thing about a password (in theory, of course) is that no one can get it from you without your willingness to give it to them. It's not written anywhere, except in your head, and we've yet to figure a way to read someone's brain memory. Pick the right password, protect it properly, and you needn't worry.
My face, my fingerprints, my dna, my iris, are all scattered around the world, everytime I touch something, go somewhere, or look at something. That's why those things are so great for forensics -- it's very difficult to avoid leaving them as evidence.
Passwords (in theory) are far better. Come up with a type/method/system of password generation/management/transmission, and they'll be infinitely better than anything else imaginable.
Having never used either one, I can't specifically comment on their differences. However, I'll remind people that the purpose of maps for navigation is not to see all of that detail at all. It is specifically to focus on the navigation required, by removing all of that added information.
I simply want to know which turns to make. I don't want my map to show me all of the great things that I'm passing -- I've chosen to pass on all of them to reach my destination. Same word for a reason.
Even more importantly, reviewing a simple map is easily committed to memory. Six turns, glanced once, remembered for the day. I can look at a map in my driveway, and then not need it anymore. It's called learning.
But give me all of that detail, and now I'll need to glance at the map every minute for a day of driving. That's insane.
There's a lot of talk about memory footprints (which have always been very significant for me, although not anymore), and about modern features. The website mentions gorgeous features like transitions and visuals and polish of all sorts. I'm sure it's very good.
Here's the thing though:
I installed winamp twenty years ago. I've been through about 6 machines in that time, and aside from a ten-minute install-and-configure effort, I haven't even noticed winamp.
It's needed zero effort from me. I don't see it. It's a tiny little bar somewhere on my tertiary monitor, in the title-bar of my e-mail window. Global hotkeys are all I need. I don't see it. I don't want to see it. I don't need to see it. I can't even remember the last time I clicked on winamp for anything.
I've gone twenty years with the same (growing) library of local music. Some of these songs date back even longer. My first was a 50MB wave file recorded at a dos command line in 1992 on a 200MB hard drive, of don't worry be happy.
I don't need to care about how my music will or will not play, how to play it, or all-about-cover-art. It's been there for twenty years. My music that is. There's no problem to solve. I don't need audio to look good. I don't need keyboard shortcuts to be high definition. And if I want my music available from somewhere else, I have this button called "copy". 10GB fits just about anywhere, including my tiny phonebaby phone. My laptop won't notice 50GB. And my desktops won't notice 3TB. So really, there's no problem to solve here. Move on.
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First off, Michigan? Really?! It's a maple tree. It declares its nationality with thousands and thousands of national flags on each and every tree. Maple trees were always just-visiting Michigan. If you want maple, know that they'll always be alive and well in their home country.
Second, maple was always arbitrary. Personally, I enjoy the less-sweet, sharper taste of birch syrup even more. You'll find them combined quite often -- that's a good stepping-stone if you need such a device.
Pfffff. Michigan maples. I mean, really. What are you thinking? What's next? British wine? Australian tea? I know: Texas tofu.
Back 30 years ago, there were shareware games. These were basically "demos" or the first level, distributed freely everywhere, and encouraged gamers to copy them to friends, in the hopes that you'd then buy the complete game.
One game in particular -- and I may never remember which -- had a splash screen. This splash screen described the shareware concept. But, instead of "press enter to continue" (this was back in the keyboard-only days), it forced the gamer to type the sentence: "I support the shareware concept" in order to continue. Simple, effective, I remember it thirty years later.
Any button can be pressed accidentally. Any two buttons can be similarly pressed in sequence. Any swipe. Any confirmation. Hey buddy, I need you to press this button too -- also goes without a second decision-maker.
On attack subs, two officers, each with a key, standing twenty feet apart, both need to turn the keys together. But what makes that so much better is what came before -- breaking the glass and revealing the code and confirming the radio transmission.
If you're going to send a message to a million humans, it's never going to be good enough to confirm the sending of that message. In this case, they wanted to send a message, so they confirmed sending the message. Any number of humans would have backed up that decision.
What they needed to do was to confirm the message itself.
So, here's my thought. For all messages that the system is going to send to the public, (i.e. not test messages) the operator simply gets to re-type the message as displayed on-screen. Five seconds to type that message. And I promise, if I were to find myself typing that message, I would have understood what I was doing.
