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queen_annes_revenge wrote: Well the first statistic is irrelevant really. It doesn't prove the safety of autonomous systems.
And the bottom, well yeah of course they were, probably doing dumb stuff like the links I posted on Friday. And occurrences like that will increase massively the more you automate the system.
And like the other link I posted on Friday, Princeton studies predict that to obtain relevant safety data to allow a fair comparison with non autonomous vehicles will take 500 years.
Grey Templar wrote: Being responsible for someone's death is at best Manslaughter if not murder. So yeah, you are literally calling everybody who disagrees with you a murderer. That is both unclassy and a violation of rule 1.
Sorry if the truth hurts, but that doesn't make the responsibility go away. If you advocate against the adoption of proven life-saving technology out of stubborn ego and religious faith in human superiority then you get a share of responsibility, along with everyone else who advocated alongside you, for every additional person killed as a result of delaying that adoption. We wouldn't absolve you of responsibility if you were arguing in favor of legalizing drunk driving, so why shouldn't you get the same level of blame for arguing against automated vehicles?
Just Tony wrote: No, because the people who make their money off of products wouldn't let it get there in the first place.
That makes no sense. Set aside your faith in capitalism and need to prove "the left" wrong and look at it from the point of view of the company. They have two choices:
1) Pay an employee $30k/year to do a redundant job instead of buying a robot, so that the employee can maybe spend some of that $30k on buying the company's products.
or
2) Keep 100% of the $30k and cut the useless human.
In no sensible world does a company pick the first option as the self-interested way to maximize its profits.
Remember, I work with automation all day every day, it's part of the deal in the machine shop. EVERY station that got automated still has the operator there.
Counter-argument: I work with automation and we've cut things down to a handful of techs/engineers setting up new production runs, and some low-skill labor (most of it obtained through a temp agency) that exists to carry baskets of material from one machine to the next and has explicit instructions not to ever attempt to set up or troubleshoot a machine or do anything other than press the "start" button. If a material handling robot becomes cheaper than a minimum-wage employee do you honestly think that these people are still going to be employed? no. They're out the door as soon as the company can find a way to replace them.
And I strongly suspect I'm working with automation at a much higher level than you are, and have a lot better understanding of its strengths and limitations. It may not be replacing every single worker in every factory yet, but if you're counting on having that job in 10 years you're making a serious mistake.
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queen_annes_revenge wrote: And like the other link I posted on Friday, Princeton studies predict that to obtain relevant safety data to allow a fair comparison with non autonomous vehicles will take 500 years.
Given the premise of only using the existing fleet of automated vehicles, and testing to the highest possible standard of certainty. The 500 year timeline is easily shortened by increasing the number of test vehicles, and even the study you quoted talks about realistic test plans on the ~5 year scale.
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Overread wrote: Auto Pilots on aircraft do pretty well. Sure they disengage for landing and take off, but my limited understanding is that a large amount of A to B is done via AP today for many commercial flights - though others here might have a more detailed understanding.
Pilot here, it's a complicated answer. Autopilots are very reliable and, given a properly equipped airplane and airport, can fly the plane all the way to the ground and (IIRC) even taxi it to the gate. But it's not the best comparison with automated ground vehicles because the existing air traffic control system does a very good job of separating aircraft into clearly defined routes that maintain minimum safe distances from all other aircraft. And the routes to fly are clearly defined between GPS coordinates and/or radio beacons, removing the problem of having to detect where the road is and resolve any discrepancies with the map database. And when you look at automated vehicles the actual control of the car once you've figured out where you want it to go, the closest equivalent to aircraft autopilots, is the easy part. The hard problem is where the car has to make judgement calls about things like whether a shape in its vision system is a pedestrian or not, and whether it is walking into the road or standing next to it. And that just doesn't have an aircraft equivalent.
Where the aircraft comparison is very relevant is in how the adoption process is going to go with cars. Once autopilots were demonstrated to be effective in a particular area of flight they were aggressively adopted, even if they weren't ready for use in other phases. And it's now at the point where flying on autopilot is required by federal law in some situations (poor weather, above certain altitudes, etc). Did anyone protest against this and insist that, contrary to the evidence, human pilots are safer? Hell no, at least not enough to stand in the way of progress. Once automated vehicles pass similar safety milestones they are going to be the standard, and eventually mandatory. And the people opposing them will be viewed as irrational luddites and not considered favorably by history.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2018/12/10 08:56:08
There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices.
