[LINK] itN: 'Third fatal Tesla Autopilot crash ...'

[Karl Auer]

On Tue, 2019-05-21 at 11:33 +1000, Bernard Robertson-Dunn wrote:
> In my experience as an automation engineer, when you automate
> something you have to be able to deal with all the exceptions that a
> human can manage instinctively. Humans can usually tell that
> something is unexpected and has a strategy to deal with it - stop,
> swerve etc. This is not 100% fail safe but it has a reasonable track
> record. Machines need to be proactively programmed. This is hard.

Humans don't manage much instinctively, or young drivers would be a
whole lot better than they are. The idea that human have a "reasonable
track record" is laughable - they kill and maim tens of thousands of
each other each year. If machines had the same track record, we
wouldn't let them any where near the roads. In fact they have a much
better track record, and we still don't let them drive.

People learn, and it is a whole lot slower than if we could just
upgrade them. Often, what would be a learning experience for a machine
is a dying experience for a human. Humans are really, REALLY bad at
learning from other people's experiences.

> Autodriving/full self-driving cars need to be tested against
> exceptions, not the norm. AFAIK that has never happened and may only
> happen over time in use, not the lab.

I don't think the Tesla engineers are stupid. Being safe is an
existential requirement for Tesla. I'm pretty sure their lab testing is
as comprehensive as they can make it - including testing against
exceptions. Bear in mind that given the billions of kilometres
travelled by cars every year, most "exceptions" happen thousands of
times per day.

Plus Tesla has been running their cars on real roads with real drivers
for years now.

Regards, K.



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Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)
http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer
http://twitter.com/kauer389

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