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posted by
cmn32480
on Monday October 31 2016, @06:16PM
from the explosions-killing-everybody-isn't-a-choice dept.
from the explosions-killing-everybody-isn't-a-choice dept.
Researchers at MIT have put together a pictorial survey http://moralmachine.mit.edu/ -- if the self-driving car loses its brakes, should it go straight or turn? Various scenarios are presented with either occupants or pedestrians dying, and there are a variety of peds in the road from strollers to thieves, even pets.
This AC found that I quickly began to develop my own simplistic criteria and the decisions got easier the further I went in the survey.
While the survey is very much idealized, it may have just enough complexity to give some useful results?
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When I met th'POPE back in '58, I scrubbed him with a MILD SOAP or
DETERGENT for 15 minutes. He seemed to enjoy it ...
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 31 2016, @07:02PM
The scenarios assume you have to choose between either killing pedestrians or the occupants of the car. However, most roads where you have crosswalks will have low enough speed limits that the occupants of the car would survive a pedestrian-avoiding crash because of modern cars' safety features (crumple zones, safety belts, and airbags).
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Monday October 31 2016, @07:17PM
Consequences will sometimes be symmetric, and symmetric consequences make it easier to tell what other factors are being selected for. You can construct scenarios with asymmetric consequences on the website, they just don't appear in the survey.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday October 31 2016, @07:20PM
That assumes safety culture continues and flawless magical cars do not in practice result in drunk people having naked sex in their self driving car, throw a kid in the back seat and have the car deliver them to school while they're bouncing off the walls as usual, people sleeping in cars going down the road. Possibly all at the same time, given some curtains in a van, perhaps. I know if I paid $50K extra for the self driving option, I'd expect some road head, or something similar to make it all seem like it was a useful "investment".
Or even removing the sex stuff from the equation, you'll have idiots holding ipads and laptops in front of the air bags to "get work done" and setting off the air bag will make the ipad decapitate them. People already die because of airbags so you know they're just going to behave even worse when they have a self driving car.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Monday October 31 2016, @08:45PM
Or even removing the sex stuff from the equation, you'll have idiots holding ipads and laptops in front of the air bags to "get work done" and setting off the air bag will make the ipad decapitate them. People already die because of airbags so you know they're just going to behave even worse when they have a self driving car.
I know how to solve this problem, we just need to legislate an air-bag into every screen!
(Score: 3, Funny) by FatPhil on Monday October 31 2016, @09:42PM
Thank you for that image! Happy Halloween.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday October 31 2016, @09:57PM
Not my fault that apple designers have a weird fixation on cutting themselves so all the products have to be hard to hold thin razor blade things.
Seriously like why can't I buy a mid 00s thinkpad that was like an inch thick and easy to hold and felt tough, instead of some floppy folded over piece of paper with a shiny screen mostly showing glare?
And since I'm on a laptop rant how come the only decent high res display out there is Apple? Why are all the windoze laptops topped out at mumble by 768 unless I spend more than the cost of an apple product? All I want is pretty as hell fonts for my emacs and ssh sessions, thats all. Instead I get resolution that would have been cutting edge in the 90s.
And why can't I get a laptop with a nice mechanical keyboard like my model M? Aside from my genuine model M keyboard weighing about as much as three apple toy laptops.
Argh I just want a high res display and a nice keyboard. The rest of the innards can be an old 486 for all the processor I need, as long as its got wifi. Gonna have to make it myself I figure.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday November 01 2016, @12:28AM
Got an Asus with a 4K screen right next to me. $1000 out the door. 4K HDMI out, pretty light, and decent specs too (Asus K501UX).
I was looking for a real keyboard, but the only ones with that and my required 16G of RAM were over-the-top desktop replacement boxes (alienware and competitors), which neither fit the boss's budget nor my carry-on weight limit.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday November 01 2016, @11:44AM
https://www.asus.com/us/Notebooks/K501UX/specifications/ [asus.com]
15.6" 16:9 HD (1366x768)/Full HD (1920x1080) (On selected models)
A kilobuck for 768 or maybe 1080, OK then.
$1299 macbook is "2304-by-1440 resolution at 226 pixels per inch"
https://wiki.freebsd.org/AppleMacbook [freebsd.org]
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday November 01 2016, @03:47PM
Mine is 4K, really: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834232946 [newegg.com]
My boss picked up the $1k tab at Fry's (16G of RAM + SSD)