[LINK] Cars, again

[Jim Birch]

David wrote:


> The prognostications of so-called "elder statesmen" do not have a good
> record.


Especially if you cherry pick them.


>   More recently we had the Prime Minister, an experienced & senior lawyer,
> declare that ...


(Unfortunately for us) politician are in the business of wishful thinking,
and talking.  "Elder statesman" refers to people who have been at the top
but are no longer active so would have accumulated some wisdom but have no
interest in deceiving.  A serving PM would hardly make that category.

A fully autonomous vehicle which can be trusted as a functional replacement
> for a conventional one would have to have the same reliability as an expert
> human driver who is not tired, under the affluence of inchohol or other
> substances, and generally in good form.
>

Improvement doesn't require perfection.  It only requires replacing things
with something better.  If we were all expert, sober, emotionally stable,
continuously attentive drivers that would raise the bar for automated
vehicles, but clearly we aren't.

If this must-be-perfect argument was correct we would not, for example,
allow ABS brakes in cars because they reduce the capabilities of expert
drivers.  However, with the current collection of drivers we have on roads
ABS brakes are a great idea.

Leaving aside the issue of consciousness...
>

Good. Let's stick with functional capabilities.

Furthermore, the brain has evolved its capability over many millions of
> years ... the number of synapses...
>

Evolution produces things that are "good enough" to replicate themselves
into the next generation, statistically not individually.  Perfection was
never part of the brief.  Brains are brilliant at energy conservation.
However, the ways that the brain achieves this feat include a slew of
cognitive biases, perceptual shortcuts, and intermittent attention.

Finally, AI has been around since the early 1960s, when it was confidently
> predicted we'd see human-like intelligence in 10 or 15 years.


Again, there has also been a bunch of people poo-pooing the idea.  As a
matter of historical fact, AI has been improving slower than the boosters
have said, but faster than the naysayers expected.

An AI system that drives a car doesn't have to be able to do everything a
human does, it just has to drive a car.  This is a complex task, but guess
what? Computer systems can already drive cars, and they can do it well.
What for me is the clincher is they get better at it every year.  Why would
you presume there is a ceiling to AI improvement, especially one at a level
close to current capability?

Jim