Grey Templar wrote: Being responsible for someone's death is at best Manslaughter if not murder. So yeah, you are literally calling everybody who disagrees with you a murderer. That is both unclassy and a violation of rule 1.
Sorry if the truth hurts, but that doesn't make the responsibility go away.
I agree. And I also add that in your country some reckless and/or drunk drivers can get 20+ years sentences for killing people by road accidents. Sounds pretty close to a sentencing for murder.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/12/10 10:30:16
queen_annes_revenge wrote: Well the first statistic is irrelevant really. It doesn't prove the safety of autonomous systems.
And the bottom, well yeah of course they were, probably doing dumb stuff like the links I posted on Friday. And occurrences like that will increase massively the more you automate the system.
And like the other link I posted on Friday, Princeton studies predict that to obtain relevant safety data to allow a fair comparison with non autonomous vehicles will take 500 years.
"I need evidence and statistics"
- "here you go"
"that's not evidence"
And round and round we go.
that could be considered a common occurrence in many debates, and does not invalidate my point in any way.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Getting dangerously political here. Although your apparent leanings would corroborate with your fanatical worship of automation. And once automation has removed everyones jobs, there should be a basic mandatory income and redistribution of wealth...
Grey Templar wrote: Being responsible for someone's death is at best Manslaughter if not murder. So yeah, you are literally calling everybody who disagrees with you a murderer. That is both unclassy and a violation of rule 1.
Sorry if the truth hurts, but that doesn't make the responsibility go away.
I agree. And I also add that in your country some reckless and/or drunk drivers can get 20+ years sentences for killing people by road accidents. Sounds pretty close to a sentencing for murder.
regardless, the point does not stand, in that saying someone will be responsible for deaths simply because they oppose a system which you may believe will cause less deaths, is not a valid argument, and borders on an ad hominem.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2018/12/10 12:45:48
Peregrine wrote:What happens with any field that becomes obsolete as technology advances? Seems like a good argument for socialism, but solutions to unemployment are rather off-topic from here.]And I pray that in 10 years time this will have been seen as a terrible idea and canned, with the research capabilities going to more productive endeavours. I can only hope.
Except that without employed people the companies will have nobody to purchase their robot made product, which will dry up resource supply AND that batch of other people's money that your socialist views depend on so desperately. No CEO is going to wake up and decide to give his money away for the greater good. If it came down to it, they'd take the entirety of their fortune and retire in Bora Bora, staring at caramel colored tiddies while all the socialists are forced to beat each other over the head for basic resources. We have historical examples of this happening. This isn't deluded fantasy, it's human condition.
Bad news for you, without employed people the companies will have nobody to puchase their robot-made product no matter what economic system you're under, leading to the same end result. Of course, if the CEO flees to Bora Bora his factories can be nationalized and started up manufacturing useful things for the people rather than let them all die pointlessly.
No, because the people who make their money off of products wouldn't let it get there in the first place. Remember, I work with automation all day every day, it's part of the deal in the machine shop. EVERY station that got automated still has the operator there.
YOUR business may be that smart. I don't expect too many others to prioritize long-term thinking over this quarter's profits; thus far the vast majority does not.
Herein lies the fallacy. EVERY business looks at things from the long term. Everything from figuring out parts distribution for products that were put out 30 years ago right down to tracking performance of their products out in the field so that they keep their brand as strong as possible, to allow for continued patronage from the public. Now the company that made Fidget Spinners? Not so much. Every other company that makes a product past the fad section of the market? They ALL look that far down the road. Except tech, they try to bury their own product on a yearly basis to get the same customers to repurchase what they already have. They're like GW in a way.
Peregrine wrote:
Just Tony wrote: No, because the people who make their money off of products wouldn't let it get there in the first place.
