
Google wants driverless cars, but do we? - boskonyc
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/19/opinion/google-wants-driverless-cars-but-do-we.html?mtrref=www.nytimes.com&gwh=7A974016FD99E172AB461FC5FFA1A287&gwt=pay&assetType=opinion&_r=0
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sqeaky
Yes, yes we want them.

Idiotic things like this in the article miss the point:

> And yet this trend has never been voted on or discussed seriously by our
> politicians

We already voted with our dollars and will continue to do so (and our
politicians suck).

The article also has stupid shit like:

> The truth is, no one knows for sure how many lives could be saved by
> driverless cars, because data on the role of human error in crashes is
> incomplete and misleading

Human error is the cause for all accidents, barring freak accidents like
sinkholes and tornadoes (both hitting my state recently :( ). This one is so
simple to reason about. Think about the cause of any accident, even the ones
where clearly some technology failed. Even a rear-end caused by brake failure
is the fault of the driver for ignoring his dashboard and not fixing the car
often enough.

A self-driving car can and will refuse to drive if the brakes go back
(provided all the sensors don't go bad at the same time too). A self driving
will have unlimited patience for slowness. A self driving car will never be
drunk or drive tired.

~~~
sqeaky
I like how the article uses the economic argument:

> Yes, jobs will be created by these new cars, but many will be lost.

Every time a company, economy, nation or empire doesn't follow the route that
saves more human effort they are outcompeted (or conquered) by those who do.

This is as much an argument against self driving cars as much as it is an
argument against automation in principle. We need to figure how to handle 40%
unemployment when all those truckers lose their jobs. Either Basic income,
subsidized jobs, or some kind of discussion to figure out what happens next.
Because self driving cars will be part of it unless there is an apocalypse.

Holy crap! I a cannot finish this unresearched technophic clickbait piece of
drivel. It is making me dumber as I read it.

~~~
r00fus
> Every time a company, economy, nation or empire doesn't follow the route
> that saves more human effort they are outcompeted (or conquered) by those
> who do.

The economics of slavery seem to be an effective rebuttal to your point,
unless slaves are put in the role of automaton (and not human).

~~~
sqeaky
Really its not unless you somehow stop counting them as people. People have
high maintanence costs whether or not they are a slave. Slaves also revolt.
Beasts of burden and Robots (so far) cannot revolt.

Also you miss out on a large portion of the person's output if they are slave.
There are very few slave inventors.

~~~
r00fus
Slave inventors - 5 high-profile counterpoints:
[http://atlantablackstar.com/2014/02/11/5-inventions-by-
ensla...](http://atlantablackstar.com/2014/02/11/5-inventions-by-enslaved-
black-men-blocked-by-us-patent-office/)

I'd say the only reason they were "missed out" is because of the politics of
slavery.

The entire basis that efficiency of human effort is competitively dominant
relies on a definition of human as only the "humans benefiting from
automation" leaving out those who don't benefit out of the equation.

~~~
sqeaky
You must be trolling to seriously compare the creative disruption automation
causes to real human loss slavery causes.

Compared to the non-slave inventors the list of slave inventors is
disproportionately tiny. A few anecdotal people don't hold muster to waves of
people innovating. I can point to single companies with hundreds of inventors.

In the long run automation benefits everyone, even the people who temporarily
lose their jobs. Those people are encouraged to get back into the work force
and to do the best they can even they have less work to do because of some new
tool. Slaves were sometimes killed for not working hard enough. If slaves
invented a labor saving device they got non of the benefit and instead any
value increase was entirely given to the slave's owner. Employees can choose
who to work for and choose their conditions, slaves cannot. Employees can try
see their obsolescence coming and go to school, shift careers or fight it,
slaves can only do as they are told.

------
jimmywanger
Literally ever single one of his points could be made about any other
technological innovation, ever. (Obviously a bit of a hyperbole, but it's not
far off from the truth. Try replacing driverless cars with seatbelts, and it
reads remarkably similarly.)

------
JamilD
> The types of accidents we’ll face in this automated future, in which these
> cars are meant to run together in proximity at high speed, may be fewer, but
> they’ll be new, different, unpredictable and, on occasion, larger and more
> grisly than the ones we know today.

There's absolutely no evidence to support this, is there? How would self-
driving cars result in larger and more grisly accidents?

