It seems like Cruise really screwed up and will probably set back a lot of autonomous vehicle progress. They deserve everything coming to them.
That being said, I'm always nervous about these sorts of things because our institutions are often not good at handling tradeoffs. An exaggerated example:
Imagine autonomous vehicles cut the vehicle-involved death rate by 2/3rds, but a significant portion of the remaining 1/3 of deaths would have been easily avoidable if a human was driving.
Do you think our regulators would handle this situation well? The public?
Here is the whole challenge of implementing AI technologies in any area of human life: accountability. No autonomous device will ever have true agency, I believe. Some say they will. Well, let’s talk then about setting them loose on an unsuspecting world. But wait, do we actually think machines with true agency will be a good thing? We need to think about these things hard and long.
It seems like Cruise really screwed up and will probably set back a lot of autonomous vehicle progress. They deserve everything coming to them.
That being said, I'm always nervous about these sorts of things because our institutions are often not good at handling tradeoffs. An exaggerated example:
Imagine autonomous vehicles cut the vehicle-involved death rate by 2/3rds, but a significant portion of the remaining 1/3 of deaths would have been easily avoidable if a human was driving.
Do you think our regulators would handle this situation well? The public?
Comments on hacker news also suggest that Cruise cars simply drive worse than Waymo.
“Actually, nobody suggested that there not be a coverup.”
Here is the whole challenge of implementing AI technologies in any area of human life: accountability. No autonomous device will ever have true agency, I believe. Some say they will. Well, let’s talk then about setting them loose on an unsuspecting world. But wait, do we actually think machines with true agency will be a good thing? We need to think about these things hard and long.
Betting the CEO will be replaced. Betting the company will need to do a big reset.
Do we know how the Waymo would be have in the same situation?