That makes no sense. Set aside your faith in capitalism and need to prove "the left" wrong and look at it from the point of view of the company. They have two choices:
1) Pay an employee $30k/year to do a redundant job instead of buying a robot, so that the employee can maybe spend some of that $30k on buying the company's products.
or
2) Keep 100% of the $30k and cut the useless human.
In no sensible world does a company pick the first option as the self-interested way to maximize its profits.
Look again at what I pointed out about the long run vs. short term profits. Musk's company made the short term profit decision and are now scaling BACK their automation. Sure you have a nice globalist socialist explanation for that.
Peregrine wrote:
Remember, I work with automation all day every day, it's part of the deal in the machine shop. EVERY station that got automated still has the operator there.
Counter-argument: I work with automation and we've cut things down to a handful of techs/engineers setting up new production runs, and some low-skill labor (most of it obtained through a temp agency) that exists to carry baskets of material from one machine to the next and has explicit instructions not to ever attempt to set up or troubleshoot a machine or do anything other than press the "start" button. If a material handling robot becomes cheaper than a minimum-wage employee do you honestly think that these people are still going to be employed? no. They're out the door as soon as the company can find a way to replace them.
And I strongly suspect I'm working with automation at a much higher level than you are, and have a lot better understanding of its strengths and limitations. It may not be replacing every single worker in every factory yet, but if you're counting on having that job in 10 years you're making a serious mistake.
Not only am I counting on having my job in 10 years, I'm counting on making MORE at it by then.
Maybe you make some product that doesn't require the types of tolerances mine does. Maybe your process doesn't have the level of judgement needed to be made as machining large engine parts does. Maybe the company that you work for isn't a legacy brand that needs the sort of attention to detail that machines and robots can't provide currently. I don't know. The point stands that Caterpillar is more than willing to pay everyone in our machine shop shy of 6 figures a year DESPITE all the automation in our shop.
queen_annes_revenge wrote:that could be considered a common occurrence in many debates, and does not invalidate my point in any way.Getting dangerously political here. Although your apparent leanings would corroborate with your fanatical worship of automation. And once automation has removed everyones jobs, there should be a basic mandatory income and redistribution of wealth...
NOW you're starting to get it. EVERY one of the people singing the accolades of full on automation are also redistribution of wealth people and the ones who lauded UBI. This isn't an exercise in morality as far as the car's computer, it's a debate of the morality of people paying other people's light bills, pure and simple.
Just Tony wrote: Look again at what I pointed out about the long run vs. short term profits. Musk's company made the short term profit decision and are now scaling BACK their automation. Sure you have a nice globalist socialist explanation for that.
I don't need a socialist explanation when I have a capitalist one: Musk's company made a business decision that certain automation elements were not yet good enough to be profitable, while keeping other automation elements that were working well enough. This is a decision based on how well each option produces cars at the lowest possible cost, not your weird idea that companies will keep paying extra employees so they have potential customers. The moment Tesla concludes that automation is in fact ready to take over those jobs all those people they hired are out the door again.
NOW you're starting to get it. EVERY one of the people singing the accolades of full on automation are also redistribution of wealth people and the ones who lauded UBI. This isn't an exercise in morality as far as the car's computer, it's a debate of the morality of people paying other people's light bills, pure and simple.
You still don't get it. Socialism is a response to automation, not a reason for wanting it. Automation will be driven purely by capitalism, because automation is more effective at doing a task than human labor. Whether that's automation in a factory or automation in driving your car, you ask the question "which option is most successful at this" and the answer is the robot. Socialism doesn't come into the picture at all until you start asking the question of what to do when, after self-interested capitalist businesses have created massive unemployment to maximize their own profits, you have a lot of people who are unemployable because their only skills can be done better by a robot. Do you accept socialism, or do you leave those people to starve?
Don't make the mistake of thinking that I like this scenario. I don't at all, because I have zero faith in our society to cope properly with that kind of change. But whether or not I like it is irrelevant. The people at the top making the business decisions are going to like the fact that automation makes their end of year profit numbers better, or they're going to be out-competed and destroyed by rivals who do. Same thing with automated cars. Whether or not I like the social consequences is irrelevant, all that matters is the average deaths per passenger-mile of automated cars vs. human drivers. As soon as that comparison favors the automated car the only morally acceptable option is clear.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/12/10 18:43:51
There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices.
