Uber's self-driving program seems to be one of the most unethical, most poorly-run in the entire industry. There were plenty of reports before warning us of the questionable quality of their research: cars changing lanes suddenly, blowing red lights, and now one finally killed someone. Every prior incident should have been treated as a serious matter.
Waymo et al has had none of these issues. Time to revoke their licence to test?
They did manage to get some local governments to do that, yes. I’m not sure how to interpret your comment other than as an apology/excuse for their illegal and unethical behavior.
If there’s more to your thought than “the ends justify the means,” I’m curious what it is.
Uber has been rewarded for employing schticks that GP called "unethical and poorly-run." Is it unethical? Yes, and I strongly believe that "Move fast and break things" is wholly inappropriate when people's lives are involved. Is it poorly-run? I think Uber is actually well-run if you accept that "ends justify the means" is in their DNA.
What would compel me to accept that an ethical standard that can be used to justify any amount of immoral and unethical behavior is “in a company’s DNA?” Why would I grade them on that curve?
This is like saying the Duterte is a very effective anti-drug crusader if you accept that murdering innocents and drug dealers is in his DNA.
Not intentionally programming them to run red lights, just intentionally or unintentionally not taking necessary precautions to prevent it from happening. They can get it right, or have it right now, and it's pretty clear which side they've chosen.
Nobody is suggesting they're doing that. They're saying Uber cuts corners to save a dime among other unethical practices (like stealing research from competitors).
Uber is embodiment of its employees. It is a flame that the unethical moths are drawn to, so they can realize their vision by the means that delight them. Uber is the Phoenix of Enron.
Not intentionally doing that, but, intentionally ignoring bugs.
"Sir, we have several bugs, one of them would cause the car to run a red in the following conditions... [fictional made-up condition: in case it sees a clown car with Brad Pitt wearing a pink dress in it]".
"What are the chances of that ever happening? Ship it!".
I somewhat doubt they even know or care that there might be bugs before they do something awful. It's like they're using the public highway as their simulator.
I don't know if this job ad for a self-driving simulation software engineer is still current, but it is somewhat worrying given the broad scope of the role they appear to be advertising for.
It had nothing to do with the $150, but part of accepting the permit is taking legal responsibility to report disengagement from autonomous testing. Uber didn't want to share this information since it would make them look bad.
We should wait for the results of investigation first. It could easily happen the killed person did some bonehead move that resulted in unavoidable crash. I was once told how a friend of mine fatally hit an older man that decided to cross the highway quickly, giving him no chance to react and a life-long trauma.
Calls to wait for facts never stopped the internet outrage machine in the early moments of news release. I doubt it will do much here, sadly. But it's worth pushing back against, even if it won't work IMO.
People will always relish in their biases being confirmed... even after a rare one-off event with a sample size of 1 in a burgeoning industry.
Yup - I've personally witnessed one of these almost zoom through a red light at an intersection and was appalled. I'm honestly not surprised...in their effort to race to the bottom Uber's autonomous vehicle program has been extremely aggressive - to the point of total disregard for safety. Their business model may be built on pipe dreams of autonomous travel (without drivers to pay), and hopefully this shutters that. In fact, the whole company should probably be shut down IMO - but I digress.
Agreed. I've been in the cars in Pittsburg and the operators laughed about how poorly it performed on certain roads. Slanted telephone polls caused the vehicle to literally slalom down the road.
> Waymo et al has had none of these issues. Time to revoke their licence to test?
I think Alphabet is to blame here too in a sense (or at least the industry as a whole). Why didn't they push for more strict testing rules? It's in their interest too.
This is how cars came to be on the road in the first place. Despite the fact that they were erratic and deadly, and spewed noxious gas everywhere, the manufacturers and automobiling clubs succeeded in convincing everybody that roads were for cars. Uber may well be the worst actor in the self-driving industry, but the industry as a whole is going to need to invent new crimes akin to jaywalking. This will allow it to shift blame to those killed by autonomous vehicles, just as jaywalking implies pedestrians are to blame for being hit by manned vehicles.
We do not yet know whether another autonomous vehicle or human for would have done better in this situation. THAT SAID, asshole company fields asshole autonomous driver. Did we expect differently? Uber cuts every corner.
It means the cars are sufficiently dangerous in general that the human drivers have to constantly take over manual control to avoid accidents. So they are dangerous to someone. Apparently the human didn't make it in time this time, and turns out that someone was 'pedestrians/bicyclists'.
a) what % of disengagements are 'to avoid accidents' vs navigating an entirely safe but complex situations. For ex: a parked UPS truck on a narrow 2 lane rd.
b) the degree of real-world complexity the tests the cars are engaging in (compared to other vendors). For ex: testing cars on simple suburban routes = fewer disengagements.
Not trying to defend Uber here, I'm just trying to understand the distinction between a high-level general statistic and it's real world implications.
A complex situation == a dangerous one for a prototype system. If it's complex, the car doesn't know what to do or has any reliability, and it makes the situation dangerous even if it were 'complex but safe' for some hypothetical human driver. The uncertainty is in the map, not the territory. Waymo checks disengagements in simulators to see how many are truly dangerous, and most aren't; Uber, for some reason, declines to discuss whether they do so and what the results are. Much like they declined to tell the truth about incidents like running a red light at high speed.
There is no reason whatsoever to believe that Uber's horrific disengagement record, which is orders of magnitude worse than competitors often in the same cities like SF, is because they are tackling orders of magnitude harder situations per mile or are orders of magnitude more conservative, and every reason, even before this fatality (the only one so far despite many self-driving programs running concurrently over years), to believe they were just plain worse.
> Not trying to defend Uber here, I'm just trying to understand the distinction between a high-level general statistic and it's real world implications.
Again, it has to be dangerous for someone. It can't be more dangerous yet not dangerous to anyone in particular. That just doesn't make any sense. Uber runs on the same roads and the same traffic with the same basic approach as everyone else, there's no confounder which could produce a reversal.
Not sure how that regulation would have made their cars safer in a way that's relevant to this accident?
Local governments have stopped other self-driving companies before with cease-and-desist letters with threats of serious punitive fines. I highly doubt by not buying a $150 license Uber would suddenly have carte-blanche to do what they want, that's not how it works.
If the state gov was really interested in stopping them they easily could have regardless.
Waymo et al has had none of these issues. Time to revoke their licence to test?