Wapo journalist verifies that robotaxis fail to stop for pedestrians in marked crosswalk 7 out of 10 times. Waymo admitted that it follows “social norms” rather than laws.
The reason is likely to compete with Uber, 🤦
Wapo article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/12/30/waymo-pedestrians-robotaxi-crosswalks/
Cross-posted from: https://mastodon.uno/users/rivoluzioneurbanamobilita/statuses/113746178244368036
People, and especially journalists, need to get this idea of robots as perfectly logical computer code out of their heads. These aren’t Asimov’s robots we’re dealing with. Journalists still cling to the idea that all computers are hard-coded. You still sometimes see people navel-gazing on self-driving cars, working the trolley problem. “Should a car veer into oncoming traffic to avoid hitting a child crossing the road?” The authors imagine that the creators of these machines hand-code every scenario, like a long series of if statements.
But that’s just not how these things are made. They are not programmed; they are trained. In the case of self-driving cars, they are simply given a bunch of video footage and radar records, and the accompanying driver inputs in response to those conditions. Then they try to map the radar and camera inputs to whatever the human drivers did. And they train the AI to do that.
This behavior isn’t at all surprising. Self-driving cars, like any similar AI system, are not hard coded, coldly logical machines. They are trained off us, off our responses, and they exhibit all of the mistakes and errors we make. The reason waymo cars don’t stop at crosswalks is because human drivers don’t stop at crosswalks. The machine is simply copying us.
I think the reason non-tech people find this so difficult to comprehend is the poor understanding of what problems are easy for (classically programmed) computers to solve versus ones that are hard.
if ( person_at_crossing ) then { stop }To the layperson it makes sense that self-driving cars should be programmed this way. Aftter all, this is a trivial problem for a human to solve. Just look, and if there is a person you stop. Easy peasy.
But for a computer, how do you know? What is a ‘person’? What is a ‘crossing’? How do we know if the person is ‘at/on’ the crossing as opposed to simply near it or passing by?
To me it’s this disconnect between the common understanding of computer capability and the reality that causes the misconception.
I think you could liken it to training a young driver who doesn’t share a language with you. You can demonstrate the behavior you want once or twice, but unless all of the observations demonstrate the behavior you want, you can’t say “yes, we specifically told it to do that”
I’m sure a strong legal case can be made here.
An individual driver breaking the law is bad enough but the legal system can be “flexible” because it’s hard to enforce the law against a generalized (bad) social norm and then each individual law breaker can argue an individual case etc.
But a company systematically breaking the law on purpose is different. Scale here matters. There are no individualized circumstances and no crying at a judge that the fine will put this single mother in a position to not pay rent this month. This is systematic and premeditated. Inexcusable in every way.
Like, a single cook forgetting to wash hands once after going to the bathroom is gross but a franchise chain building a business model around adding small quantities of poop in food is insupportable.
I really want to agree, but conservative Florida ruled that people don’t have the right to clean water so I doubt the conservative Supreme Court will think we have the right to safe crosswalks
I remember seeing a video from inside a waymo waiting to make a left against traffic.
It turned the wheel before moving, in anticipation of the turn. Which is normal for most drivers I see on the road.
It’s also the exact opposite of what you should do for safety and legality.
Keep the wheel straight until you’re ready to move, turning the wheel before the turn means that if someone rear ends you, you get pushed into traffic, not along your current lane.
It’s the social norm, not the proper move.
Is this site being weird or am I tripping, because I just came in here, and there was an on point comment about being a parent and wiping pee being a part of life, and ended with a solid joke, but, I come back in here and it’s gone with no deleted or anything. It was good and on point enough that I returned to reply…. What is happening? I’m too tired for this confusion!