Each letter is effectively a confirmation. So that's what, fifty confirmations of the message content itself. And of the fact that it's being sent. And of the fact that it's going out to the public -- because tests aren't confirmed like that.
The real problem now is the very simple notification fatigue. How long will it take for you to believe it next time?
Not to mention the fact that your government just terrorized its own people -- making your government a terrorist organization.
Your metrics are just plain out-of-whack.
Every road that exists was built for people needing to drive it. Therefore, every road can be driven by human drivers.
Compared to the number of humans who drive any given road, you see incredibly few dashcams crash videos. Of the millions of cars through billions of intersections every day, how many crashes do you see? 10'000 per day? That's effectively nothing (in terms of driving skill success).
Choosing not to pass is a valid choice. Whether or not it's possible or easy is irrelevant. As is the skill of the driver irrelevant to this conversation. Flip a few coins, and randomly choose a road, a time, and a reasonable weather condition for that region. 99% of healthy drivers will have no problem with 99% of the existing combinations. 99% of self-driving cars will fail in at least one of 99 different ways.
In my opinion, this is little more than a dependency issue. As a human driver, I'm dependent on the quality of my vehicle, and the quality of the road. That's about it (ignoring my own fatigue, of course). But that self-driving car (talking about today's cars) depends on mapping, vision systems compatible with the environment, experience with that road, experience with everything that actually occurs on a given trip. It's just insane.
Any system that requires experience in order to do something isn't self-driving anything. It's playback, and nothing more. Dynamic playback, customized playback, co--ordinated playback, sure. But it's just another mix tape.
Self-driving is like self- anything else. It's self-learning. You can either learn to do something that you've never done before, or you can't. You might learn slower or faster, at-speed or with your four-ways on, but if you can self-learn, then you can move forward and figure it out as you go.
That's what "capacity" is all about. These machines have a lot of ability, but zero capacity beyond those abilities. That's the problem. They can't decide how to act in a confusing situation. And therefore, you can't risk putting them in a situation that may become confusing.
Put it this way. You simply can't tell your ten-year old child how to deal with each and every problem that could happen when they are home alone. At some point, you need to trust that your child can figure out how to get through a new problem that they've never encountered. Until you can trust that they can do that adequately, you don't leave them home alone.
It's that simple. It's all decision-making. Can you make a decision when you simply don't know -- because you're moving at 120kph with others doing the same. There's no time to ask for help. You can't always slam on the brakes. You can't expect a passenger, blissfully unaware, to suddenly understand the context of the situation. It's up to you, and you alone.
Pop quiz hot-shot, what do you do?
Dude, you're saying that machines are better driving on roads than humans. You've absolutely zero evidence of that, given that there are no machines capable of driving on arbitrary roads at arbitrary times/climates/scenarios.
You've based your entire philosophy on something that's never been done.
There IS nothing better than a human driver, because there is nothing other than a human driver. Let me know when there is. We can talk again then.
I agree with a lot of what you've said, but I'll adjust a definition therein.
It may be a "human error" to crash as a result of blinding fog -- drive slower, don't drive, change lights, change street lighting, whatever. But that's not human error because we accept a certain amount of certain types of risks, otherwise we wouldn't be able to do anything cost-effectively.
With that definition adjustment, I actually don't consider most of what you've described as human error. We've built a system designed to be safe in most scenarios, and designed to have members fail in some scenarios. That's fine by me.
I promise, any AI driving will also have failure scenarios -- like driving into the sun on a snow-covered day.
The difference is, as I've always said, I'm perfectly fine with the reasonable failure of another human being, as the cause of my injury. I'm not ok with the reasonable failure of a machine, as the cause of my injury -- even if it's statistically less frequent.
So sorry you're a senior disabled person who lives alone with no friends and no neighbors and no one to help you.
Those of us like me -- healthy, young-ish, homeowners -- depend on at least a hundred people every year for the very basics of living.
I can't fix a serious plumbing issue, and you can't plunge a toilet remotely either, by the way.
I can't diagnose why my car keeps blowing a fuse, and since it's the anti-theft system fuse, you'd need to be a dealer to reprogram the keys anyway.
I might be able to clean my furnace and my fire place and my air conditioner twice a year, but I wouldn't be able to fix what might need fixing, nor be certain that I didn't break it trying to clean it.
I don't repair porcelain tiles.
I can paint, and I can even make small drywall repairs, but I can't do large drywall repairs.
