
Stupid Smart Stuff - ivoflipse
https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140308200904-12181762-stupid-smart-stuff?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pulsenews
======
hawkharris
In the 1950s, the rate of commercial plane crashes caused by human error was
71 percent. By the 1990s, with the introduction of new automated flight
systems, the rate had decreased to 52 percent. [0]

Yes, there are horror stories about "dumb" transportation software that linger
in the forefront of our memories. But ask yourself, What is the burden of
proof for this technology? Do self-driving cars and aircraft automation
systems have to work 100 percent of the time before we accept their
usefulness?

If that's the burden of proof, we will remain stuck with human drivers who are
much more "dumb," by a measure of the car accidents and plane crashes they
cause.

The author's argument against automation in these life-saving contexts is
weak. His article would have been stronger if it stuck with points about
watches and similar consumer products.

[0] [http://www.statisticbrain.com/airplane-crash-
statistics/](http://www.statisticbrain.com/airplane-crash-statistics/)

~~~
rjd
"The author's argument against automation in these life-saving contexts is
weak."

I think you missed the point of the article. Its not that existence of
automation is bad, its the implementation of it that (in a lot of cases) is
wanting, useless, distracting, or even detrimental to the items purpose.

~~~
hawkharris
"The notion that we can have automated or semi-automated cars as long as the
driver is watching over them is a dangerous myth."

If we accept the author's argument that a human driver can't watch over an
automated car, the question becomes fairly black-and-white: do we rule out the
driver or rule out the automated vehicle?

Within this rigid self-imposed framework, the author seems to choose Option B:
ruling out vehicle automation. Throughout this post (in the aircraft analogy,
for instance), he notes the importance of human supervision.

To this, I say, Where is the evidence that human-supervised vehicles are safer
than fully automated cars? Where is the evidence that humans are better
equipped than good software to react to split-second emergencies?

The only point in favor of human drivers is that we have more stats to
describe them, but the stats are horrific. By contrast, Google's autonomous
cars have logged over 300,000 miles in various conditions without an accident
(minus getting rear-ended by a human driver).

~~~
tlb
The current fatal crash rate for human drivers is about 1 per 100,000,000
miles, and the injury crash rate is around 1 per 1,200,000 miles. 300,000
miles with 1 accident doesn't prove much.

~~~
hawkharris
Where did you find that statistic?

~~~
tlb
Best presentation, but just for one state at a time. Utah is typical:
[http://s3.amazonaws.com/zanran_storage/des.utah.gov/ContentP...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/zanran_storage/des.utah.gov/ContentPages/17200092.pdf#page=8)

National data, but only for fatal accidents:
[https://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/transportation/...](https://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/transportation/motor_vehicle_accidents_and_fatalities.html)
Articles 1103 and 1106.

More detailed source of national fatality data: [http://www-
fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx](http://www-
fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx)

------
awalton
Taking one argument for horribly bad designed "smart devices" (the current
generation of smart watches) and applying it to a different field altogether
(airplanes and cars) is absolute utter bollocks.

First of all, most of all civil aviation disasters in history have been caused
by human error[0] (or, in at least 4 incredibly famous examples, human
intention). Yes, humans have lost their lives to technology failing, but the
assertion that the pilots always are able to do something if they had just
been more aware and given control of the dozens of subsystems that a
commercial jet controls behind the scenes is rather ridiculous. The "Shit
Happens" factor exists for any level of technology.

Or the idea that human beings can react faster than a computer can in the one
or two seconds of a car accident. The same car that is able to detect the fact
you're trying to leave your lane when you accidentally fall asleep at the
wheel and try to wake you up or keep you in lane, the same car that is able to
fire airbags in the milliseconds after a major deceleration or impact event.
The same car that prevents your brakes from locking up and tries to prevent
your car from hydroplaning when you decide to speed over that puddle of water
because you're late and speed limits are just a government ploy or some other
bogus Libertarian rationale.

People will die driving in self-driving cars. This will happen some time in
the future - it's an inevitability. But it is incredibly difficult to believe
that figure will be anywhere near the scale of the ~35,000 automotive deaths
per year in the United States we average now.

If we take the obviously huge leap to compare air travel's legendary
reliability thanks in a big part to autopiloting, equipment redundancy,
regular inspections and maintenance, and so forth to self-driving cars, we'd
believe the deaths to be on the order of 35 or less a year. Cars may never be
that reliable due to other factors (like all of the vehicles being on the same
plane of travel), but it's still far more likely to be an overall win.

Yes, progress in technology is a horrible, horrible thing. Let's just put our
heads back into the dirt and pretend it isn't happening.

[0]:
[http://www.planecrashinfo.com/cause.htm](http://www.planecrashinfo.com/cause.htm),
because everyone always asks for citations instead of spending two seconds to
search for themselves.

~~~
amirmc
> _" ... but the assertion that the pilots always are able to do something if
> they had just been more aware and given control of the dozens of subsystems
> that a commercial jet controls behind the scenes is rather ridiculous"_

That's not his assertion. His assertion is that the pilots had no idea that
anything was wrong (or being compensated for) up until the plane basically
said 'fuck it, you deal with it'.

