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Apple's Automobile Project Said to Include Self-Driving Cars
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I will admit, I feel we are legally and socially many years away, many many years away from driverless cars on normal public roads when it comes to accidents, and who is liable.
The AI on a computer controlled can has to be incredibly advanced and fed with all manner of moral judgements as to what action to take when something bad happens.
Let's say it was you in your computer driven car.
Do you want you car to regard itself and your safety as top priority, or should it sacrifice itself/your safety to avoid others it may hit, and also what type of others would be more valid?
Rather than hit the lorry that's pulled out, would you rather it swerved and ran into the group of school children waiting at the buss stop as it's calculated that, that action would be the best to avoid injury to you the passenger?
Or should it hit the lorry, feeling the children's lives or major injury to them would be morally worse than injury to you?
And who is going to explain this decision making process in a court of law, as it has to be in place.
You can't just have, BRAKE HARD in a straight line as the only piece of code.
The AI on a computer controlled can has to be incredibly advanced and fed with all manner of moral judgements as to what action to take when something bad happens.
Let's say it was you in your computer driven car.
Do you want you car to regard itself and your safety as top priority, or should it sacrifice itself/your safety to avoid others it may hit, and also what type of others would be more valid?
Rather than hit the lorry that's pulled out, would you rather it swerved and ran into the group of school children waiting at the buss stop as it's calculated that, that action would be the best to avoid injury to you the passenger?
Or should it hit the lorry, feeling the children's lives or major injury to them would be morally worse than injury to you?
And who is going to explain this decision making process in a court of law, as it has to be in place.
You can't just have, BRAKE HARD in a straight line as the only piece of code.
No, no, no. This just shows lack of understanding of how computers work and how AI works. It shows too much time reading cheesy sci-fi and no effort to understand how things really work.
It will not make that decision at all. It will drive according to its collision mitigation algorithms and if a crash happens, it happens. The computer is not making any decisions about what to hit or not.
Do humans make that moral decision in the split second it happens?
Even if it could make advanced moral decisions you really think it could make the crash occur exactly the way it thinks it should?
What if it it decides to hit the lorry as the moral choice, but as it turns into it it hits a patch of ice the AI didn't detect and does a barrel roll onto an even bigger group of school children?
Exactly, it's unpredictable. And since there's no possible way to know what the outcome of the crash will be there's no way it can make any judgements about what it should or should not hit.
THE THREE LAWS OF ROBOTICS ARE SCI-FI!!
Wow. So in your opinion the only possible things are a super-human AI that can evaluate who will be killed or injured before the collision occurs and perfectly implement a crash exactly according to the AI prediction or you brake hard in a straight line?
alcohol tolerance vary's from individual to individual. you can have 1 beer and be smashed, or you can have 5 beers, function as if you're sober, yet you get a DUI because you blew over.
for the record, i don't drink. i think drinking and driving is stupid. but you're seriously delusional if you don't think the government loves raking in the fines for people who weren't even drunk, but consumed just slightly over the limit.
If the car is working properly, you shouldn't have any crashes to start with. It would have seen the lorry and children before they ever became an issue. So I can't see a car ever having to make such decisions. The problem with self driving cars will come when they don't work properly. But that's why Google and co are spending millions getting the AI right.
As long as they don't piss away the investment on dead end products like an electric car, Apple is a company that could pull it off. Seems like it would make more sense to develop the technology and then license it back to auto manufacturers instead of building their own car.
You can do that today.
"Siri, take me home".
She'll calculate a route to your home-address.
I've never tried "Take us home" - we're not that close.
I wonder if she'll calculate the route and then ask me why I speak in majestic plural....
So if I am standing by the side of the road, and just as the google car comes level with me, I walk out, what does it do?
Hit me, as it can't brake in time to stop or quickly and sharply steer to one side to avoid me?
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I think you are underestimating the human brain and our built in judgements when things go wrong, and what decision we make very quickly.
You only have a second to decide what to do, but hopefully you would TRY your best to avoid humans. unless it meant something even worse.
Self preservation would be your instant reaction I would imagine.
I agree there is no way to know the best option when something goes wrong, but there are choices that can be made, and when you are saying a computer is scanning and evaluation hundreds of things per second, there will be questions asked as to why the car ran into the children as opposed to hitting the tree which would of saved the children.
It had both options it could of gone with.
Who will stand up and say, hitting the children was the option the car decided that would best protect the driver. If it had turned to hit the tree, then the children would have been saved, but that may of killed the driver of the car.
True. But can you think of a better or more fair way to have the law? Zero alcohol when driving for everyone? I'd like to here how you think the system should work.
Maybe the US is different, but I work in criminal law in Canada and personally deal with about 200 drinking and driving cases a year (isn't it a criminal charge in the US too?). The minimum fine is $1000 for a first offence, and I very rarely see a fine over $1200, even with very high readings or property damage and personal injury collisions. Almost everyone runs a trial, because if they plead guilty it is a criminal conviction, and the cost to the taxpayers for a simple impaired trial is about $10,000. Doesn't seem like much of a cash grab to me.
