[LINK] Robot cars and the fear gap

[Brendan]

On 07/14/2016 02:06 PM, Karl Auer wrote:
> On Thu, 2016-07-14 at 13:50 +1000, Brendan wrote:
>> Yes. It's effectively the trolley problem. Do you throw a fat person
>> in the way of a runaway trolley in order to save 5 other people?
  
[]

> The fallacy in the argument as it applies to autonomous vehicles is
> that autonomous vehicles don't see "people" and cannot weigh outcomes
> with any subtlety at all. You can't ask "what should the vehicle do in
> this situation" and then load the situation with value judgements. The
> result is - a stupid question.

The argument has nothing whatsoever to do with autonomous vehicles making decisions.
  
I can only assume that you have not understood.

For example, *assume* some data points:
without autonomous vehicles: 1 million ppl dead: 90% class A/10% class B
with autonomous vehicles: 950,000 ppl dead: 60% class A/ 40% class B

*If presented with this data*, then the choice by *human decision makers* to
allow the vehicles on the road is not only a choice about how many people
are going to die, but it's also a choice about what type of people
(ie class A or class B) they choose to let die.

It's reasonable to assume that certain classes of people will be removed from accident
statistics - such as young men, suicides and drunks - because now the car is not being
driven carelessly. If there is a marginal decrease in the overall statistics then that
means the gains in this group are being offset by losses in some other group.