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Comment by mikegreenberg

17 hours ago

Given electric cars are responsible for much bigger responsibilities than combustion cars (avoid driving into that bicyclist), there are new concerns here which beg extra consideration.

I actually think we should be asking more of safety regulations here with regards to the design of electric/computerized cars.

Think of it this way: every concern you have about a teenager having root on their electric car is the same as any sociopath hacker (AI enabled for modern nightmare fuel) who finds a root vulnerability and decides to not be a good person with it. If a teenager can mess with the collision avoidance, e.g. Israel can modify it to murder anyone who talks shit about Israel in the car. Or the CIA could turn it into a weapon. Or one day some dev could push a bad OTA update. Et cetera. Our safety regulations should mandate design features to prevent a malfunctioning computer from posing any greater safety risk than any other modified part in the car.