I’ll second that. My point was agreeing with yours, really, while also acknowledging the validity of the argument Adam_B is making. My reasoning is more in line with yours, but it’s still a worth while discussion I think.
It’s impossible to quantify hedons, no matter how hard Benthamites try; utility is usually in the eye of the user.
Is this the thread where we were talking about autonomous semis recently? Can’t remember now…
Last year, autonomous trucking company Embark announced that it would begin using its Level 2 autonomous semis to deliver refrigerators from Texas to California. Now, TechCrunch reports, the company has taken it a step further as one of its trucks has now completed a 2,400 mile trip from Los Angeles to Jacksonville, Florida. The trip took five days, which included scheduled rest breaks for the driver that was on board, and TechCrunch says that Embark’s team is now assessing all of the trip’s data. While there’s no word yet on just how often the system required the driver to step in, those on board said that the truck went “hours at a time with no disengagements, and when they did occur they were usually only a few seconds,” according to Embark CEO Alex Rodrigues.
I would hope that autonomous driving could handle the majority of California->Florida. The huge swath of empty, flat roads through the midwest or Texas could be handled with cruise control and a bungee cord on the wheel.
This civilization changing technology is really cool but has a lot of questions:
Are people going to try and screw with autonomous cars, whether they have passengers or not? We’ve seen in sci fi that people really abuse robots.
What happens with debris in the road (see point 1), snow, ice (as others have mentioned) and other bad conditions?
What do you do with your stuff without a car? For instance if I go golfing I have my trunk I can store my clubs in, going to the beach I have all the beach stuff, etc. Sports people have equipment, kids sports have equipment, etc. Carseats. How are we going to solve lugging stuff around?
How will we handle autonomous and non autonomous drivers, with a lot of autonomous cars in the mix? Special lanes? For peak traffic flow efficiency it seems like the robots will need their own lane. But most city freeways don’t have room for a new lane unless you screw the HOV lane people. How will these worlds collide?
Well, any Star Trek fan THINKS they are aware… but you should also know that Spock was likely citing an urban myth.
The actual entomological source of sabotage means “to walk noisily” and it referred to a practice of doing assigned work incredibly badly or slowly in a labor dispute as an alternative to striking.
Yeah, come to think of it, it’s extremely dangerous to have these things without insurmountable, hack proof security. Do they advertise anything like that?
It’s not even hacking really. Just imagine a bunch of teenage drivers realizing they’ve got bots on the road and trying to mario kart them for fun… trying to test the AI. I mean there is no way around that really, but I am hoping they are programming these things for the not ordinary just the same.