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Comment by endisneigh | Hacker News Reader

> I think this is just the usual goal post moving, if a machine does it then we decide it wasn't really dangerous for a machine to do it.

I strongly disagree. Most machines are not capable of killing you because it makes a mistake.

Do you have an example of something humans did that could kill them that was automated completely that still can kill them, but generally does not anymore? An elevator is one example, but in the case of an elevator its a very bounded problem to solve, and even still hundreds die for unnecessary elevator deaths yearly.

Not to mention an elevator is not an entropic environment. A full self driving car would have to be able to deal with ice suddenly falling on the ground, people crashing around them, etc.

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Fully automated train systems? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_train_system...

Not nearly as complex a problem as self driving cars, but I'd still rather not get hit by a train

My understanding of trains is that most of the safety advances have come from better signaling, not the automation of the trains themselves.

Yes, not nearly. Not anywhere close to the complexity needed for self driving cars. Trains run on closed, limited, well-signaled infrastructure, which (comparably) makes it fairly easy to "avoid other trains" (as long as the signaling, coordinated externally, works--if it doesn't the train is likely programmed to just stop until it does again).

> hundreds die for unnecessary elevator deaths yearly

Elevator deaths are extremely rare in industrialized countries (a couple dozen per year in the USA), and most are of people working on the elevator (e.g. accidentally falling down the elevator shaft), not passengers riding in an elevator. I think construction elevators are also quite a bit less safe than ordinary passenger elevators.

Typical elevators are one of the safest forms of transportation, substantially safer than stairs or ladders.

You mean, like the entire rest of his comment? Garmin Autoland...

The Garmin Autoland is not equivalent to full self driving? That's like self parking which has existed for a while now. In any case planes are inherently orders of magnitude safer than cars to begin with due to the lack of obstacles/chaos.

It frustrates me to no end when people compare autolanding (even the Garmin kind), or worse, general autopilots, with self-driving cars.

Anyone who does that has either never traveled in an airplane (even just as a passenger), or just never observed and thought about the vastly different levels of interaction planes have with their environment.

Did you forget what you originally wrote? You said:

> Do you have an example of something humans did that could kill them that was automated completely that still can kill them, but generally does not anymore?

And I pointed out that the parent comment had already provided an example. Now you are arguing with me that the example given, about Garmin Autoland, isn't comparable to self-driving... Which isn't at all the example you asked for in the first place. Maybe focus and read a little more, write a little less. You'll be more easily understood.

> Do you have an example of something humans did that could kill them that was automated completely that still can kill them, but generally does not anymore?

My understanding from looking at research is that airplanes by experienced pilots rarely killed people... and they... still don't even when (partially) automated? There doesn't appear to be definitive evidence that autopilot is safer [2] as many of the innovations in safety have been conflated with procedural improvements.

In fact there are studies [1] that suggest autopilot is actually making flights unsafe as pilots are becoming complacent and airplanes do not flight themselves completely from point to point including taxiing.

In other words, no, plane automation is not an example as it does not satisfy the criteria of "generally does not" compared to the baseline of no automation.

[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/001872088502700...

[2]https://www.eurocontrol.int/sites/default/files/publication/...

Try not to be so condescending, sheesh.

You wrote:

> The Garmin Autoland is not equivalent to full self driving?

This has nothing to do with your argument criteria of:

> Do you have an example of something humans did that could kill them that was automated completely that still can kill them, but generally does not anymore?

> Try not to be so condescending, sheesh.

I didn't mean that to be condescending out of turn, but if you are going to engage in an argument by posting a strong disagreement and an opinion:

> I strongly disagree. Most machines are not capable of killing you because it makes a mistake.

You cannot change the criteria for an example that you asked for simply because you don't feel like arguing that the example did or did not meet your criteria, nor can you do so simply because you didn't bother to read it carefully.

So no, I'm not being condescending out of turn, you really needed some correction on that. Sheesh.

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