> _" Or the idea that human beings can react faster than a computer can in the
> one or two seconds of a car accident"_

Where is this claim being made? Certainly not in the article. As for the rest
of your paragraph, those seem like individual, single-purpose systems (for the
most part). When you're talking about larger systems where things within the
car must communicate with each-other a lot more (probably written by different
groups), I expect the scope for bugs is greater.

> _" People will die driving in self-driving cars ... it's an inevitability"_

I completely agree. The really interesting thing will be who is considered
(legally) liable at that point. The manufacturer? The software authors? The
driver? It's not really that clear cut and I bet the insurance companies are
already thinking about this.

> _" Yes, progress in technology is a horrible, horrible thing. Let's just put
> our heads back into the dirt and pretend it isn't happening."_

Where did this negativity/sarcasm come from? The author of the piece isn't
claiming progress is horrible so why put these words in his mouth? I read his
basic point to be "design better stuff, there's plenty of research you can
already draw on". That sounds pretty reasonable to me.

~~~
sitkack
He is a _technologist_ and feels that technology has been attacked and needs
defense.

The more used, the weaker the defense.

Nowhere did the author say that progress in technology is horrible. OP is not
a Luddite by any means.

------
sanotehu
A great parable for how we try to make technology more human-friendly with
unintended consequences.

I went on a road trip recently and I've been thinking about how advances in
car technology change how we view cars. I came to a similar conclusion as Don
- specifically the change from manual to automatic gearboxes has meant that
people have to concentrate less on driving and can devote their attention to
other things.

But that's not necessarily a good thing - by getting rid of the idea that
driving is an activity that requires full-time attention we are making it more
unsafe because people then feel justified in paying it less attention. The
reductio ad absurdum argument is the self-driving cars that he mentions at the
end of the article, but this is just the end of the spectrum.

I'm not sure what the solution to this problem is.

~~~
qwerta
There is also cost cutting. Multiple independent 'smart' systems are ok. But
pushing cost down means higher integration to save money. Now when engine dies
it may take down power steering or even brakes.

Self-driving cars are great example of cost cutting. It would take $ 100 000
000 000 to develop system which can actually drive. Google is using GPS with
fraction of cost. But GPS signal is very weak, easy to block or even spoof. If
self driven cars will become reality $20 gadget could collapse traffic in
entire city for hours/days.

~~~
awalton
Google's self-driving car platform is based on sensor fusion - it does use
GPS, but if the GPS network goes down, it still has mountains of lidar,
photographic (Street View cars aren't just for the heck of it), and even
regular old street maps for dead-reckoning navigation.

Your $20 evil genius GPS blocking gadget is far more likely to cause the
regular human beings in their cars to lose track of where they are going than
the robot that has been designed with this exact constraint taken into
consideration.

Furthermore, as of right now and the near and mid-term future, it's not legal
for the car to drive itself without a human at the wheel. Which means the
self-driving car still has to function as a human-drivable car. The final nail
in your mustache twirling GPS-blocking evildoer's coffin.

Before we go to a complete driverless system, it's likely we'll need lots more
sensor assistance, such as "active highways" with mile marker and lane-keeping
RFIDs paved into the roads, and other similar technologies. But we're probably
at least 30 years off from even having that conversation given the
conservative climate and the love for personal driving in this country.

~~~
maxerickson
I think it is highly likely that the licensing process for self driving
systems will require them to be environmentally aware and function without gps
signal. What I mean by environmentally aware is that things like passing
through an intersection and lane keeping will be fully guided by immediate
sensor data, not from reference data looked up by position.

Maps and dead reckoning fall more under navigation than they do driving and
that part of the problem is reasonably solved.

------
ACow_Adonis
"If the watch was so smart, why didn't it tell me at 9 PM that it was low on
energy and that I should put it on the charger overnight."

A watch that needs to be put on a charger? Smart is not exactly the word I
would use for such revolutionary design.

Presumably this is a product for the same market that wants to plug in their
glasses :P

~~~
rtpg
I direly hope that we get wireless charging to a point that I could just put
my phone down anywhere on my desk and it could get charged.

With something like pebble, I wonder how much energy is necessary? Could some
well-placed solar cell on the watch do the trick (think calculators).

If I could get one wish in life, it would be to have something like nuclear
batteries we always see in sci-fi (actually, there are probably 12 other
things that would be more important in the long run)

~~~
kijin
> _Could some well-placed solar cell on the watch do the trick (think
> calculators)._

My Casio watch has two tiny solar panels built into its face. According to the
manual, 5 minutes of sunlight each day (or a few hours of indoor lighting) is
enough to compensate for normal use, and the battery will last 6 months even
without any sunlight.

I've had the Casio for 9 years now. It still works fine, and I've never had to
manually charge or replace the battery. The battery does get a bit low in the
winter when the watch spends a lot of time covered by thick clothing, but that
problem is easily fixed by leaving the watch in the sunlight for a few hours
when spring comes.

