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The first machine to kill a human entirely on its own initiative was "Likely Caused By Software Set to Ignore Objects On Road" according to a new report on the collision which happened last March:
The car's sensors detected the pedestrian, who was crossing the street with a bicycle, but Uber's software decided it didn't need to react right away. That's a result of how the software was tuned. Like other autonomous vehicle systems, Uber's software has the ability to ignore "false positives," or objects in its path that wouldn't actually be a problem for the vehicle, such as a plastic bag floating over a road. In this case, Uber executives believe the company's system was tuned so that it reacted less to such objects. But the tuning went too far, and the car didn't react fast enough, one of these people said.
Fast enough? She walked across three and a half lanes in what should have been plain view of the car's LIDAR the entire time.
takyon: Also at Reuters. Older report at The Drive.
Previously: Uber Pulls Self-Driving Cars After First Fatal Crash of Autonomous Vehicle
Video Released of Fatal Uber - Pedestrian Accident, and More
(Score: 2) by number11 on Wednesday May 09 2018, @04:28AM (2 children)
But they hardly ever are. What would be a 10 year sentence for an individual is a $10K fine for a corporation. Maybe if you expanded jail time to corporations (6 months means the marshals padlock your premises and freeze your bank accounts for 6 months). Yes, the investors and workers would whine that it hurt them, but criminals usually hurt innocent people. We don't let bank robbers off because it'll hurt their family.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 09 2018, @07:25AM
Someone I know very well was working in a fintech corporation where his manager asked him to deliberately fudge the numbers and basically commit fraud. He raised objection, so he was given the lowest possible rating and then asked to leave. So he hired a lawyer and decided to whistleblow. Guess what - since he had gotten a new job after being fired, it was NOT established in the court of law that there was any harm done by the termination due to being asked for committing fraud and hence he had full freedom to chose not to commit fraud, and hence nothing bad happened.
Fortunately he got full payment of 1 month by the HR of the company, but this example is all one needs to know to see how corporations are judged.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday May 09 2018, @03:06PM
I would think a better idea would be to just raise their corporate tax rate to 100% of profits for the same length of time. That way the workers are still getting paid.
Although of course you'd need some oversight to make sure they don't fudge their numbers too hard and claim they're not making any profits like the movie studios.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"