Re Tesla Driver In Fatal Florida Crash Got Numerous Warnings To Take Control Back From Autopilot

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Eric Grimm <ecgrimm () me com>
> Date: June 20, 2017 at 1:12:09 PM CDT
> To: dave () farber net
> Cc: ip <ip () listbox com>, synthesis.law.and.technology () gmail com
> Subject: Re: [IP] Re Tesla Driver In Fatal Florida Crash Got Numerous Warnings To Take Control Back From Autopilot
>
> Dan Steinberg asks:
>
> > > Why are we holding autonomous vehicles to a much higher standard than we do for people? 
>
> Not sure who "we" is, or whether a standard of care in a legal, negligence, sense has been decided for autonomous 
> vehicles -- in Canada, Florida, or anyplace in the US.
>
> When "we" do get around to setting a standard (will courts, Terms of Service drafted by Tesla, regulators or 
> legislators perform this function? maybe something like RFCs for the Internet would be worth considering), why not 
> expect automated systems to outperform humans most or all of the time?   And why not set the safety bar higher?
>
> These seem like entirely fair questions.  Presupposing that human performance (and average performance is not the 
> same as the performance of the best professional drivers) ought to be the right benchmark ... is a premise that 
> should be considered with care and jettisoned if it does not survive reasonable scrutiny. 
>
> Agreed that there are foreseeable situations in which a human, when alerted to resume driving, may be entirely unable 
> to resume driving.  Or, as humans have shown through behavioral examples from time to time ("hold my beer, watch 
> this"), they may capriciously be unwilling to take the wheel -- just to see what will happen, or even for a 
> nefariousness purpose like sabotaging the market for autonomous vehicles and attempting to delay rollout.
>
> A well-designed and roadworthy autonomous autopilot system, upon discovering new data -- namely, the human does not 
> resume operating the vehicle when reminded to do so -- ought to have a "plan B" built in that is (at the least) more 
> likely than not to produce better results than a collision.
>
> In the 1960s, some legal scholars noted that industrial supply chains and processes (the classic case taught in law 
> schools was about an exploding bottle of coca-cola) have advantages in terms of information collection and memory, 
> risk-avoidance, and society-wide risk-spreading, compared with ordinary consumers.  Like the McDonalds database of 
> prior coffee burn events that came to light in the Stella Lybek case, non-human "people" like McDonalds, are more 
> capable than individual consumers to quantify risk, and to collect data ("data" is the plural of anecdote) and about 
> risks of death and injury. 
>
> They are better-positioned to change processes that are largely hidden from the end-user, in order to avoid harmful 
> events in the first place. 
>
> And building social insurance against risks that nonetheless materialize, into the cost of the product, is a good way 
> to align incentives so that big artificial "persons" (industrial corporations in the coca-cola and McDonalds cases, 
> or automated "AI" systems and the industrial purveyors of these systems, in the case if Tesla) are as 
> well-incentivised as possible accurately to balance social cost, and investment in safety, when designing processes 
> that no one human on his or her own can fully understand, let alone replicate or match in performance.
>
> In other words, think about how we have held industrial corporations (or should have, to the extent we have done so) 
> to a "higher standard," when considering what the standard of culpability ought to be for AI.  AI promises to make 
> mistakes fewer, overall.  But when mistakes
> still happen, then incentives ought to be aligned to promote appropriate investment in making adjustments to learn 
> from experience, so as not to repeat the same mistakes over and over
> again.
>
> IMHO, there is nothing the least bit unfair or unreasonable in holding individual humans to the reasonableness 
> standard of negligence, while holding AIs and industrial corporations to a more rigorous standard of safety and 
> risk-avoidance.
>
> No doubt many insurance defense attorneys and PR professionals, will disagree vehemently.
>
> And that debate is a good one to have.
>
> ECG
>
>
> Sent from a handheld device.
>
> > On Jun 20, 2017, at 12:03, Dave Farber <farber () gmail com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Begin forwarded message:
> >
> > > From: "Synthesis:Law and Technology" <synthesis.law.and.technology () gmail com>
> > > Date: June 20, 2017 at 11:19:32 AM CDT
> > > To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
> > > Subject: Re: [IP] Tesla Driver In Fatal Florida Crash Got Numerous Warnings To Take Control Back From Autopilot
> > >
> > > Dave, 
> > >
> > > I can imagine plenty of hypotheses under which a driver will not take back control:  unconsciousness, extreme 
> > > nausea, blurred vision, muscle spasm, etc, etc.  The premise that a driver somehow "must" resume control seems very 
> > > flawed.  what should the vehicle do? slam on the brakes? drive faster? drive slower?  The whole point of the alert 
> > > system is that something is happening that the vehicle suspects a driver would do better. "please take control" 
> > > "please take control" "ok fine I had a plan anyways..."  This makes no sense.
> > >
> > > Why are we holding autonomous vehicles to a much higher standard than we do for people? 
> > >
> > > Dan Steinberg
> > >
> > > SYNTHESIS:Law & Technology
> > > 2-45 Helene-Duval     
> > > Gatineau Quebec
> > > J8X 3C5        
> > >                
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > > On Tue, Jun 20, 2017 at 12:05 PM, Dave Farber <farber () gmail com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Begin forwarded message:
> > > >
> > > > > From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren () vortex com>
> > > > > Date: June 20, 2017 at 10:31:28 AM CDT
> > > > > To: nnsquad () nnsquad org
> > > > > Subject: [ NNSquad ] Tesla Driver In Fatal Florida Crash Got Numerous Warnings To Take Control Back From Autopilot
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > Tesla Driver In Fatal Florida Crash Got Numerous Warnings To Take Control Back From Autopilot
> > > > >
> > > > > http://jalopnik.com/tesla-driver-in-fatal-florida-crash-got-numerous-warnin-1796226021
> > > > >
> > > > >      Joshua Brown, the Tesla driver killed last year while using
> > > > >    the semi-autonomous Autopilot mode on his Model S, received
> > > > >    several visual and audio warnings to take control of the
> > > > >    vehicle before he was killed, according to a report from the
> > > > >    National Transportation Safety Board. Despite the warnings,
> > > > >    Brown kept his hands off the wheel before colliding with a
> > > > >    truck on a Florida highway.
> > > > >
> > > > > - - -
> > > > >
> > > > > The big problem here is that the Tesla continued motoring along
> > > > > normally even though the driver wasn't complying with the autopilot
> > > > > warnings to take back control. This is unacceptable, and puts innocent
> > > > > parties at risk (that is, other drivers of other vehicles). If the
> > > > > driver isn't complying, the Tesla cannot be permitted to simply
> > > > > continue as if nothing was wrong.
> > > > >
> > > > > --Lauren--
> > > > > Lauren 
> >
> > Archives  | Modify  Your Subscription | Unsubscribe Now       



-------------------------------------------
Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/18849915-ae8fa580
Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=18849915&id_secret=18849915-aa268125
Unsubscribe Now: 
https://www.listbox.com/unsubscribe/?member_id=18849915&id_secret=18849915-32545cb4&post_id=20170620143439:1BD52A3C-55E7-11E7-BA5C-D4F74045FFE8
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com