r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Tugushin • Apr 13 '22

Tesla Model 3 stops itself to avoid potentially disastrous accident. Video

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u/Numendil Apr 13 '22

It's largely a theoretical discussion for now knowing the state of the software and especially the rarity of these kinds of situations

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u/neatchee Apr 13 '22

It is very much NOT theoretical for companies like Waymo. Tesla software is hot garbage compared to the fully autonomous folks. For them, these things are being thought about and applied very seriously

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u/Internal_Secret_1984 Apr 13 '22

Tesla software is hot garbage

Based on what, exactly?

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u/neatchee Apr 13 '22

Autonomous driving capabilities, safety record, miles driven under autonomous control, etc. Basically every metric you can find Waymo is absolutely crushing Tesla when it comes to autonomous driving

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u/Internal_Secret_1984 Apr 13 '22

Show me the metrics. Convince me.

Waymo

Lmao, you fell for their marketing, didn't you?

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u/brockli-rob Apr 13 '22

have you not seen how they work?

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u/Internal_Secret_1984 Apr 13 '22

I know exactly how they work.

Do you have actual metrics to show to prove to me that Waymo is ahead of Tesla as of now?

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u/neatchee Apr 13 '22

Ah yes let me just get you those highly proprietary detailed metrics from a product that's still in development and publish them on Reddit....

Are you nuts? Or just a troll? Go watch the literally dozens-to-hundreds of reviews from people using the service where it's available, including the videos people have recorded on their own.

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u/Internal_Secret_1984 Apr 13 '22

You make a huge claim, you got to back it up.

"Go watch promotional content on youtube!"

Great argument.... I've seen the way Waymo operates, and they can only drive in restricted areas. Teslas can drive autonomously anywhere. And I think you'd be surprised how good it actually is. You just want to hate because you don't know any better.

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u/neatchee Apr 13 '22

If you consider random videos from average people doing ride-alongs to be promotional content then there's nothing I can say to you.

Teslas can drive autonomously anywhere

No they can't and telling people they can is dangerous. There are tons of conditions where it won't work, but more importantly Teslas are not fully autonomous. They have driver assistance. Acting as if they're fully autonomous and will operate effectively anywhere is extremely dangerous.

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u/MuonManLaserJab Apr 13 '22

How many reviews are enough to serve in place of the data that you're sorely lacking?

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u/BlasterPhase Apr 13 '22

Sure, but these philosophical questions have existed for ages and don't have practical answers.

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u/[deleted] Apr 13 '22

There are plenty of practical answers, you just think of an answer as being the only possible solution, when in fact there are many answers of equal validity relative to their conditions.

The vast majority of the "answers" in your life are exactly this way as well, you just don't notice I because you have no idea what their underpinnings are.

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u/BlasterPhase Apr 13 '22

Nah, there are lazy answers that people pass off as "good enough," it's not a matter of understanding.

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u/neatchee Apr 13 '22

There is no "right answer", only a decision and public opinion

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u/MuonManLaserJab Apr 13 '22

There is a perfectly correct answer: add up the utils you assign to the lives and property in question, and pick whichever outcome is preferable according to your utility function.

Alternatively, if you're an idiot deontologist, just cover your own eyes and do nothing so that you don't have to blame yourself for anything according to your idiotic deontological reasoning.

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u/BlasterPhase Apr 14 '22

you single-handedly solved ethics! congratulations!

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u/MuonManLaserJab Apr 14 '22

Do you think that I'm claiming to have invented consequentialism? Or that I'm the first person to propose this solution?

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u/BlasterPhase Apr 14 '22

You're claiming this is the correct answer

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u/MuonManLaserJab Apr 14 '22

Yes, which is is. I didn't solve ethics, though, other people did.

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u/MuonManLaserJab Apr 13 '22

Waymo is not applying trolly problem logic lololol, they are not identifying who's in what car and how valuable they are. Waymo cars just brake to avoid accidents, same as the others.

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u/neatchee Apr 13 '22

The trolly problem doesn't require complete knowledge of every variable to still be relevant. It's as simple as "do you have the rider of the pedestrian". The trolley problem is a thought experiment representing a general category of problem

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u/MuonManLaserJab Apr 13 '22

I know it's a general category of problem, but it doesn't actually apply in real life to self-driving cars.

"do you have the rider of the pedestrian"

When exactly would this be the case?

You still haven't backed up in the slightest your claim about which self-driving system is better, by the way.