Sure, it's not "smart", but it can display the time in several different
timezones, act as a stopwatch, and even has a button that lights up the
display at night (which will probably drain the battery faster). All running
off of two solar panels the size of the nail on your pinky.

~~~
darkmighty
The energy requirements are magnitudes away, you could never do that for a
"smart" device. By the way, we also have the much older self-winding
mechanical watches which harvest body movement; those are pretty reliable and
can also run indefinitely without maintenance.

~~~
kijin
> _you could never do that for a "smart" device._

That sounds overly pessimistic. Computing power per watt has improved by
several orders of magnitude over the last couple of decades already. Combined
with more energy-efficient displays (anyone wants to improve on e-ink?), who
knows what we could pull off 5-10 years from now, even without a significant
change in battery capacities?

~~~
marcosdumay
Well, I opened a calculator to prove you wrong, and guess what?

300K * k * 1GHz = ~4pW

Or, in other words, you are right, we can in theory reduce the power
consumption of our computers so much that a current watch will last for a
lifetime.

~~~
darkmighty
Computing power is not the limiting factor. Far more relevant are the display,
which has efficiency physically limited by its luminosity -- and we're less
than a magnitude away from the limit.

Even disregarding that for e-ink, there's the radio, which is limited by the
channel capacity, from which I'd say we're also less than a magnitude away for
isotropic radiation.

------
jw2013
"If the watch was so smart, why didn't it tell me at 9 PM that it was low on
energy and that I should put it on the charger overnight."

Not all people have the same sleeping pattern. While 9PM may be cool enough
time to remind you to recharge the battery, it will be a disaster for other
people. I think either of following will be a great feature to add: 1) auto-
recognizing sleeping pattern of watch wearer (may be hard to implement); 2)
just to add an option in system setting your usual sleep time.

~~~
jdbernard
Exactly. And there will always be this kind of mismatch between what the human
wants and what the device can anticipate as long as the human is smarter than
the device. Even among humans it takes years of learning social norms before
we are able to anticipate each other with any degree of accuracy.

People always get upset at these "smart" devices, and decry their stupidity,
and yet they wouldn't really do that much better of a job were they in the
device's shoes, so to speak.

------
sitkack
I see so many comments here attacking the premise of the article. He isn't
attacking technology and this man has studying these things. He has he smited
your God of technology?

If we are to design autonomic systems that are safer, better and as the
article says, smarter, we need to put real thought into the unintended
consequences.

I had a WinCE device, one of the first ones ever made. It had two fatal flaws

    
    
      * volatile storage, all notes, memos, calendar entries, everything was in ram
      * it would wake up and vibrate and turn on the backlight to tell you it was running out of energy
    

Those two things in combination, meant if I left for the weekend and didn't
put it in the cradle, it would commit suicide. It would be like having a brand
new fresh ipod every monday. Lovely.

------
suprgeek
Confused Article with mixed messages - Surprised that it had so many up-votes.

The Author has problems with a Sony Smart-watch yet there is a picture of a
Samsung Gear on the article.

Much of the criticism for the watch is indeed deserved - Smart Watches are
more of a novelty at this point. If he had stuck with Smart Watches then this
would be an acceptable and deserved criticism.

But he moves on to Cars and then muddies the waters with why long term
attention spans inversely co-relate with automation. What does one have to do
with the other? Why go ranting about unrelated points to "round out" the word
count?

------
mwfunk
I agree with many of the sentiments expressed in the article but am totally
mystified as to why he was sleeping with the watch on. Maybe it was because he
was testing the device and wanted to try different scenarios, but I just can't
imagine any normal user scenario that involves getting in bed and going to
sleep while wearing a watch. Is this something that people do? If so, that's
the first problem right there.

~~~
com2kid
I typically don't take my watch off because if I do, it may be several days
before I remember to put it back on again.

Why not wear it 24/7?

------
Houshalter
>Automation has now entered the automobile. Alas, the automobile industry
refuses to learn the lessons from aviation automation. The automobile
engineers believe that they have solved the problems: cars will drive by
themselves without any incidents. Humans will monitor the driving and if there
ever is a problem, they will simply take over. In fact, the requirement for
people always to monitor the self-driving automobiles is now incorporated into
the law in some locations.

That's a legal requirement so people can test autonomous systems - which is
very important. It's not suggesting that self-driving cars should always rely
on a human to monitor them.

------
userbinator
On the other hand (no pun intended), I think the only things at the moment
that seem almost close enough to be called "smart" are smartphones.

------
jamesbrownuhh
A good example illustrating that even the best and most capable hardware will
be completely let down by ill-thought-out, poorly designed software.

~~~
tlarkworthy
properly designing the software costs too much, requires too much time and
effort and too much iterative testing. You can see why they just skip to MVP
(for watches).

------
NAFV_P
This is the only _smart_ device I can think of:

[http://www.briantherobot.com/](http://www.briantherobot.com/)

------
th0br0
stupid smart phone

