Re:AI and will it make our lives safer

[Barry]

So are you recommending that we compound the error? Bearing in mind that we are talking about machines programmed to choose who to kill should it be triggered.

No. I prefer a human driver, but that driver given as much aid as possible in making decisions, such as proximity/speed alarms, ice alerts, so that it mitigates risk as far as possible.
We need a separate thread for this!

[Nalaar]

Or  a terrorist.

Terrorists are also fond of manually driving cars into crowds of people.

Limiting our technology based on expressly illegal actions of bad actors is not in itself enough. 

[Javert]

The people putting out this sort of questionnaire realise full well just how difficult - and yes I would say immoral  - these questions are. They absolve their own guilt by spreading the decision in this way. They can then justify their ultimate decision by showing a majority. These are not real world problems. They are human vanity at it's very worst encouraged by the evil which so many in this world refuses to recognise. I have absolutely no wish to be 'helpful' as you describe it and would question just who you think would benefit from any answers I might give.

So what is your position on this then?

Should we assume that you think these questions are so immoral to consider, that all self driving car research should be halted immediately?

Or should the choice be made randomly on the basis that any pre-ordained decision on such a matter would be immoral?

Or should the vehicle simply say "moral overload" on the screen and shut itself down in an attempt to avoid responsibility (which in face in most cases is the first answer in that test anyway and is an active decision)?

If a human being is faced with a similar decision, which of the above 3 should apply?  For example choosing which patient gets a heart transplant if only one heart is available - that's a real choice that real people have to make today, even if you don't want to know about it.

[papasmurf]

It might not be JOG taking liberties but some nerdy teenager.

Or  a terrorist.

[T00ts]

Just as humanity is flawed and imperfect, so is everything it invents. Radio frequency devices are especially susceptible to interference from other radio transmissions, even if they are not on the same frequency. Also susceptible to lightning, sudden changes in solar wind and magnetic field. Then of course, there's power failures and dry joints.

So are you recommending that we compound the error? Bearing in mind that we are talking about machines programmed to choose who to kill should it be triggered.

[Barry]

Just as humanity is flawed and imperfect, so is everything it invents. Radio frequency devices are especially susceptible to interference from other radio transmissions, even if they are not on the same frequency. Also susceptible to lightning, sudden changes in solar wind and magnetic field. Then of course, there's power failures and dry joints.

[T00ts]

Then the nerdy teenager will go to prison.

... and how many lives will be lost in the process I wonder. I think there are far more questions than answers and it will be up to the discerning young of this country to ask taxing questions.

[Nalaar]

It might not be JOG taking liberties but some nerdy teenager.

Then the nerdy teenager will go to prison.

[T00ts]

Intentionally confusing a cars sensors that result in a crash sounds like the kind of action that will result in imprisonment.

It might not be JOG taking liberties but some nerdy teenager.

[Nalaar]

how hard do you think it will be for me to confuse their sensors

Intentionally confusing a cars sensors that result in a crash sounds like the kind of action that will result in imprisonment.

[papasmurf]

I mean FFS i can hack into electric cars now and piss with their status displays, how hard do you think it wil lbe for me to confuse their sensors

Quite, plus GPS going offline.

[johnofgwent]

AI cars will drastically reduce road deaths, I see that as progress.

Now it does not happen often that smurfy and i see eye to eye, but I think you allow your optimism ot get the better of you. I condifently predict that within the first year of some idiot allowing such a thing, there will be an event of such atrocity that they will bring back hanging to deal with the lobbyists who demanded it.
I mean FFS i can hack into electric cars now and piss with their status displays, how hard do you think it wil lbe for me to confuse their sensors

[papasmurf]

AI cars will drastically reduce road deaths,

I doubt that.

[Nalaar]

That's what I find the most disconcerting. I don't understand why someone of your intelligence just calmly accepts that this is inevitable. You have no questions other than which choice to make. Should we succumb to whatever is offered just because science describes it as necessary, or progress? To hand over matters of life and death to a microchip.... I just cannot understand.

AI cars will drastically reduce road deaths, I see that as progress.

[johnofgwent]

You do post some pretty dreadful things but that has to be near the worst. Whoever dies there will those who love them who will hurt to their very core. No-one, least of all us, can determine who is more important than another. Everyone is important. I am hoping that you didn't mean it as it came across.

Well ....
I tell people I had to prise Terry Pratchett's Monstrous Regiment (if you are a Pratchett Fan, you already know what it is about the book, if you are not, read it !) out of my father's rapidly cooling dead hand. I shied away from emailing Pratchett to tell him, for fear he would take it the way Tim Brooke Taylor took the news of a certain Scotsman's passing while watching a bit of ecky-thump) but after Pratchett's death i chanced to meet a friend of his on whom the character of the recruiting sergeant in the book was based; he told me i ought ot have told him, he would have loved to hear it.  Dad went after three months of utter hell that capped off three years of misery. If i get what he got, I'm calling some mates to being a shovel and a shotgun.
When two sunni chappies I've known for decades handed me a copy of the death certificate for my daughter's (shia) rapist i found it hard not to dance, sing and get very, very drunk.

And when I heard the bastard that operated the command wire that vapourised my childhood friend whose crime was to think the army might provide a career had gone to take his place in hell, you could have heard me cheer. And when I stood the whole bloody pub a round that night, they cheered too.
Death is a funny thing. I've just about had a gutsful and i never had to put on a uniform ...