Maybe today uber still requires human intervention but this is looking a little into the future. I do think even today driverless cars are safer than human controlled ones, and the technology is very new, what about in 5 years? 10? Biological motor skills will not be competitive against computer controlled cars in the future.
Legality is a different issue, it'll depend on your jurisdiction and there's a tradeoff between safety and freedom. I don't see them rendering manual cars illegal even in the most progressive countries any time soon
I don't think driverless will ever truly compete with the ability of a well trained driver as far as avoiding accidents. I can think of at least ten instances of accidents I managed to avoid that a driverless car would of not have been able to of. Of course you can say well the other driver was human, but hey if in your mind automated driving wont replace human drivers, then there you go.
Another point I would like to make is that you are not taking these companies into account as far as their motives for profit goes. They will undoubtedly seek for their friends in government to render human driving illegal in a push for more profits. They send out their lobbyists, pay off a few people and before you know it a bill to render most human driving illegal. There isn't a tradeoff between safety and freedom by the way.
With freedom we are responsible for our own safety. By the way government can't take away freedom. I know I go on about the dangers of freedoms being taken away, but in reality the constitution does NOT grant us freedoms it simply states we are born with them. Therefore the only way freedoms can be lost is if people willingly give them up on an individual basis. My whole point here is don't go with what the crowd thinks is cool because of the novelty, think about the intention behind this push for driverless vehicles. There's a lot more to it than 'protecting' people.
Believe me I understand the novelty of it. I have thought about driverless vehicles since before 2000. I envisioned a driverless transportation system. Buses picking up passengers, dropping them off on routes, stopping automatically at red lights. The idea increases efficiency, there is no driver to need a break, they can run 24/7. If they are powered electrically they wouldn't even need to stop to be refueled and they could be powered off a wireless system that charges onboard battery through a line of sight system along the routes. So you see I'm no technophobe but when you extend this to regular cars, there are new toll roads, new tracking methods you can see the idea here is to stifle freedom of movement, and that is not a good thing for you and me.
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thanks for the long write up
I disagree with the fact that humans are, and will remain better drivers than AI. We are limited by this biological blob of flesh that constitutes our being, whereas AI is theoretically only limited by the laws of physics. So if well programmed, it can do everything we can do and more, it'll do it faster and more consistently, and it's judgement is never compromised by emotions (eg fear as it's spinning out from an accident).
I feel that there are competing economic forces here between traditional car manufacturers and driverless car manufacturers in terms of lobbying etc. I don't foresee human controlled cars banned anytime soon, although if a driverless car is 10x -100x safer, there are moral and economic incentives to internalize costs of wanting to drive a conventional car, as you are endangering the lives of others by a factor of 10x+.
It is not the novelty that's appealing, but the utility, which is indisputably far more efficient. I don't take the least charitable interpretation of every technological change that comes along, which in my opinion is something one has to do to view them as a genuine threat to one's freedoms. Even if certain technologies encroach on our freedoms, the rational question is whether the freedoms compromised is not offset by concomitant benefits. Here, I'd argue that the benefits greatly outweigh the costs.
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"Even if certain technologies encroach on our freedoms, the rational question is whether the freedoms compromised is not offset by concomitant benefits. Here, I'd argue that the benefits greatly outweigh the costs."
Very troubling statement. What if I were to tell you we could clothe all the people of the world, feed the entire population, house the entire population, no more wars, no more violence. The only catch is you would have to give up individualism and live like a lab rat in an automated system in which you wouldn't have to lift a finger. Many people esp. socialists would accept the trade off, but people like me will rightly argue that in this example the entire point of living in the first place has been stripped away. There is always a way to make something comparatively safer and efficient but that doesn't make it a good idea. In my example of an automated transit system, there would be no trade off to our rights we enjoy daily.
In automating cars, and the move to do so there are too many ways in which we will be screwed as far as our rights are concerned. I will list a few, companies involved will lobby government to place restrictions on human driving over and over again until essentially most human driving will essentially be outlawed in most cases; with new restrictions to human driving there will be new taxes on driving/mileage/toll roads..etc; driverless vehicle manufacturers will move towards a leasing system in which ownership for cars will eventually cease to exist in favor of making people rent their vehicle; due to the leasing model many more jobs will be lost for example car sales... I could go on and on.
Also this machines are infallible and safer drivers argument is just an assumption. There are always oversights, there are always malfunctions/failures, and as yet machines don't have the ability to reason. Improvements will be made but I would love to see a driverless vehicle be in a situation where it is driving in a two lane one way road, it is on the left going 40 mph with a car behind it tailgating It less than a foot away, meanwhile the car on the right hand land less than 15 feet ahead of it takes a hard left right in front of it.