For a second offence, the minimum is 14 days in jail. No fine at all. Hardly a money making proposition.
Well, Samsung already has the military sentry robot (as well as the sex-robot industry) cornered. So Google and Apple will be way too late to the game there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_SGR-A1
Real Life driving, is not like a computer game.
If all roads were scanned all the time in real time.
Every item was in a database with it's location.
Every living creature was being scanned at all times.
Road surfaces, and every other aspect was also being scanned THEN one could be pretty sure all would be safe.
But mixing in computer controlled cars, and humans/animals, and any unknown situation is asking a LOT.
On WIDE open freeways/Motorways, then sure.
Small busy city streets? weaving in and out of pedestrians and around cars making unexpected manoeuvres?
If all roads were scanned all the time in real time.
Every item was in a database with it's location.
Every living creature was being scanned at all times.
Road surfaces, and every other aspect was also being scanned THEN one could be pretty sure all would be safe.
But mixing in computer controlled cars, and humans/animals, and any unknown situation is asking a LOT.
On WIDE open freeways/Motorways, then sure.
Small busy city streets? weaving in and out of pedestrians and around cars making unexpected manoeuvres?
Give me a break, 5 beers with no effect. Better go back and dig me a damn study on this please.
You don't function as if sober with 5 beers, no matter who you are. Doesn't mean your less impaired than someone else; but it has a very significant impact. 5 beetrs in a row then drive you get to 0.16 for most people, if your a very big person with lot of muscles, maybe 0.12-0.13. Still quite impaired with slower reflexes.
I love to drive! I hope there is a self driving car by the time birthdays or health revoke that privilege.
I know quite a few seniors who were essentially prisoners in their homes once the keys were taken away. It's something we all could face eventually.
There is definitely a market for a self-driving car.
Recipe for disaster
I can see it now.
"Ok, I will now drive you to Rome"
Wonder how far out to sea you will get before it cancels
I can see it now.
"Ok, I will now drive you to Rome"
Wonder how far out to sea you will get before it cancels
Hit you, and send the details to http://www.darwinawards.com .
Seriously, I always (or most of the time) know whether and how far I can move my car to the other side of the road without danger. If I see pedestrians, experience tells me whether they are likely to do something stupid or not. If I think they are likely to do something stupid, and I have no space, I drive very careful (slowing down, foot on brake). I'd think that a self-driving car would do the same.
I hope these are all just automated cars to help drive the Mac team to and from work, allowing them to focus on a out a way to release actual computers more timely.
Apple's Automobile Project Said to Include Self-Driving Cars
Get off the Apple "five minutes of hate" kool aid.
Tesla has a huge customer base in Europe and other countries. If Apple did that, they would have to deal with government regulations internationally and kiss their behinds to get by.
Tesla Motors is Elons company. Apple tried to buy them but failed in the past. And if, for example, Apple tries to get cute with China doing things behind their back, the land of the Dragon is not afraid to put a bullet through their skulls.
Lesson: don't mess with China or Europe.
Get off the Apple "five minutes of hate" kool aid.
Tesla has a huge customer base in Europe and other countries. If Apple did that, they would have to deal with government regulations internationally and kiss their behinds to get by.
Tesla Motors is Elons company. Apple tried to buy them but failed in the past. And if, for example, Apple tries to get cute with China doing things behind their back, the land of the Dragon is not afraid to put a bullet through their skulls.
Lesson: don't mess with China or Europe.
You do know how amazingly advanced the human brain is, and it's immense parallel computing power, that's been combined with all the knowledge about the world you have learned since you are born.
And you do realise just how dumb computers are still, and they don't know much at all. Heck we can't even make a vacuum cleaning robot that can negotiate around the home!
Humans see something, and instantly based upon experience can know what it is, we ASSUME a lot, based on past experience.
What actually goes in the eyes can be very little real data, but our brains work out what's there based on often very very little.
We see a shape, and by it's size, and the way it moves, and where it is, our brains best guess and almost always are right.
A few times, things trick our brains, like how optical illusions work, we see the inside out face, but our brain gets it wrong as faces never go in, until it's turned sideways and given more data we see it's an inside out face.
What I'm getting at is that, what seems easy and obvious, and just simple common sense to us, can be virtually impossible for a computer to grasp still.
I'd love there to be driverless cars.
I'm not totally sure we want them, sitting there bored as a passenger as opposed to driving, but I can see sometimes the idea would be good, esp if you are tired, drunk!, or wanted to just lay down and watch TV in your car all relaxed on a long drive.
I can't see that happening for normal people for a long long long time.
And forget about a system where you have to take over control at any time in the event of an emergency, that's simply a non starter as an idea and would be worse than normal driving.