~~~
kjbflsudfb
Not defending the argument, but I suspect the author was referring to the
reduction in safety equipment installed on autonomous vehicles leading to more
grisly accidents.

From the article: "One of the claims made for autonomous cars is that they can
be lighter, shedding heavy metal crash cells and expensive safety gear, like
airbags, saving fuel."

~~~
sqeaky
I would hope we wouldn't do that until they have demonstrated years of safety.

We would also need to get most of the humans off the road. No amount of self-
driving AI can dodge a human with intent (or stupidity), a similar performing
vehicle and a headstart.

~~~
kjbflsudfb
I agree. Additionally I cannot find any reference to the author's statement
about autonomous vehicles without airbags, etc.

------
Eridrus
In case you were wondering which hack wrote this hit piece.

> Jamie Lincoln Kitman, a lawyer, is the New York bureau chief for Automobile
> Magazine.

So, no surprises here.

------
harshaw
I read this more as "Everything talking about driverless cars is the
optimistic future" and not a real world understanding of the challenges of
widespread culture change this would require.

Yes, the change is technological, but the biggest impact is cultural. You
assume that everyone is going to love self driving cars, but has anyone
studied people to see if they are accepting? Many people just want to jump in
their cars and go.. they haven't figured out the destination yet. Or maybe
they are just scared - they have been driving for a long time and don't want
to give it up.

When I drive 10 hours to visit my parents, I don't like it. But do I mind
driving to the train station every day? I get to feel the road under the
wheels, drive a little bit fast in corners, etc. Do I put my car in sport mode
so its fun? hell yeah. Maybe if you truly have no affinity for car culture all
these things are irrelevant.

~~~
Sohcahtoa82
People look at me funny when I tell them I plan on getting the next gen Tesla
Roadster with the Maximum Plaid option so I can get that ludicrous 0-60 time,
but also plan on buying the full self-driving option.

My commute is 29 miles, with all except 3 miles being on the highway. The off-
highway miles, you bet I'll be in manual mode and gunning the shit out of it.
But once I hit the highway, I'll hit the auto-pilot and relax. Being a driving
enthusiast while wanting to have autopilot are not mutually exclusive.

I wonder how easily you can drift a Tesla...

------
dumbfounder
Every point made by this article made me angry.

Some of the points made by the article:

-We don't know exactly how many people will be saved each year!

-We might make fewer cars!

-Our politicians haven't decided whether or not we want them!

-We can just disable phones in moving cars so people don't drive distracted!

Jamie Lincoln Kitman, you make me angry.

[Edit: formatting]

~~~
dumbfounder
Ah, I see the problem:

"A member of the Society of Automotive Historians, Jamie Lincoln Kitman drives
a 1966 Lancia Fulvia and a 1969 Ford Lotus-Cortina, both of which run fine on
unleaded."