Electrician, I am not, so anything beyond a simple outlet or basic switch, and I'm S.O.o.L..
I don't walk on rooves.
I don't pave driveways, although sealing is easy.
I cut grass, but not trees.
I cook, but don't repair kitchen appliances.
This concept of needing to be able to control every device with ease is a naive attitude of the I.T. industry. It's ridiculous. Do you hem your own pants? Most people buy pre-washed lettuce.
Congrats on completely missing the point. Pentium got it. Maybe you shouldn't be driving. Maybe you're an AI.
Plenty of accidents are caused by plenty of reasons. Start excluding the exceptions, like weather, breakage, environmental distractions, procedural failures, and acts of god, and your "plenty" becomes pretty small. Take that "plenty", and divide it by the number of non-incidents, and you can call your "plenty" virtually zero.
Millions of cars through billions of intersections every day in my city alone. Maybe ten accidents of consequence for 10 million people. 1 in a million.
You're very correct. In your country, healthcare isn't a right, it isn't a luxury. It's a status symbol.
That would be all fine, in theory. I can accept the concept that not dying in the streets is a status symbol -- hey, it would certain motivate me to work harder.
The problem is that, in practice, you pay more taxes than we do. You get far less out of those taxes too. And, overall, while you have far more "control" over what you do and don't get, and over what you do and don't deserve, you wind up all getting a whole lot less than we do.
I don't know what else to say. You pay more, you get less, you have more and bigger problems.
Personally, I couldn't imagine a scenario where I get hurt, and my first thought is anything but calling an ambulance. I stub my toe, and 9-1-1 is my first thought. But all healthcare is no-cost or near no-cost here. My family doctor is a ten-minute drive, available at a moment's notice, and free. The drugstore across the hall is peanuts.
I can't imagine worrying about my pain and my pocketbook at the same time.
If I use an ambulance ten times a month, it'll cost me $450. If I use it zero times, it'll cost me $0.
Nothing else is variable. My taxes are lower than yours -- I promise.
All of these vision AIs are programmed backwards -- for convenience. This random object looks "more like" a speed limit sign and "less like" a stop sign. Great. No body cares about how much "like" something another something appears.
You can ask any 10-year old. A stop sign is a red octagon. Any 16-year old will say it also has a white border, and white lettering in the middle. Any experienced driver will add that it appears at some sort of intersection, obstruction, or event, alongside a narrow road.
Now, if you see a red octagon, and you stop, and it turns out to be a giant lollipop, then that's good. Because a giant lollipop on the road is absolutely acting as a stop sign.
If something isn't a red octagon, then it's definitely not a stop sign.
The problem here is that google's vision AI doesn't identify an sight according to what defines a stop sign -- a red octagon on the side of the road. That's because it's highly stupid.
And the question really comes down to something much simpler. If I put a big square sign on the side of the road, blue, with yellow lettering, that says "please pause, thank you", will google treat it as a stop sign? Good bet that any driver who sees it (and can certainly be forgiven for not noticing it) will stop.
Conversely, on a highway, at 120kph, if I put a real stop sign on the side of the road, will google treat it as a stop sign? No human driver is going to slam on the brakes.
Google's not thinking. Therefore, it ain't an AI. It surely "looks like" an AI, but it's not an AI. It uses collected intelligence to determine what the object is, but it doesn't use its own intelligence to make decisions. It doesn't make decisions at all.
Show me a vision system that can take any photograph of any road, and decide whether or not it should stop the car. Doesn't need to be right or wrong, correct or incorrect, it just needs to make a decision, reliably, that makes sense. See, if it can do that, "reliably", then we can change the signs for them. We chose the signs for us for a reason. Humans see red first, so stop signs are red. If machines have trouble with octagons, and love purple, then we can give them that instead. Dual signage is common in multi-lingual communities.
But these shitty AI systems are much worse. They don't even make their classifications reliably -- because the more data they collect, the most they distract themselves. So a guaranteed "this is a stop sign, 100%" can change a year later, as it "learns", such that the very same stop sign is now only 80%. There's no fortification. There's no stubbornness. That's a problem.
Community services a) are meant to be used; and b) get better, cheaper, and more effective the more we use them.
This 7% signifies three things:
1) that some people were calling for ambulances when they didn't need any medical care en-route to the hospital. Ambulances aren't taxis. These people should have been taking taxis or asking a neighbour to drive them. You don't need to pay a stranger to help you. You live with others.