Honestly I'm somewhat surprised bars don't make more use of vending machines.
It's even possible for IDing to be automated; it happens at some airports already. In the mean time all snacks, soft drinks and hot drinks could be served by machines.
Even food orders can be automated (I like the order points at macdonalds; it's nice seeing customisation options for the burgers!).
Will my self driving car be able to drive thru?!
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/12/14 09:21:09
when that starts happening the world will be a sorry place.
Also, in a study conducted a few weeks ago, 100% of the mcdonalds self service order touch screens tested came back positive for fecal matter. now im sure if you tested a lot of things, you may find similar results, but it still gives pause for thought. personally I pass on using those.
Sometimes machines make sense and sometimes they don't.
For example a computer can only mix known drinks, can only scan cards and can only deal with what is infront of it. It can't interact with those at the bar; it can't provide customer service; it might not easily handle a custom order; it can't handle someone being drunk and pressing random buttons etc... And it has no means to stop you buying drinks for your underage friend; or for you totally far too drunk friend. So you've still got to have human security there to monitor things. Plus if machines control IDs you can bet fakes will become a think - a barman can at least question someone who is clearly underage but holding a valid ID whilst a machine, provided its fooled, can't.
Automation can work wonders, but it can also backfire. I've seen several supermarkets take out the self-checkout aisles because of problems. From increased casual shoplifting to the fact that they find they still have to keep staff on-hand to deal with issues that arise (both computer and user based issues).
Also there's the human element to consider. Machines today are a VAST far cry from C3PO who you can interact with. A tablet to order your food is impersonal, cold and whilst efficient (to a degree) its also just not the experience many people want to have.
Of course I can see some places going this way, I just don't think it would become mainstream yet. In time sure and heck who knows the club/bar scene might change enough that a "bar" isn't needed and all one needs are a few circular booths around the place where you can walk up and get you drink served.
Also, in a study conducted a few weeks ago, 100% of the mcdonalds self service order touch screens tested came back positive for fecal matter. now im sure if you tested a lot of things, you may find similar results, but it still gives pause for thought. personally I pass on using those.
That one is easy to resolve - wands!
If it became mainstream people would just have a tablet wand on them at all times in their pocket to press buttons on the communal tablets. Heck you can bet there'd be the magical iWand that comes pre-loaded with a little display that shows you money-off coupons and advertisements for local eateries (and 10001 other apps that grinds it to a half every other hour and an instagram mode or something).
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/12/14 11:04:38
Or just talk to the server at the counter. It must be depressing enough working in mcdonalds without having the fact people would rather interact with a screen than you rubbed in your face.
On the bartender front I'd much rather have a person serving, especially if they're a female. If you replace them with vending machines you might aswell just stay and drink at home.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/12/14 13:20:51
Peregrine wrote: It doesn't make you a murderer, but it makes you responsible for those additional deaths. Your anti-computer beliefs are not based on evidence, they're based on emotion and ego.
I write software for a living, don't buy a self driving car for a least the next decade. I've seen the software development process, and no matter how shiny those marketing demos you've seen are the reality of self driving cars is massively more complicated than most people, including plenty of those working on it, really grasp. Further to the topic of the thread, there's not going to be any one person who is dedicated to writing morality in to these cars, there will be a nebulous group of subsystems interacting in a vaguely planned way that hopefully create the intended result, but will almost certainly have no individual ownership of the system or even serious decision making ability. The 'decision' will be made by a series of disparate bits of logic that fire off in sequence which hopefully fires off as intended.
I'm not even going to talk about deaths, I can promise you those things will be a general shitshow of inconvenience, inaccuracy and annoyance for at least the first two generations of mass production. Let the early adopters face tank things for you, no one will convince them otherwise. Then, maybe, maybe, they'll have things well enough done that you can bother with them.
Till then, you want to help the environment, drive less, buy a hybrid or an electric car and run that battery till we figure out how to recycle them well.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: Or just talk to the server at the counter. It must be depressing enough working in mcdonalds without having the fact people would rather interact with a screen than you rubbed in your face.