He just wants to drive his crappy, unsafe, polluting cars around forever and
make us do the same.

~~~
sedachv
This is not the first time I have heard similar arguments from "car people"
and I don't understand why any classic car collectors would be against self-
driving cars (well, rhetorically I do not, I understand that a lot of classic
car people tend to be sentimental curmudgeons with a lack of basic reasoning
faculties).

The #1 danger to classic cars is collisions with distracted drivers of newer,
less cool cars. A friend of mine lost a late 1960s Honda CVCC (precursor to
Civic) in a front-end collision after putting a lot of work swapping over a
bunch of period-correct NOS modifications from another late 1960s Honda CVCC
that he obtained as a wreck from another collector who wanted to sell it as a
parts car to a fellow enthusiast after it had been involved in a similar
front-end collision. Two classic cars lost to distracted drivers of modern
shitboxes who were too busy texting to realize that they should not have been
making a left-hand turn.

Even California exempts pre-1975 cars from smog testing (and soon to be
pre-1980s cars). Classic cars will have no trouble being grandfathered in. I
have seen people drive Model Ts around on the streets.

------
deadringerr
Personal anecdote: I've been living without a personal car for 4 years now
thanks to my city's dedication to public transportation, choosing to live
close to where I work, and using literally every car share service available
when the need arises. The only part of driving itself I consistently enjoy is
listening to my music louder than normal. If I buy a car in the future it will
absolutely be entirely electric and have autonomous functionality.

------
wonder_er
Author's byline clarifies why he's surfacing pretty unimaginative critiques:

> Jamie Lincoln Kitman, a lawyer, is the New York bureau chief for Automobile
> Magazine.

------
nojvek
People hate losing control. We know how shit our answer machines are. Google
says there algorithms are good but there is no open benchmark of various
driving scenarios for which every self driving algorithm should pass.

Even openpilot gives a big Blob of binary that I should trust.

It's my goddamn life. I'm not going to let a company whose #1 goal is to make
me click as many ads as they can run my car.

------
asdz
> Jamie Lincoln Kitman, a lawyer, is the New York bureau chief for Automobile
> Magazine.

for sure you're against it

when driverless car is out and everyone is adopt to it, the whole automobile
industry together with oil & gas will be disrupted

but your company shouldn't be affected as you can review on all the driverless
car :) :)

------
Toenex
Yes. One day, in the not too distant future people will look back aghast at
how we tolerated the number of deaths on our roads.

------
xutopia
It's a matter of time before it happens.

------
dfabulich
Mass automation is undermining our democracy in a very specific way: it's
acting as the ultimate "resource curse."
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse)

"Countries with an abundance of natural resources, specifically non-renewable
resources like minerals and fuels, tend to have less economic growth, less
democracy, and worse development outcomes than countries with fewer natural
resources."

Scholars debate the causes of the resource curse, but one popular theory has
to do with the way autocrats fund themselves relative to democracies.

Autocrats, it turns out, need a lot of wealth to pay their cronies. No
dictator rules alone; they need someone to run the military, someone to
collect the taxes, and someone to enforce the laws. Those people have to be
paid, and handsomely, or they'll overthrow the dictator (or just allow the
dictator to be overthrown). This is called "selectorate theory" and this video
is a great introduction.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs)

Oil wealth, specifically, undermines democracy because when autocrats have
access to oil wealth, they don't need to depend on their citizens very much.
(Indeed, many autocratic countries rich with oil wealth just allow other
countries to come in and drill it, keeping local labor entirely out of the
loop.)

Resource-cursed autocracies tend to democratize when the oil wealth runs out
and they need to rely on the people's productivity to deliver wealth to
cronies. When autocrats are forced to allow people to educate themselves and
communicate with one another, democracy ensues.

It can work the other way, too. In every democracy, there's a group of folks
asking themselves a question: is now the time to try a coup, to replace
democracy with an autocracy? As the value of capital increases and the value
of human labor decreases, the advantages of staging a coup becomes more and
more enticing.

For years we've thought of human labor as the "ultimate resource." But it
turns out that human labor isn't the ultimate resource. Robot labor that's
just as good if not better than human labor is a resource beyond any we've
ever seen.

But that means that we're discovering/inventing the _ultimate resource curse._

We _might_ use automation to fund universal basic income, or a class of elites
could use it to undermine "unnecessary" citizens (the "unnecessariat"),
establishing a corporate fascism.

When we depend on human productivity for our tax base, we need to keep us all
well educated and healthy. But soon, we won't depend on human labor.

"Is now the time?" they're asking. And, increasingly, the answer is "yes."

------
ASalazarMX
Yes. Next question.

------
utternerd
Yes. Yes, I do.

