Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Tuesday June 11 2019, @11:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the on-the-road-again dept.

Phys.org:

Losing even one in 10 customers would substantially reduce airlines' revenue. They don't make much money on each flight as it is; less income would likely cause them to shrink their service, flying fewer routes less frequently.

The problem wouldn't just be customers who chose not to fly. Some passengers might split trips between self-driving cars and airplanes, which would further reduce airlines' revenue. For instance, a person in Savannah, Georgia, who wants to go to London could choose to change planes in Atlanta—or take a self-driving car to the Atlanta airport, and skip the layover.

These changes could substantially change the aviation industry, with airlines ordering fewer airplanes from manufacturers, airports seeing fewer daily flights and lower revenue from parking lots, and even airport hotels hosting fewer guests. The future of driverless cars is appealing to consumers—which means the future of commercial flight is in danger.

A personal fondling session from a TSA agent named Brad, or 5 hours in your self-driving Mazda that your four-year old smeared peanut butter in?


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday June 12 2019, @02:35AM (9 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Wednesday June 12 2019, @02:35AM (#854489) Journal

    If we told you that you are 6 times more likely to die when driving long distances yourself than using the driverless option, I assume your reaction would be to attack the studies involved and continue engaging in the dangerous behavior.

    --
    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 1, Offtopic) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 12 2019, @02:39AM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday June 12 2019, @02:39AM (#854491)

    your reaction would be to attack the studies involved and continue engaging in the dangerous behavior

    No need to attack anything, this is 'Murica, we don't need permission to risk our lives, and science denial puts you in the popular majority.

    Never tell me the odds.

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]
  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @03:00AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @03:00AM (#854498)

    From an evolutionary perspective it's better for the species in the long term if most of us die mostly/partly because of our own gene related issues (bad coordination, poor reflexes, falling asleep while driving, low toughness, poor clotting factor) than something mostly not controlled by our genes other than "chose or even forced to get in a self driving car".

    So self-driving cars, elevators and airliners have to be really safe, while it's fine for people to participate in dangerous sports or hobbies.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday June 12 2019, @03:43AM (2 children)

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Wednesday June 12 2019, @03:43AM (#854506) Journal

      Maybe, but this assumes that we don't entirely veer away from natural reproduction. If we use gene editing, synthetic embyros, artificial wombs, etc. we will have unprecedented control over the evolutionary direction of the species. Even with what we have today, we are balancing our ability to keep weaker individuals alive with our ability to screen them out [soylentnews.org].

      If shit hits the fan™, we may not reach that level of technology, but we could have a quick culling of billions of humans, leaving a fraction of a subset of well-prepared and crafty individuals. If the goal is to keep humanity from being completely extinguished, we will probably be OK since we have billions of humans. Many "strong" people will die if nukes are being launched all over the globe, but some would make it and dominate the next phase.

      If we don't get a SHTF™ event, we will enter into a new era of biotechnology that overturns a lot of ideas. No more natural selection, no more natural anything unless you're a contrarian.

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
      • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday June 12 2019, @08:55AM (1 child)

        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday June 12 2019, @08:55AM (#854577) Journal

        but some would may make it and dominate the next phase.

        FTFY, no strong warranties exists.

        Besides, even if it happens, I have reasons to believe you won't like the ... ummm... dominants, very likely they'll rely on brute force more than the intellect.

        --
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 12 2019, @11:23AM

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday June 12 2019, @11:23AM (#854618)

      When we started providing significant species (and even tribe) specific advantages to our offspring after our age of fertility (thinking: Grandmothers...), that started skewing up the whole evolution by death of the stupid. Now, we can have stupid children, but as long as some of them grow up to be able to protect some children long enough to breed, that's O.K.

      Diversity is where it's at. There's not one best genotype for species survival - having a variety working cooperatively has given h. sapiens lots of advantages.

      --
      🌻🌻 [google.com]
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @03:57AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @03:57AM (#854511)

    But they are no where near 6:1 vs average drivers, and don't believe anyone that tells you they are--look deeper for the people behind the "AI" who are still tweaking madly as edge cases surface. These are not the self-learning systems you have been led to believe. There has been a lot of hype out there, dig past it.

    And it will be a good while before they can come close to a "good driver" -- one who doesn't engage in known risky behavior like substance abuse, distraction (phone/videos), over-tired, etc, and is probably something like 10x less likely to be in a serious accident than "average" drivers.

    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday June 12 2019, @09:49AM (1 child)

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Wednesday June 12 2019, @09:49AM (#854588) Journal

      ~6:1 is one claim, but you can also find claims of 90% or 93% accident reduction.

      An individual car doesn't need to learn anything. It just needs to apply algorithms that have been widely tested. These algorithms may have been created using a "machine learning" process. If you don't want to call it "learning" to mix it up with some other method (like having neuromorphic "strong AI" enslaved in the car), then don't.

      I don't think it will be long at all until it gets as good as a "good driver". >99% of the time, driving is trivial and boring. Google demoed a car doing the boring stuff years ago. But sometimes a person will run in front of the car or some other unexpected event will happen. In those cases, if the car can react very quickly in order to simply slow down, it will increase the possibility of saving lives (might result in you getting rear ended more often though). If it can react in 25ms instead of 500ms, there can be a substantial reduction in impact velocity.

      https://www.science.org.au/curious/technology-future/physics-speeding-cars [science.org.au]

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
      • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 12 2019, @11:27AM

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday June 12 2019, @11:27AM (#854620)

        Whatever the odds (and never tell me), self-driving cars represent predictability, mass production with uniform predictable flaws and failure rates: the actuarial table calculators are dreaming of retiring to Bora Bora on this one, and the deep futurists can't stop salivating over the day that we get the human controlled vehicles off the road.

        Newsflash: freeways might someday become auto-driver only zones, but until you're prepared to stop me from my morning bike ride, and keep pedestrians off the village crosswalks, you're always going to have human controlled obstacles in the auto-drivers' paths.

        --
        🌻🌻 [google.com]