My wife hates "New and Improved" and news-stories about vehicular homicide that state "the car hit the group of children at the school bus stop". The first has been a staple of language comedy - how can something be new and improved at the same time? Her gripe with the second is that a car (or truck or ...) has no volition - it must be controlled by someone. The driver hit the group of children with the car under their control. This will still be true for autonomous vehicles - even if the passengers in the car have no control (unlikely), the software developers who program the algorithms of the autonomous vehicle will be liable when the car hits the school children - the programmers hit the school children.
Speaking of autonomous vehicles, as I was commuting to work this morning, my Prius did it's "oh noes, I'm skidding" thing when I accelerated quickly out of my side street - there's always a patch of gravel and the anti-skid thinks the drive wheels have lost traction, drops power to the wheels, and suddenly I'm not accelerating into the hole in traffic that seemed plenty big enough. After that, the anti-skid did the opposite (accelerated) when the car bumped over the potholes at Alameda and Rio Grande. That made me think that the real problem with autonomous vehicles is how do they handle the abnormal environment. In nuclear safety, we consider that any system has to operate in a normal (i.e. expected) environment, in abnormal (i.e. rare, not expected) environments, and malevolent (i.e. bad guys attacking) environments. The edge cases of the abnormal environment will be the second biggest problem for autonomous vehicles (the malevolent environment is the biggest problem). I expect, however, that those edge cases will happen more often than outright attacks and will have equally spectacular failure modes. How will autonomous vehicles handle construction zones (that should be part of the normal environment, but I don't know if the programmers have thought about the infinite variations that can be encountered)? How will autonomous vehicles handle GPS mapping errors? Humans seem to have trouble when their GPS tells them to turn into a one-way street or over a non-existent bridge - will autonomous vehicles do better? How will autonomous vehicles handle low-water crossings? That, too, should be part of the normal environment, but sometimes an exceptionally heavy rain moves them into the abnormal environment. Presumably, autonomous vehicles will detect the tree branch that fell into the roadway - but will they notice the tree branch starting to fall? I'm not sure most humans would notice the latter, but some would. I've driven in the mountains after some heavy rains and noticed on a curve ahead that the dirt under the blacktop had been washed out. I knew from my long-distance observation not to drive over that section of road. Would an autonomous vehicle notice that? Sorry to hijack the thread, but feel free to answer with a new subject. At least the first paragraph is on topic. Ray Parks Consilient Heuristician/IDART Old-Timer V: 505-844-4024 M: 505-238-9359 P: 505-951-6084 On Aug 5, 2015, at 10:14 AM, Owen Densmore wrote: I have to admit to a fascination on evolution of language. Remember The MacNeil/Lehrer Report? Robert MacNeil had a great series on the evolution of English, even to influence of the sea islands (Gullah), There are some downsides. I'm bitchy about a few usages: If I *was* should be If I were, subjunctive. Loan is a noun so I can not "loan you something" .. "lend (verb) you something". Less -> Fewer. It goes on. I bet we all have our own favorites. -- Owen On Tue, Aug 4, 2015 at 4:27 PM, Gary Schiltz <g...@naturesvisualarts.com<mailto:g...@naturesvisualarts.com>> wrote: Enough is enough. If bro and bruuh are added to the dictionary, I will start speaking Spanish exclusively. And what the fuck is "on fleek"? Wait, I really don't want to know. Seriously *not* unbothered :-( On Tuesday, August 4, 2015, glen ep ropella <g...@tempusdictum.com<mailto:g...@tempusdictum.com>> wrote: http://qz.com/465820/how-brand-new-words-are-spreading-across-america/ -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-255-2847<tel:971-255-2847>, http://tempusdictum.com<http://tempusdictum.com/> ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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