There's a cost you're missing in your equation. Automobile accidents are a major cause of death, particularly for individuals in their prime productive years (unlike, say, cigarettes which still typically wait until you're toward the end of your career to kill you). If automated cars can achieve even a fraction of the reduction in automobile deaths that they're predicted too, any developing nation would be stupid not to heavily subsidize widespread deployment of this tech.
Sorry but that's ridiculous, were talking about countries where a decent % of population in rural areas doesn't even have basic sanitary conditions and you are suggesting they should burn cash on AI cars ?
Generally, safety is prioritized less in developing nations. How many developing nations have building codes, workplace laws, environmental regulation comparable to America? And it's not just because we love litigation.
Most do. These days, most building codes are international and places like Turkey (where I lived up until very recently) now have earthquake codes on par with California due to recent experience with a devastating quake (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_İzmit_earthquake). Granted, enforcement may not be on par with the US, but that's more a question of corruption as a general problem, not limited or specific to safety.
That said, Turkey has a stupidly high traffic accident death rate.
So, yes, as the 19th biggest economy in the world, with 70+ million people, I think heavily subsidizing AI cars would definitely be in the country's best interest (and well within its means...Turkey already has at least one world-famous robotics laboratory). I'd wager economies number 20-50 are probably in similar situations. Yes, truly impoverished nations and regions of nations likely have more important things to worry about, but I'd still wager at least ⅕ the world's population falls into the "can't afford AI cars individually, but would benefit from gov't subsidization of such".
We're drifting a bit, but perhaps our differences are due to the definition of a developing country.
Another commenter mentioned countries where a significant portion of its citizens don't have basic sanitary conditions, and that's what I'm picture. And in the case of Turkey, I wouldn't call it a developing country using this definition.
> I'd still wager at least ⅕ the world's population falls into the "can't afford AI cars individually, but would benefit from gov't subsidization of such"
> In the 2016 edition of its World Development Indicators, the World Bank made a decision that there is no longer distinguished between “developed” countries and “developing” in the presentation of its data. Nobody has ever agreed on a definition for these terms in the first place.
So much for the vagaries of human language! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Going back to Turkey, I really enjoyed my time there and it didn't fit into the developing country stereotype since the middle class seemed to be doing alright and there were plenty of outdoor leisure activities (my personal marker of how "developed" a country is). If the political situation was better, I wouldn't mind living there at all.
I disagree, with your wording at least. Safety is generally prioritized everywhere as a key goal.
It is just that if you live in rural India and are part of the 10% of the population that has no access to clean water Cholera is much more likely to kill you than an reckless driver.
Focusing on securing water in these regions is prioritizing safety. People are smart to focus on things more likely to kill them.
Yeah, I agree my original wording could have been better. However, I think both of us are in agreement that if you were that person in a developing country, you'd chance drinking potentially infected water over dehydrating. Just as one would work for pennies at a sketchy job site instead of not working and not being able to buy food at the end of the day.
And going back to the original discussion, automobile accidents are an abstraction, a probable cause of death, versus something more definite like starvation.