2) that there are some people calling uber when they should be calling an ambulance. Medical issues can get worse en-route, especially with added delays and random things that can happen -- accidents, weather, traffic, jostling, tripping, indigestion, et cetera. Expert medical professionals are a good idea when there's already something seriously wrong with you (serious enough for a hospital visit) simply to ensure that nothing else happens to you also. Like my doctor says, once you're sick, you can still get another sickness too.
3) your ambulances are far too expensive. Ours cost $45 - Canadian Dollars. Always. That's it. And you won't get the bill for about a month. That's a driver, two paramedics in the back with you, the ambulance itself, and nothin' but green lights all the way. It's cheaper than a taxi -- as it damn well should be! Strangers pull over, delaying their plans, whatever they are, for your medical benefit. It's probably the most beautiful thing in the history of civilization. And I think it's the greatest achievement of mankind.
Exactly. People have no idea. And I'll take that sentiment one step further.
I'm among those Canadian 55%. My parents are very successful. So to compare myself to them is a very good indicator of growth, or lack thereof.
They came from humble parents. They came from humble means. They had little stability. They had little or no access to international travel, expensive entertainment, nor random goodies. Houses broke, plumbers were expensive.
My house is (relatively) inexpensive, and plumbers are cheap or free for me. Food is everywhere, safe, plentiful, and inexpensive. I can afford to travel anywhere in the world -- flights are inexpensive, frequent, and I can afford the time away from work.
Work is easier -- I work at a desk, mostly in a nice home office, welcome to high tech jobs. I don't get injured, I don't commute, I don't compete with colleagues.
Infinite water, fantastic health care, low taxes (as it turns out, our taxes are lower than most country's, and we get so much more), nearby conveniences like stores, entertainment, restaurants, et cetera.
So sure, I'd say that 50 years ago, people living where my parents/I lived/live likely felt that they had a lot more control over dictating their long-term successes, feelings or control are just total bullshit. Today, I worry about nothing. I don't worry about fire, flood, famine, crime, war, finances, family, health.
I think the reason that they felt like the governor of their own success is because they didn't get anywhere near this much for free. My community gives me so much, just for being born/here, that it doesn't feel as though I've earned it -- which I haven't. So that results in a feeling of less control.
Kinda hard to complain that I don't have control over all of the good that comes flooding my way.
It was December 17th when my cat finally stopped getting mad that dinner was suddenly an hour later.
I don't mean it like that.
I'm a business owner. About five years ago, my senior employee and I split. Lifestyles changed, we went in different ways.
He felt as you do. He didn't want to leave me stranded. So he offered to keep working on one major project that was his baby. I let him because, well, it was his baby and I didn't want to suddenly take it away from him.
After about three months, we sat down and he said "you know, at some point, you're going to need to do it without me". I of course said "I was just waiting for you to be ready to give it up. today's the day".
The truth is, I'm a business owner. I can deal with whatever comes. I didn't rest my entire business on his shoulders. I'm the business owner. So, plus or minus a short bit of shuffling or suffering, I can handle it without him.
Your employer is the same way, I promise. They didn't rest the entire business, and their livelihood, and their family's mortgage, and everyone else who works there, all on your shoulders. They either have a backup plan in case you leave (or that truck thing), or they plan to figure out when it happens, or maybe they just plan to drop that client/project altogether.
Every business owner has a succession plan, and an emergency plan, good or bad, stated or secret, obvious or hidden. Their business is not your responsibility. If it were, you'd have equity. . . and a requirement of sufficient notice in a written agreement.
Do what works for you. Be nice about it. Tell them your intentions. Don't worry about hurting them. They won't get hurt.
It's just business. I promise.
I do conflate, almost for a living. But I do so in much that same way that when I circle a word, the circle is made big to be obvious, even though it winds up encompassing other words as a result. Similarly, indicating an angle with a short line is not as obvious as using a long line, and it must be understood that the magnitude of my line is not to scale.
So please allow me to delve into the specifics that you quibbled so well!
You mentioned my desire for an "active" authorization. You and I very much disagree about what constitutes "active". When my touch-screen phone rings, and I reach into my pocket to pull it out, sometimes I wind up answering the call, merely by reaching for the phone in my dark pocket, behind my keys, under my wallet, past the dog poo bags. My reaching was an action, and meets your definition of active. It doesn't come close to mine.
