Gadgetory

this is a rough one well yeah there's problems in Arizona man wielding rocks and knives Arizonans attack self-driving cars did you know that self-driving cars were under attack no neither did I but I feel like I'm going to what appears to be happening there is a resistance to the self-driving experiments going on specifically in Arizona there's like 20-plus incidents of people attacking self-driving waynebow vehicles that are trying to figure out how to get better how to improve the AI on those vehicles to be better self-driving cars essentially Chillar police confirming to 12 News there have been 21 attacks on the self-driving cars since they first hit the road back in 2017 so they're stabbing them that is an odd thing to do the incidents including slashed tires drivers trying to talk to employees and runway mow cars off the road and in some cases weapons are pointed at the company's safety drivers people are also throwing rocks at them and some are trying to cut them off or fit to break in front of them trying to screw them up mess them up now it sounds crazy obviously I don't recommend that anybody do this but the individuals they have they have a bit of a point in the sense that this is untested technology those tests are taking place in their neighborhoods they didn't necessarily vote for it they didn't agree to that and I mean waving a PVC pipe or brandishing a 22 revolver which is in the next paragraph and not a great way to deal with the issue I just don't feel comfortable with technology long as it's relatively safe you know the trial period yeah I'd give it a shot I don't like self-driving cars personally but nonetheless I am kind of interested in the point because it talks about that one case in which that cyclist was hit by I believe it was a self driving driving uber vehicle and then there's another statement where apparently a kid playing in a cul-de-sac was almost hit they're a ten year old boy it's kind of rough it's like a lot of other things in life though whenever this topic comes up of the danger of self-driving vehicles or automation you get people like Elon Musk on Twitter that are saying hey if you look at the statistics what about human beings are way worse than the robots driving they're safer but everyone gets all fired up when a robots responsible because there are all these questions of ethics and decisions and who's doing the programming who's responsible what are the rules I don't know if it's a majority but at least there are some people who are angry enough to physically attack these way mow vans apparently many people feel that this is out of their control and the only way they can fight back is is through these types of attacks but it does bring up this hot debate in general about you know the future of automation and AI and how it's going to interact an interface with the pre-existing systems that are set up that involve humans typically take for example uber drivers obviously uber is one of these companies that's testing self-driving tech and the presumption there that eventually those drivers would be replaced by automated versions of themselves and that this process of testing these styles of vehicles that the eventual aim is to eliminate the need for human beings to be behind those steering wheels right and so people in Arizona they might be doing that math and saying hey are we taking part in our own demise obsolescence here are we are we participating in in a process that may eliminate us eventually I don't know where I land on the thing obviously it's a it's a it's an interesting topic of conversation in a lot of places tech ecology has eliminated human beings a recent study found up to six hundred seventy thousand US jobs were lost to robots between 1990 and 2007 and that number is likely to go up as a result the number of human beings needed to deliver a particular product or service has diminished and driving in particular a very big employer of individuals in the United States and elsewhere it has become the flagship innovation segment for having this conversation there's another conversation about like I said earlier if you're responsible for programming these vehicles you have to in some way decide how that vehicles gonna behave in an emergency scenario right for example if there is a pedestrian on the road do I play through this pedestrian to save the driver or the passenger or do I veer into this wall which may damage the occupant who makes that selection is it the person who designs the software is that the driver themselves is it a politician these are tough things to talk about tough topics now I'm not sure the people throwing rocks at cars want to have that conversation exactly but I think that they sense that there's there are philosophical issues yeah with these types of tests taking place in their town mm-hmm this is definitely a sign it is I think that there is a variance in how much trust an individual has for these various tech companies to take care of their best interests this technology appears to be a really innovative really cool and amazing and has the potential to do to make the road safer ultimately to have fewer people to have fewer people died in car accidents which by the way is a fairly big figure and nobody wants that and I'm sure if there's someone that's been affected by that directly they would love to see a world in which that happens less frequently if you look at Airlines for example they're all automated and they're incredibly safe because of it we rely on automation and artificial intelligence and in certain in certain departments in something like this it becomes a step more complicated I'm gonna suggest that people stop attacking vehicles I don't think that's a good move but it definitely is a discussion that that we should be having about the future of artificial intelligence in human life and how we kind of navigate that