Community Notorious on Nostr: I know #selfDrivingCars are very unpopular here, and I understand some of the ...
I know #selfDrivingCars are very unpopular here, and I understand some of the reasons. They're good, valid reasons.
For me, it's more complicated.
Self-driving cars have the potential to save a lot (a LOT) of lives and prevent a lot of suffering. Most of the models right now are still superior to human drivers in terms of accident probability (or they were a couple of years ago when I last looked).
But we had a chance to make self-driving cars a thing that wasn't predatory and rent-seeking. Make them like normal cars, except... they drove themselves. No, instead we made them a subscription service that locks the user out of the control loop almost completely, and one of the big pushers of the technology is a Dickensian (or comic book) villain using the promise of self-driving cars to solidify his grip on the US government.
They could have been one of the best things to ever happen. We could have had future historians writing "self-driving cars ended the centry-long death spree of human-operated cars." Instead, we're probably going to get something like "self-driving cars were one of the issues that gave the oligarchy control of what was once US democracy" or "self-driving cars increased waste by an order of magnitude, did nothing to reduce carbon emissions, and degraded worker protections to below minimal levels."
There's still a chance to do something decent with the technology, but of course we won't do that.
For me, it's more complicated.
Self-driving cars have the potential to save a lot (a LOT) of lives and prevent a lot of suffering. Most of the models right now are still superior to human drivers in terms of accident probability (or they were a couple of years ago when I last looked).
But we had a chance to make self-driving cars a thing that wasn't predatory and rent-seeking. Make them like normal cars, except... they drove themselves. No, instead we made them a subscription service that locks the user out of the control loop almost completely, and one of the big pushers of the technology is a Dickensian (or comic book) villain using the promise of self-driving cars to solidify his grip on the US government.
They could have been one of the best things to ever happen. We could have had future historians writing "self-driving cars ended the centry-long death spree of human-operated cars." Instead, we're probably going to get something like "self-driving cars were one of the issues that gave the oligarchy control of what was once US democracy" or "self-driving cars increased waste by an order of magnitude, did nothing to reduce carbon emissions, and degraded worker protections to below minimal levels."
There's still a chance to do something decent with the technology, but of course we won't do that.