[LINK] Elaine Herzberg was an Anomaly, just an Artefact

[Roger Clarke]

Report: Software bug led to death in Uber's self-driving crash
Sensors detected Elaine Herzberg, but software reportedly decided to ignore her.
TIMOTHY B. LEE
Ars Technica
MAY 7, 2018 10:12 PM UTC
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/05/report-software-bug-led-to-death-in-ubers-self-driving-crash/

The fatal crash that killed pedestrian Elaine Herzberg in Tempe, Arizona, in March occurred because of a software bug in Uber's self-driving car technology, The Information's Amir Efrati reported on Monday. According to two anonymous sources who talked to Efrati, Uber's sensors did, in fact, detect Herzberg as she crossed the street with her bicycle. Unfortunately, the software classified her as a "false positive" and decided it didn't need to stop for her.

 ...  [nice article] ...


[In the postmodern world, a new survival trait has emerged:

[Don't exhibit patterns that stand out from the crowd and are hard for AI/ML to classify, because the patterns will either mark you for attention, e.g. by law enforcement and national security agencies, or will be treated as an artefact and ignored.  Both kinds of positives are survival threats. 

[Elaine Herzberg's unclassifiability was presumably a walking human form merged with a bike-profile, and the treatment by the software melange was 'unclassifiable, hence treat as an artefact of the image collection system'; so she wasn't detected as a pedestrian in the vehicle carriageway.


-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/
			            
Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
Tel: +61 2 6288 6916                        http://about.me/roger.clarke
mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au                http://www.xamax.com.au/

Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law            University of N.S.W.
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University