Welcome to life as cattle in the corporate system. Do you think McDonalds cares about the happiness of their low-level workers? Of course not. If an automated ordering system means 1% better numbers for the quarter to make the shareholders happy then automation is going to happen. And this is a McDonalds we're talking about, not a nice restaurant where service is part of the appeal. You're going to a McDonalds because it's a fast and cheap way to get something at least vaguely food-like when you don't want to spend any more time or money on it. If removing all human interaction from the process saves a few cents on a burger the majority of McDonalds customers are going to be perfectly happy with that trade.
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queen_annes_revenge wrote: Also, in a study conducted a few weeks ago, 100% of the mcdonalds self service order touch screens tested came back positive for fecal matter. now im sure if you tested a lot of things, you may find similar results, but it still gives pause for thought. personally I pass on using those.
This is another example of you not understanding how statistics work. Yeah, 100% tested positive, but at what levels and how does that compare to other surfaces that are regularly touched by the public? For example, what would those tests show about the door handles to get in the McDonalds? That kind of report is great as clickbait but doesn't really tell us anything useful
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YeOldSaltPotato wrote: I write software for a living, don't buy a self driving car for a least the next decade. I've seen the software development process, and no matter how shiny those marketing demos you've seen are the reality of self driving cars is massively more complicated than most people, including plenty of those working on it, really grasp. Further to the topic of the thread, there's not going to be any one person who is dedicated to writing morality in to these cars, there will be a nebulous group of subsystems interacting in a vaguely planned way that hopefully create the intended result, but will almost certainly have no individual ownership of the system or even serious decision making ability. The 'decision' will be made by a series of disparate bits of logic that fire off in sequence which hopefully fires off as intended.
I'm not even going to talk about deaths, I can promise you those things will be a general shitshow of inconvenience, inaccuracy and annoyance for at least the first two generations of mass production. Let the early adopters face tank things for you, no one will convince them otherwise. Then, maybe, maybe, they'll have things well enough done that you can bother with them.
Till then, you want to help the environment, drive less, buy a hybrid or an electric car and run that battery till we figure out how to recycle them well.
Counter-argument: self-driving cars are already working, regardless of how theoretically difficult it's supposed to be. They're not perfect yet, but as I keep saying perfection isn't the standard. Being at least slightly better than human drivers and all of their frequent failures is.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2018/12/15 06:46:01
There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices.
Your utilitarian machine cog attitude is getting a bit boring. You must be an absolute hoot at a party.
Just because something is more efficient doesn't mean its whats best. just because something will save money, doesn't mean its right. we're already cutting down human interaction. and resultingly, more people are feeling increasingly lonely, depression and rates of mental health issues are rising. People are increasingly unhappy in their views of themselves, and part of the reason is because all they do is look at phone screens when theyre at home. when they go out they buy their groceries from a self checkout, and order food from a screen, then pay using an app. It creates an unrealistic view of life, and theyre disappointed when reality doesn't match it.
I do understand how statistics work. I'm not even going to expand that further.
I knew you wouldn't even accept the opinion of someone in the industry! ha. They aren't working. Theyre driving under lorries because they cant register colour differences, or swerving into the opposite lane trying to follow cars.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/12/15 08:20:11
queen_annes_revenge wrote: Just because something is more efficient doesn't mean its whats best. just because something will save money, doesn't mean its right. we're already cutting down human interaction. and resultingly, more people are feeling increasingly lonely, depression and rates of mental health issues are rising. People are increasingly unhappy in their views of themselves, and part of the reason is because all they do is look at phone screens when theyre at home. when they go out they buy their groceries from a self checkout, and order food from a screen, then pay using an app. It creates an unrealistic view of life, and theyre disappointed when reality doesn't match it.
I don't think you understand how this works. The CEO of McDonalds does not give a about whether or not people are sad and lonely, they care about how this quarter's profit numbers look. If replacing human workers with an automated ordering screen increases profit by 1% the humans are out the door and replaced with screens. Whether or not you and I like this change is irrelevant. McDonalds and companies like it have a long history of not caring one bit who they're hurting as long as they're making money, and I don't see why you think that is going to change just because the harm goes against your particular ideological position.