My definition of active includes a few sides. It must be your definition of active, that's side one. It must also be intentional. That basically requires that it cannot be (reasonably) done by accident. Touching a part of an object while handling the object as a whole can be done accidentally. Swiping in a straight line isn't much harder. Entering a pattern or a code would be intent, but I've seen no phone that requires anything like that to answer a ringing call.
And that hurts me. If I'm james bond, or ethan hunt, or a homeowner, or a business owner, and someone calls me, and I've left my phone on my desk as I go to the bathroom, or just face the other way, and someone calls me, my LOCKED-with-a-password phone allows any passer-by to answer that call.
So now a random person walking by my desk, even while I'm there, can grab the ringing phone and talk to the person, short of me tackling them to the ground. Maybe it's my wife, maybe it's my child. Maybe it's an automated message from my child's school saying something private. I'll never know what got divulged.
So that's intent to act in the active manner.
The third side is comprehension. I need to know both what my action is, and the consequence of my action. A big prompt that says: "click here" isn't valid. "click here to agree" is required. Otherwise "click here" could mean deny, read more, or just for fun. But, obviously, it's really not enough. click here to agree to what? The sentence before? after? the title of the document?
A long time ago, we had shareware games. And a few of them started with an screen of text explaining what shareware is, and how it's a trial in the hopes that you'll buy the full game. It didn't say "click here to agree", it said: "type the following phrase: 'I support the shareware concept' ". I'll never forget that. It becomes highly explicit, and there's no denying to what I agree.
So that's active intent with comprehension. There's one more facet. Ability -- to comprehend.
I type for a living. I type fast. I program. Lots of letters, lots of clicks, lots of tab, space, enter. Guess how many times windows throws up a dialog box a split second before I hit enter, space, or tab-enter. I have no idea what the dialog said. I just effectively approved or denied something. I'll never know. That's not true. Because moments later, my computer reboots. I approved a reboot, mid-work-flow.
I'm sure you've seen contracts that say things like "I've consulted my own counsel/attorny or choose not to do so". You'll also find contracts that require a time period to elapse to consider the ramifications of agreeing -- because instant agreement is suspect and possibly coerced. I don't know why windows lets me click the OK/CANCEL button on a dialog box that's been open for a tenth of a second, when it knows that I couldn't possibly have read it that fast, nor even diverted my eyes from the other monitor in which I was typing. Humans have a maximum speed. It knows. It doesn't care.
So, active, with intent, comprehension, and enough time/effort to justify the action.
Back to my touchscre
For the business that's paying facebook for each impression, that company would rather not waste money on the 90 year-old eyeballs. That's valid.
Think harder.
I'm not talking about facebook. I'm talking about the people who are paying facebook.
Learn how to prioritize "systems of components", and this is an easy decision.
If you don't want a printer that prints a lot, don't get one designed to print a lot.
If you want a printer that will last for decades, buy a printer that will last for decades (and remember to amortize the price).
I print about a page a week, on average. Maybe two. So eight years ago, I bought a high-end consumer multi-function. I chose the laser, obviously, and the small toner version, obviously. I went multi-function for the occasional scanner. Network for the not caring about software part. Small paper tray, obviously.
It's been sitting there for eight years now. Once a year I print something stupid -- like wine bottle labels, or car club flyers, or address labels. Otherwise, for work, it's about under ten pages per month.
I configured it to clean itself vigorously. So it's quite slow. When the toner is below 50% on one of the colours, it'll clean itself between each and every page. It's insanely slow. But the toner lasts twice as long. And what do I care if two pages takes two minutes.
It also looks nice, because it's small and consumery. Which is nice in an expensive home office.
The point is, this isn't hard. Spend $100, and you'll throw it out. Buy an inkjet, and you'll throw it out. Buy a black and white printer-only, and you'll eventually need something more. Spend $300 on a scanner and colour and laser and a decent brand, and the most annoying part will be finding a/the box when you want to take it with you three houses later.
I'm pushing 40. I'm in the IT world. I'd love to know that no one will discriminate against me. And that's all fine and dandy.
But there's a big difference between not hiring me because I'm 40, and being forced to spend money to advertise to me.
