SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Slate and University of Washington have recent articles discussing robotics and the issue of how hard they say it is to even begin to define the nature and scope of robotics, let alone something like liability resulting from harm. They say:
Robots display increasingly emergent behavior...in the sense of wondrous complexity created by simple rules and interactions—permitting the technology to accomplish both useful and unfortunate tasks in unexpected ways. And robots, more so than any technology in history, feel to us like social actors—a tendency so strong that soldiers sometimes jeopardize themselves [livescience.com] to preserve the "lives" of military robots in the field.
[Robotics] combines, arguably for the first time, the promiscuity of information with the capacity to do physical harm. Robotic systems accomplish tasks in ways that cannot be anticipated in advance, and robots increasingly blur the line between person and instrument. Today, software can touch you, which may force courts and regulators to strike a new balance.
This seems like calmly worded yet unnecessary hype that is severely premature. Why not simply hold manufactures and owners responsible like we do now? I suppose this ignores the possibility of eventual development of true AI, where such an entity might be 'a person' who could be sued or thrown in jail. If it's an AI iteration that is only as smart as a dog, then the dog's owner pays if it bites.
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Monday July 27 2015, @12:30AM
"Virtually all" != "all" - see life-critical system [wikipedia.org].
For the heck of it, standards for automotive exist [wikipedia.org] - except that:
So, work in progress, eh? Guess what: the first publication of J2980 is... 2015-05-07 [sae.org] and it costs $72 bucks just to look at it.
How good are those "considerations" in practice? What's the cost of adjusting the car production processes to effect those consideration in practice? Too early to tell, so... should we just go ahead and throw self-driving cars on the road no matter what? (Is it like the progress must not be stopped by such a trifle as expensive public safety considerations?)
Of course, given the issuing date, there's no agency tasked to enforce anything right now.
Want more? What about self-driving trucks... You know? the ones that "are imminent" [medium.com]? What about them, you ask? The J2980 is limited [sae.org]:
In other words, I'm not convinced that it actually covers sudden acceleration/power loss for any vehicle (those aren't related to collision per se, even if they can lead to a collision - but I'm not inclined to fork $72 just from curiosity) and for sure does not cover now anything heavier that 3.5 tonnes in any circumstances.
Let me put it in other words: the one and only warranty of not being hit by an "imminent self-driving truck" is informative, not prescriptive.
(fortunately, the imminence of self-driving trucks may be greatly exaggerated... for now. But, given how much truck drivers cost the economy, I wouldn't bet it will take long enough; on the contrary, I'd bet it will start happening before the SAE standard committee has something/anything addressing "truck automotive safety" no matter if human or self-driving. It would not be a "standard committee" if producing a standard overnight).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford