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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?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @03:51AM (8 children)
> Driverless cars shouldn't need to connect to the Internet or other cars. But it will be that way
Um, assuming current "AI" technology, the only way to get enough training data for these things is from user data. It's not like a Torrent where you can choose to just leech, all these systems will need your data back in exchange for the tech.
See the recent Tesla conference on their self driving system,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ucp0TTmvqOE&t=4152s [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday June 12 2019, @04:03AM (7 children)
If the algorithms have been refined by years of testing and millions or billions of miles driven, then your new self-driving car shouldn't need to send data back to anyone.
Maybe don't be an early adopter if being a guinea pig is part of the deal.
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(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday June 12 2019, @08:48AM (2 children)
Since AI learning is trial-and-error based (with errors being used in the optimisation), the only issue would be how many fatal errors the market is able to accept before dropping the idea completely.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MostCynical on Wednesday June 12 2019, @09:14AM (1 child)
judging by how many deaths from ordinary vehicles people are willing to accept, I expect the number will be quite massively larger than 1.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Wednesday June 12 2019, @10:13AM
I don't know about that "massively".
It's one thing to accept "If you die in a car crash, it's mostly because of you, the driver" and just another to accept "get in the car and if you live or die is a matter of pure chance from your PoV, you or any other human have no control over it".
Humans are some weird creatures like that. For instance, you remember MH370 and MH17? Well, the govt of Malaysia nationalized the airline [economist.com] to save it from collapsing, despite the two air incidents being something beyond the airline's control
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Hyperturtle on Wednesday June 12 2019, @05:34PM (3 children)
Hey wait
Why do you think they would just push out an update to *disable* telemetry? That's money lost. The GPS location, the speed and braking info, the routes taken and routes avoided, the calls received and calls placed, and the information accessed while in motion as compared to when at a complete stop--and even driver facing camers that do facial recognition... these all generate data that no vendor will wish to leave in the car.
ALL of that can be monetized over and over again. It will likely be used against the driver in some way (I consider marketing will put the ad into adversarial...) or used to entice the driver later when usage telemetry informs the vendor how to tweak the user interface just enough to include new irritating user interactions that are required... which, for a simple, for-a-cost, upgrade... can be elimated. It's not like this is a new tactic; look at how Windows 10 was "free" and solitare wasn't, and the DVD player was removed, etc...
If you refuse updates somehow, it's not like the telemetry is ever going to stop without cutting a wire. I am sure that any Insurance company would like to know what it is you're doing besides focusing on the road.
Look at this review; https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/06/it-watches-you-drive-subaru-forester-review/ [arstechnica.com]
They don't even touch upon the privacy implications. Facial cameras, like what I mentioned earlier. Right now, it is a special extra cost feature. Before long, privacy will be the luxury that will cost extra.
There is no real suggestion as to why a facial ID tagging is necessary to alert the driver to remain focused on the road; no real reasons are provided aswhy facial ID is really required. I cynically suspect the point is getting facial recognition in the car for testing acceptance and also testing what can be done with the telemetry later.
The reviewer is clearly unconcerned with it, not creeped out at all, and considers it to be pretty cool that the car will stop if you turn your head to look out the side windows when parking, forcing you to look where you shouldn't be because the system doesn't consider why, just that you are not compliant.
From the article: "The real shiny newness in the Forester is DriverFocus. When you start the Forester up, the DriverFocus cameras will scan the driver's face. If it's your first time behind the wheel, it will do a face scan and offer to store the data in one of the five profile spots. If it detects your aren't looking straight ahead, it will beep and flash a warning on the display in the instrument panel. Ignore the warning and the Forester will gradually stop the vehicle."
The word "privacy" is not in the article even once. "Data" is used only in the context of saving the face information to a profile. There is no comment as to where the profile itself is saved. Of course, it's an article about cars--the reviewer and drivers in general are not supposed to care about privacy or security of their data when focusing on driving.
This first generation seems to open the door to more telemetry gathering, not less. I think that if user acceptance levels among rich people impressed with bling and shiny is at a high level (positive and simplistic reviews will help, I am sure), then facial ID and telemetry based privacy violations for safety purposes will become more common, not less. Pair it with some insurance discount (or punishment if not used) and it's practically a given.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday June 13 2019, @03:27PM (2 children)
Will a self-driving car function without telemetry? Maybe you can find a way to disable or jam it. Hopefully as easy as a YouTube video and not requiring you to dismantle the whole car and carefully remove component(s) off of a computer chip.
If not, just use the self-driving Uber/Lyft/etc. replacements when you need to, and keep your own old car until it is banned. By the time that happens, you might not be interested in driving that much (retired, eyes/brain screwed up if no regenerative medicine available, receiving Walmort/Amazonk grocery deliveries to your house).
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(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Thursday June 13 2019, @04:27PM (1 child)
I think I'll keep my old car until it's banned... maybe then I'll have "bought the farm" and can have a horse be my autopilot. Once they learn the route, the rider can even sleep while holding the reigns! If they make cyborg horses controlled by The Cloud, we're all doomed, unless we start riding manually pedaled bikes or actually start walking instead ;)
Also I wouldn't want to use a self-driving uber or lyft. I feel sorry for the people working as drivers that essentially are funding the service that will eventually put them out of a job. Seems like a crummy way to get rewarded for doing the job; getting laid off in the end if the research is successful. I've seen too many jobs get outsourced; at least those jobs went to someone. In this case, the AI isn't going to contribute back to the local economy, but the CEO of the company might get a bonus and can afford more gold plated furniture in his armageddon vault in New Zealand or something.
I can't follow through on all of my ivory tower beliefs, but not spending money on something because I don't like it (as opposed to donating to various causes that I do like) is a lot easier to do...cheaper, too, so that maybe I'll have something saved for the eventual time when my job is taken by robots.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday June 13 2019, @05:06PM
I said "self-driving Uber/Lyft/etc. replacements".
These may be operated by Uber and Lyft. But in the case of GOOG/Waymo, there isn't a bunch of drivers except for test drivers, so no exploited ridehailing drivers are personally kicked to the curb. They'll just force others to kick their own drivers to the curb or go out of business.
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