I also run a business. Damned if anyone's going to tell me how to spend my advertising budget. If I can (or believe that I can) get better bang for my buck by targeting what I believe is better value, then you ain't a'gonna stop me.
Besides, I'd argue that any 40 year old can easily pretend to be 25 years old to read job listings. And if a 40 year old responds to my ad in teenager-weekly, he's welcome to convince me that he's the better candidate. I'm happy to listen and I'm happy to be convinced.
Yes there's a line to be crossed where a thousand 40 year olds line up outside my door, and flood my interview time, but there's no rule that says I need to interview in sequence, nor that I need to interview absolutely everybody who shows up to the last man. So provided they aren't illegally blocking access to any responding teenagers, the more the merrier!
Actually, in-person, we may use facial-recognition to *identify* a person, but never to authenticate their request. For that, we use a signature -- because no one can accidentally give their signature, and we all understand that my signature means you can act, everything else is merely conversation.
The problem here is that the digital facial recognition isn't being used to populate "Hello Jonathan". It's being used to accept commands like "reveal private information", "spend money", "install software", "delete everything".
In the digital world, we like to put the major security up-front (the login credentials), and then the brief security last-minute (the are you sure confirmation). In the real world, we use brief security (you're here to close your account?) at the start of the conversation, and the major security (sign this waiver) at the last minute.
That's because in the real world, getting past the front door gives you physical access, but doesn't really grant you control over anybody. Sure you can steal trinkets, but you can't command someone to do something.
The signature has two benefits. The first is as mentioned above -- we know it means "go". The second is that it is VERY illegal to forge someone else's signature. There are real consequences to that. So it's not something to worry about.
The awesome thing about a password (in theory, of course) is that no one can get it from you without your willingness to give it to them. It's not written anywhere, except in your head, and we've yet to figure a way to read someone's brain memory. Pick the right password, protect it properly, and you needn't worry.
My face, my fingerprints, my dna, my iris, are all scattered around the world, everytime I touch something, go somewhere, or look at something. That's why those things are so great for forensics -- it's very difficult to avoid leaving them as evidence.
Passwords (in theory) are far better. Come up with a type/method/system of password generation/management/transmission, and they'll be infinitely better than anything else imaginable.
Having never used either one, I can't specifically comment on their differences. However, I'll remind people that the purpose of maps for navigation is not to see all of that detail at all. It is specifically to focus on the navigation required, by removing all of that added information.
I simply want to know which turns to make. I don't want my map to show me all of the great things that I'm passing -- I've chosen to pass on all of them to reach my destination. Same word for a reason.
Even more importantly, reviewing a simple map is easily committed to memory. Six turns, glanced once, remembered for the day. I can look at a map in my driveway, and then not need it anymore. It's called learning.
But give me all of that detail, and now I'll need to glance at the map every minute for a day of driving. That's insane.
Tell me like I'm six.
Oh, that's an easy one. We call that. . .yo' problem.
There's a lot of talk about memory footprints (which have always been very significant for me, although not anymore), and about modern features. The website mentions gorgeous features like transitions and visuals and polish of all sorts. I'm sure it's very good.
Here's the thing though:
I installed winamp twenty years ago. I've been through about 6 machines in that time, and aside from a ten-minute install-and-configure effort, I haven't even noticed winamp.
It's needed zero effort from me. I don't see it. It's a tiny little bar somewhere on my tertiary monitor, in the title-bar of my e-mail window. Global hotkeys are all I need. I don't see it. I don't want to see it. I don't need to see it. I can't even remember the last time I clicked on winamp for anything.
I've gone twenty years with the same (growing) library of local music. Some of these songs date back even longer. My first was a 50MB wave file recorded at a dos command line in 1992 on a 200MB hard drive, of don't worry be happy.
I don't need to care about how my music will or will not play, how to play it, or all-about-cover-art. It's been there for twenty years. My music that is. There's no problem to solve. I don't need audio to look good. I don't need keyboard shortcuts to be high definition. And if I want my music available from somewhere else, I have this button called "copy". 10GB fits just about anywhere, including my tiny phonebaby phone. My laptop won't notice 50GB. And my desktops won't notice 3TB. So really, there's no problem to solve here. Move on.
Oh I wish I had votes for this one. Brilliant. I think I could have lived six life-times and not noticed.
Would women hire other women? Wouldn't some men hire women? Aren't we at the stage where market forces can regulate this on their own?