I do understand how statistics work. I'm not even going to expand that further.
Apparently not, because your post is the kind of thing that would only be said by someone who doesn't understand statistics.
I knew you wouldn't even accept the opinion of someone in the industry! ha. They aren't working. Theyre driving under lorries because they cant register colour differences, or swerving into the opposite lane trying to follow cars.
First of all, they're not working in the automated vehicle industry, they write software. The fact that you think the two are interchangeable is hinting at a severe lack of understanding of the entire field of engineering. Second, you keep posting this broken argument where you cite a failure by an automated car and claim that they don't work. Single failures do not matter. What matters is accidents and deaths per passenger-mile compared to human drivers. And human drivers have a well established rate of driving under lorries because they're drunk and can't register distance, swerving into the opposite lane because they're texting and don't notice the car turning in time, etc. Automated vehicles can become mandatory despite having occasional failures as long as the rate of failures is better than the humans they are replacing.
There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices.
computer programmers are the ones who program the cars. so I'll take the opinion of someone who does that, on the subject, regardless of whether they work in the autonomous vehicle industry or not, theyre still an SME on computer programming.
I'm done mate. frankly, you cant seem to accept that just because something is 'inevitable' that doesn't mean we should blindly accept it without question, so you can have this one, you've bored me out of this debate.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: computer programmers are the ones who program the cars. so I'll take the opinion of someone who does that, on the subject, regardless of whether they work in the autonomous vehicle industry or not, theyre still an SME on computer programming.
I also am a computer programmer (among other things) and, unlike you, I understand the immense difference between different kinds of software. The sort of hardware control programming I do (essentially the "brain" that runs a robot) is very different from the back-end web development my partner does, and both of those are very different from writing a video game engine. Someone can be great at making video games but utterly ignorant about hardware control or making a bank website that doesn't immediately lose all of your account data.
I'm done mate. frankly, you cant seem to accept that just because something is 'inevitable' that doesn't mean we should blindly accept it without question, so you can have this one, you've bored me out of this debate.
And, again, you're missing the point. Nobody is asking for blind acceptance, we are asking for acceptance based on evidence. You are the one asking for blind acceptance without question, just of your preferred religion of human supremacy. The rest of us are expecting acceptance of automated vehicles based on (eventual) demonstrated safety records better per passenger-mile than human drivers.
(And, in the case of McDonalds, it doesn't matter if we accept it or not. McDonalds is going to act to maximize profits no matter what we think, they don't give a about our opinion.)
There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices.
On the Mc D front - consider that whilst machines might be cheaper to run than staff servers there are complicating factors. For example machines might cost more to replace; require higher fee paying employees (in an area) to service; they might come with increased running costs; they imght result in an initial curiosity spike of sales followed by a dwindling rate of sales as customers prefer human interaction; it might be that complaints take a huge spike because customers are unable to request even minor alterations to orders or rare allergies are unable to be taken into account.
Also considering that most McD staff Iv'e seen tend to be multi-role from servers to cooks to cleaning etc.. it might be that whilst they can save on one or two employees at peek times; the overall saving in staff isn't that great.
The back end to numbers is complicated and rarely is it simplistic. In fact most simplistic approaches often work only in the short term and fail in the long term. Or sometimes the novelty factor is all its trading on.
And this is before we consider governments who, if they saw a lot of lower level jobs shifting into automation, might be put under pressure to provide incentives to encourage businesses to retain staff or retrain and use them elsewhere - ergo to preserve jobs.
And don't forget social aspects, Facebook used to use a tax doge to avoid paying most of their tax (I think they paid some insane nominal value). Once news on that got out the community backlash was extreme and forced them to change their tax paying methods. They were doing nothing illegal, just using a tax loophole that is in the system, but because their whole service relies on the public, public pressure forced a change. That said public pressure is a fickle beast and often enough forgets and gets complacent fast. Plus it gets increasingly harder to rile people up the more an issue returns each year. What might cause pubilc outcry one year might be a blip on the radar 3 years later
That aside human or computer neither is safer when it comes to serving food. We don't get mult-person pile-ups when a server is a bit sleepy; we don't get life threatening injuries when two servers bump into each other; we don't get huge network and traffic issues etc... Ergo there just isn't the vast beneficial pressure to consider an automated approach to serving compared to driving. The benefit is purely looking at the end-return on investment and the costs of doing business.
