Comment by smugma

3 days ago

Failed pretty badly but no reported injuries or even accidents so not that badly.

And if you’re Waymo, it’s a short-term reputation hit but great experience to learn from and improve.

22 comments

smugma

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smrtinsert  2 days ago

Triggering some sort of extreme safety mode is considered failing now?

  • zamadatix  2 days ago

    Anything other than "normalish" tends to be a failure in driving. I.e. stopping and throwing your hazards on when you're in the intersection isn't success just because there were even worse options to have picked. It's nice they were able to pull the fleet back and get the cars out of the roads during the problem though.

  • KalMann  2 days ago

    I think this was a failure. The gold standard should be that the if every human driver was replaced with an AI how well could the system function. This makes it look like things would be catastrophic. Thus, showing how humans continue to be much more versatile and capable than AI.

    I suppose if you lower the standards for what you hope AI can accomplish it wouldn't be considered a failure.

    • pdmfz  1 day ago

      If every human driver was replaced with AI, this situation would have been fine. All the self-driving cars would have respected the four way stop

      1 reply →

  • kedean  2 days ago

    I'd say yes. The goal of a self-driving car is to emulate humans. If the car is panicking and reverting to "extreme safety mode" in situations where a normal human is going to be fine, then that's a failure.

potato3732842  2 days ago

>Failed pretty badly but no reported injuries or even accidents so not that badly.

Just because no integer lives were wasted doesn't mean we can't sum the man hours and get a number greater than 1

  • grayhatter  2 days ago

    Using that math it would be better if they were faster even if they killed somebody.

    That's a repulsive argument... Just because some argument is logically sound doesn't mean it's rational or reasonable.

    Also, when attempting that math, make sure you account for the buffer that everyone already builds into their life. No sense in double counting the extra 10m I'm angry in traffic, instead of angry sitting at home because I'm doom scrolling some media feed with that extra 10m I saved because the robotaxi was faster.

    • yunwal  2 days ago

      I mean, we would all save lives if we just never used a car outside of medical emergencies, but we do, so clearly there's some time/risk tradeoff that's happening.

    • potato3732842  1 day ago

      Your naive feel good attitude (and you're not alone in it, that crap permeates white collar western society) is exactly the problem and being all emotional about it only worsens your ability to reason about it.

      Whenever we do something "good" at societal scale be it build ADA ramps or engage in international trade of consumer goods or in this case, have transportation infrastructure, there is always some tradeoff like this. We can either do the thing in a safer to life and limb manner, but that almost always has tradeoffs that make the thing less accessible or worse performing. We could have absurdly low maximum vehicle speeds, that would save lives, but the time and wealth (which are convertible to each other on some level) renders the tradeoff not worth it (to the public at large).

      You can value a whole life loss higher than man hours. You can value a child more than the elderly. You can make all sorts of adjustments like that but they do not change the fundamental math of the problem.

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