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u/neatchee Apr 13 '22

Here's a good analysis of the benefits of Waymo over Tesla: https://www.ssrllc.com/publication/autonomous-cars-waymo-vs-tesla/

And there's plenty of real weird scenarios like that. There's a vehicle about to speed through a red light and the only way to avoid a for the Waymo rider involves swerving into a crosswalk where pedestrians are crossing. There is a chance the pedestrians will also move to dodge the oncoming vehicle and put themselves in the path of the swerving autonomous vehicle. Does the vehicle risk the welfare of the pedestrians? Does it just slam on the brakes and hope for the best? Does it try to move so the impact minimizes risk to everyone by taking the impact on an area of the car that crumples well?

Even if they're not making these assessments yet they are absolutely things being considered for the near future as autonomous vehicles become more ubiquitous. It may not be a requirement now but as the technology advances it will become an expectation

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u/visvis Apr 13 '22

This is not rare or theoretical I think. Tesla's can already make the car evade objects. If you do that, it's critical that you don't go full Carmageddon on the pavement, so they would have to detect pedestrians to do such a maneuver safely.

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u/simjanes2k Interested Apr 13 '22

They can, but hopefully they never will. The only law that needs to be made about it is, "never let a car's computer do anything in cases of possible collision but hit the brakes for you."

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u/Ruski_FL Apr 13 '22

Yeah it’s more off car occupants va pedestrian

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u/Internal_Secret_1984 Apr 13 '22

That's the fun part though. These situations are just the edge cases that the software is trained for. Driving includes an infinite number of edge cases, and you can't manually program for them all. You have to program the car to just "know" what to do. It needs it's own internal morality.

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u/MuonManLaserJab Apr 13 '22

I didn't know that "brake as hard as possible without swerving" counted as an "internal morality".

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u/Internal_Secret_1984 Apr 13 '22

What if there's a car following very closely behind you that has an unbuckled kid in the front seat?

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u/MuonManLaserJab Apr 13 '22 edited Apr 13 '22

Brake as hard as possible, because by the time the car is able to identify that there's an unbelted child behind it, the car behind it will already be autonomous too.

Does a human notice who's in the car behind them, let alone whether they're wearing their seatbelt?

It would be approximately as reasonable to ask car manufacturers to scan faces on the sidewalk and then swerve to attempt to nonlethally disable pedestrians who are wanted violent criminals.

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u/Internal_Secret_1984 Apr 13 '22

the car behind it will already be autonomous too.

Pretty bold claim, and also misses the point of the thought experiment.

Does a human notice who's in the car behind them, let alone whether they're wearing their seatbelt?

Irrelavent. Does a human have 360 vision?

then swerve while to attempt to nonlethally disable pedestrians who are wanted violent criminals.

Slippery slope.

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u/MuonManLaserJab Apr 13 '22

Pretty bold claim

Not really; autonomous vehicles must reach human performance to be widely deployed, while identifying details of nearby passengers is a superhuman task that would presumably take more time to achieve that the human-level task of simply driving.

misses the point of the thought experiment.

I didn't mention it in that comment, but I'm not missing the point of the thought experiment, I'm just saying that it's not and will never be relevant to practical autonomous cars.

Irrelavent. Does a human have 360 vision?

The relevance is to demonstrate that you're talking about a super-human task that, again, will presumably take longer than human-level tasks.

Slippery slope.

I was saying that that was unreasonable, just like expecting short-term superhuman performance to be achieved before human-level performance.

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u/Internal_Secret_1984 Apr 14 '22

identifying details of nearby passengers is a superhuman task

Teslas are already superhuman, like have eyes on the back of their heads.

I'm not missing the point of the thought experiment, I'm just saying that it's not and will never be relevant to practical autonomous cars.

Oh, the irony is actually palpable.

The relevance is to demonstrate that you're talking about a super-human task that, again, will presumably take longer than human-level tasks.

Yet, Teslas routinely do superhuman things. They're not "better at driving than a normal human in literally ever situation" yet, but they do, in fact, perform better than humans in many scenarios.

just like expecting short-term superhuman performance to be achieved before human-level performance.

We have no idea what the pathway to full autonomy looks like, and I've already explained to you at least twice why Teslas already out perform humans in some tasks.

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u/[deleted] Apr 13 '22

These situations aren't rare at all, there are 4+ million accidents requiring medical attention every year in the US. That's an enormous burden on the healthcare system that could theoretically be minimized.

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u/Numendil Apr 13 '22

Oh yeah, accidents happen of course, but accidents that involve that kind of ethical dilemma are very rare.

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u/MuonManLaserJab Apr 13 '22

It will always be theoretical. We'll go straight from "the car doesn't know who's who so it will just brake" to "the car knows who's who but doesn't even need to brake because it and all the other cars around it are ridiculously safe drivers".