To be clear, I don't necessarily think that McDonalds will remove those human employees in the near future, I'm just pointing out that if it turns out to provide better profit numbers then those jobs are gone and none of the company's upper management or shareholders will care one bit about quality of life issues or "kids these days are all depressed because they're on their phones all the time" or whatever. And companies like McDonalds are going to be the most likely scenario for adopting automation because of the market they're dealing with. If you go to a McDonalds it's because you want something vaguely food-like for a cheap price and you want it as fast as possible. You aren't expecting a great experience from it, as you would from a nicer restaurant, you just want to get your mediocre burger and get out. So even if having an ordering screen instead of a human cashier is an inferior customer service experience the vast majority of customers aren't going to care. They might grumble a bit, but when they're hungry on a road trip and the exit sign has that M logo labeled with the shortest distance, well, guess it's time for another big mac.
It's the same kind of thing with other automation. Self checkout works in a grocery store where most people are coming to get specific items and get out as quickly as possible. If you need to pick up some milk on the way home from work you don't need help from experienced sales people, and you aren't there to waste time chatting with the cashier. You just want the most efficient means of exchanging money for items, and the only thing better than self checkout would be RFID tagging all the items so you can just walk out the door without even stopping in a checkout line. But it doesn't work so well in something like a game store, where the scanning of items and taking of payment is only a small part of the sales process and having an expert sales person to talk to is important for a lot of customers. That's why self checkout machines are universal in grocery stores but nonexistent in game stores.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2018/12/15 11:29:59
There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices.
Interestingly, the conclusion is that transition to a self-driving world will take 25 years and will become compulsory once autonomous vehicles are reliably safer than human drivers.
Which are the conclusions many of us have come to in this thread.
Kilkrazy wrote: The BBC's technology correspndent has updated this topic with a new piece today, containing some reaction from the public and experts in the field.
Interestingly, the conclusion is that transition to a self-driving world will take 25 years and will become compulsory once autonomous vehicles are reliably safer than human drivers.
Which are the conclusions many of us have come to in this thread.
Not everyone agrees that it'll reach that point with any speed. And not everyone thinks that we can even GET the robots to drive that safely without making separate circuits with NOTHING but robot drivers. Even then, I'm willing to bet simple accidents to full on fatalities will happen due to gaps that the programmers didn't program for. Maybe after all THAT happens, we'll see it.
Which it will be, to deal with people like you who are willing to let a greater number of innocent victims die if that's what it takes to maintain your belief in human superiority.
There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices.
Which it will be, to deal with people like you who are willing to let a greater number of innocent victims die if that's what it takes to maintain your belief in human superiority.
Oh boy this straw man again.. I wasnt expecting this!
It's hardly a straw man when you've posted over and over about how you object to the entire principle of humans not being in control regardless of the safety records.
There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: Madness. So I guess when we prove robots are safer than humans at raising kids we'll have them do that aswell.
If it is superior why not?
Humans driving is hardly all that safe as it is. Doesn't take much to see. I have lost count on times somebody for example in street here uses the right lane entry to rotary which is specifically for those turning RIGHT to actually go STRAIGHT. Several times resulting in nearly colliding to me on the left lane that is for those who aren't taking the first exit from the rotary. Red lights are ignored as default with people driving as usual several seconds after lights are already red. Etc etc etc. And then we come to people who think it's cool driving 60km/h in 80km/h limit in clear good weather. This results in long blockades when opposing drivers are coming steadily resulting in dangerous overtakes when impatience sets in. Computer would be driving that 80km/h steadily(not 78, not 82. 80)
The sooner humans are replaced from behind the wheels the better.
It's hardly a straw man when you've posted over and over about how you object to the entire principle of humans not being in control regardless of the safety records.
no. They're out the door as soon as the company can find a way to replace them.
Heresy World Eaters/Emperors Children 
