This week it’s self-driving taxis in San Francisco’s famously hilly streets, but it could be just about anything these days: America has become an unwilling nation of beta testers as products that are not even close to being ready for prime time are released on an unsuspecting public.
Product Development 101
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
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This is the ultimate question:
10,000 vehicle related fatalities / year with human drivers
Total cumulative X vehicle related fatalities while AI is perfected (or “good enough”) .. then ..
100 vehicle related fatalities / year with AI drivers
Solve for X. Show all work.
There’s a detail you left out.
The tech for these “self-driving” cars? No one’s sure if they’re safer than human drivers. (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/08/technology/tesla-autopilot-safety-data.html)
The crucial point is this: companies (Tesla and others) are experimenting with this tech on open roads. If you are driving on those roads or crossing those streets, you are a non-consenting participant in their experiment. Your life is being put at risk so that Elon Musk can smirk at how great he is or so GM shareholders can make three cents a share more in quarterly earnings.
Not true – the X is what you solve for, it is the investment in terms of human death made while you make them safer than human drivers in the long run. If you think it is unachievable, then X = infinity.
You have to make the choice. If we force Tesla and others to not bring AI anywhere near the public until it is proven safer, then you are living in the 10,000 deaths / year world until that happens. By keeping it from the public, you are necessarily making that closed beta term longer.
Why do you want so many people to die? I think that’s sad …