[LINK] Spells Against Autonomy

[Nicholas English]

I loved that piece about the car in it’s own unmaking. The old joke went “How do you keep an idiot in suspense? …

> On 23 Mar 2017, at 2:16 PM, Roger Clarke <Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au> wrote:
> 
>> On Thu, 23 Mar 2017, Jim Birch wrote:
>>> This could result in cities that are more pedestrian-oriented, which is
>>> arguably a good thing. It could also make vehicle travel slower and perhaps
>>> even unworkable with some imperious pedestrian populations. It might
>>> eventually result in jaywalking laws being dusted off and revamped.
> 
> At 12:35 +1000 23/3/17, Robert Brockway wrote:
>> It also occurs to me that jaywalking may become socially unacceptable. If my driverless car is stopping every few metres while on city streets to allow a jaywalker across I'm going to develop a negative view of jaywalking, and so is everyone else.  It could quickly be viewed as a very anti-social behaviour.  Combined with appropriate legal sanctions I think this should deal with the problem.  It's an interesting example of society adapting to technogical change.
> 
> This conversation's a delicious example of how homo sapiens will pass the baton on to roboticus sapiens and/or homo roboticus, in the process signing its own execution warrant.

More seriously, IANAL, I would have thought that the nature of autonomous cars is that such they are expression of the rights of a corporation and not a barer of individual rights. Where a jaywalker is guilty of depriving the corporation of right to trade by wilfully impeding their ability to deliver their client? How far can you take the PPP model of infrastructure once the corporation has a direct exposure to capacity of ‘our' infrastructure to deliver profits? I do hope that there is no real parallel between net neutrality and what might happen to ‘our’ open roads.

> But it doesn't seem as if they'll need my help.  Big business will require subservient parliaments to give them the rights that they need, as they need them.

see above

> Capek got it wrong, in that violent takeover by robots is unnecessary.  
> 
> Clarke (Arthur C., I mean) and Asimov got it right, by postulating that, say, 25th century, societies comprise robots (which may have some biological components) and no humans.

That 'biological component’ wouldn’t happen to be the corporation that owns the algorithm, would it?

> (In the meantime, I'm interested in the number of pedestrians who make unfortunate assumptions about whether the car driving towards them is under the control of a human, …

Speaking of warrants, hands up anyone who would got to court to contest the evidence of LIDAR, audio HD video, GPS and a full log file? Game, set and match!! No need to go to court you can just issue a direct penalty, even against your estate if you don’t happen to survive the encounter as the RFID reader has taken Tap’n’go to a new level.


Nicholas English
nik.english at gmail.com <mailto:nik.english at gmail.com>


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