When it can avoid that type of accident then I will revisit this and rethink my argument but until then I will just shake my head at the stupidity that anyone would willingly give up rights, freedom of movement, vehicle ownership..etc in favor of being more lazy. There is another argument here for me to pursue as well which is the degradation of the human brain due to more and more automation and being used less and less. It is unhealthy.
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Yes, I think at the center of this argument is that we have different subjective values. You deem freedoms to be of paramount importance, I deem them to be of finite importance. I think the latter view is more coherent when you consider cases where freedoms can conflict between individuals, and the only way to see which should prevail is to assess them as something of finite value and compare them.
I agree with everything in the second paragraph, except I don't view it as an imminent threat. As I said in terms of government clout, it's rarely been in favor of newcomers into the market. As we don't have values that align perfectly I deem it sensible to have long term economic sanctions against one's exercising their freedoms in a manner that puts others at greater risk than viable alternatives (such as self driving cars)
I disagree on this factual point in your 3rd paragraph. We are limited by our biological physiology. The computer is only limited by the laws of physics. The illusion of human 'reasoning' is not a relevant factor. The machine is armed with light pulse, sonar, ultrasonic, radar and camera sensors that can perceive near instantaneous changes in the physical world around it at react accordingly. Our eyes, ears and a few mirrors, relatively slow reflexes, reaction time, and compromising emotions are no match for a well designed machine. I think even today a prototype driverless car could beat the world's best stunt driver in maneuvering around sudden obstacles etc. If I am wrong, it certainly would be able to be far superior in the not so distant future than the best humanly possible driver. You may 'feel' that your a superior driver in an anecdotal sense, but I assure you the machine will be far better at it in a few years.
There is a fear of a slippery slope argument underpinning your views. For me, each decision of giving up something for something else is merely a product of rational market choices. I would certainly not embrace a lifetime of incarceration for the convenience of never needing to apply sunblock again. But that is not the cost benefit analysis in question. I don't pass judgement on this analysis based on what class of cost and benefits are in question (freedom vs security etc), but merely what are the magnitudes of these costs and benefits in terms of consequences, and I side with the one that confers the greatest net gain.
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"Yes, I think at the center of this argument is that we have different subjective values. You deem freedoms to be of paramount importance, I deem them to be of finite importance"
They are. I don't want to assume what Country you are from, but I was born and raised in the United States. Honoring individual rights and liberties is the entire reason why the United States was created. To say otherwise is to disrespect the central tenent that was the motivating factor of the creation of the United States. Protecting individual rights and liberties is also the core of holding most civil duties or offices in the United States, which is why the oath of office exists. So if you are from the United States and were to assume a public office there is no way you could honestly take the Oath of Office.
This is not a personal attack, it's just fact. I will go further in saying that if your view of rights, liberties, freedoms..etc being of finite value is the norm in Government and it is pursued to further strip people of them... there will eventually be a civil war it's inevitable if that belief becomes the norm of those that were sworn under the assumption they were of paramount importance... and the people will be right to fight back in that kind of circumstance.
"I disagree on this factual point in your 3rd paragraph. We are limited by our biological physiology. The computer is only limited by the laws of physics."
I disagree with that assumption entirely. Think of the possibility of failure as a type of ‘lag’. The more filters something has to travel through to its final destination the greater the ‘lag’. The driverless cars would have a greater amount of ‘lag’ or possibility of failure. By virtue of being designed by humans, created by humans, programmed by humans the limiting factor will be the ability of those that created it.
Then you have to think about it’s responses will be calculated by various programs from information received by various sensors located in various points of the car, there are more possible points of failure from the programming, the hardware and circuit design, weather limitations of the hardware or sensors and other unforeseeable hardware limitations… could go on and on. Like the ability of the humans coding the programs to translate and predict every single circumstance possible behind the wheel of a car and account for it… just wont ever happen. There will also exist a high possibility of a catastrophic central failure of a certain model, for instance firmware/operating system that has a design flaw in which all cars of that model fail.
“The illusion of human 'reasoning' is not a relevant factor. The machine is armed with light pulse, sonar, ultrasonic, radar and camera sensors that can perceive near instantaneous changes in the physical world around it at react accordingly. Our eyes, ears and a few mirrors, relatively slow reflexes, reaction time, and compromising emotions are no match for a well designed machine.”
It most certainly would be. For instance the example I gave earlier. A car traveling on a two lane one way road. You are the car on the left traveling at a rate around 40 mph or faster, there is a car tailgating you only about a foot away so close that in your rear view it almost appears as if the car is only an inch away, on the right there is a car traveling at the same rate you are but about 15 feet ahead of you (or the driverless car I mean) and the car on the right decides to do an immediate left turn to a road on your left right in front of you disregarding all traffic laws. If the driverless car can get out of that situation without hitting the car that turns, or having the car tailgating you hit you by hitting the brakes… then I will rethink the factor of ability to reason… otherwise I believe it’s a valid argument.
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