"Jeff Barnett" wrote

| As someone else said: You should be wary and afraid of those automated
| vehicles. But you should be god-awful more afraid of all those idiots
| out there jacking off with their smart phones while driving.
|

I hope you're not referring to me. I referred
to the phone problem in the time zone thread.

In this context I think it's misleading logic.
It's not an either/or choice. Technophiles are
expressing an almost frantic defense of auto-
driven cars following the AZ accident, and
they'll cook up any old logic to make their case.
Even if you think auto-driven cars are the future,
there's no reason they can't be limited to test
tracks until the technology is proven -- or not.

Whether the accident was avoidable is not
really the point. What about the man leaving
his Tesla on auto-pilot and fatally running into
a truck? These cases neither prove nor disprove
the safety of auto-driven cars. But they should
raise questions.

If you do favor auto-driven cars.... why? So
you can safely diddle your phone on your way
to work? Because you don't want to have to bother
to drive? Because you don't want to deal with
other people on the road? What rational reason
is there, after all, to have auto-driven cars? And
if there is a good reason, would it not also apply
to eating, walking and all the other unregulated
activities we do? Where do you draw the line?
Should you trust yourself to wrestle a chicken bone
without choking?
(Of course, it's true that some people don't
walk in any unofficial capacity. They pay a monthly
fee to stand on a treadmill, breathing indoor air,
under fluorescent lights, walking while they read
reports for work. Those people only walk when it's
an official, retail activity, duly recorded on their
computerized watch.... And I suppose we can't
really classify the intake of "power bars" as eating...)

I can see auto-driven cars in a controlled
environment where there are *only* auto-driven
cars (with giant rubber bumpers). Mixing them with
human drivers and uncontrolled circumstances
seems crazy to me. And there's no credible case
for the technology in the first place. It's a case
of "Jetson Futurism Disorder". JFD. It's all the
rage these days. The prescription is to spend a
week in the woods to reconnect with basic
physicality.


| My personnel bet is that 5 years from now we will see self drive cars
| doing spectacularly better than human drive cars - better safety, better
| millage, faster trips - and still a bunch of idiots (the same ones who
| opposed autopilots and computer assisted landings for planes) bitching
| about the supremacy of human drivers, vinyl records, doctors reading
| x-rays, etc, etc, etc.

And cooking? And dressing yourself? And
what's the problem with doctors reading
x-rays? Doesn't human experience count
for anything? You can't computerize life. It's
not digital.

One of my favorite examples to explain to
people the limits of computers and the marketing
of "AI" is to imagine an android that's programmed
to drive across the country. If such a thing were
done then people would be amazed. We'd be thinking
about buying androids to raise our kids, mow
our lawns..... But what if that android goes all
the way from NYC to Nevada and comes upon
something it's not programmed to deal with?
Say, for example, a road block, a sinkhole in
the road, or maybe a 3-way fork? Then the android
crashes. Either the software, the car, or both.
It made the drive all the way to Nevada only
because it was programmed to deal with the things
it encountered. That's not AI. It only looks intelligent
to the observer. But in reality it's simply complex
software that's limited to numeric, linear operations.

Unfortunately that also means that if we come
up with a Cherry 2000 it won't *really* be a lover
but only a high-tech masturbation toy.