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Comment by PragmaticPulp | Hacker News Reader

This is terrible overreach and a good example of magical thinking about the abilities of AI.

Even if the false positive rate of such a system was only 0.1% per driving session, an extraordinarily ambitious goal for any AI system, that still translates to an incredible number of false positives across all drivers. Someone who drives twice a day for work would be expected to hit a false positive every couple of years or so. Do we really want our cars randomly flagging everyone as drunk every once in a while?

Obviously the people writing this bill assumed that perfectly correct AI could exist. They did their job, now the problem is punted to the engineers.

Ridiculous. I’m sure this will get removed eventually, perhaps with further legislation.

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I think it’s off base to pin this on AI enthusiasm, that’s just kind of unclear writing in the article. The legislation doesn’t specify a particular anti drunk driving provision, just that the NHSTA study the issue and determine the best course of action. Mandatory breathalyzers seems like what, um, sober minds will come up with. Which certainly feels like stunning overreach to me, but isn’t strictly about AI

Technically the wording is vague enough that they could be referring to anything, but the article specifically highlights distracted driving systems that scan drivers’ eyes:

> Among the systems that have been studied are ones that monitor a driver for signs of distracted, impaired or fatigued driving. One uses sensors that scan drivers’ eyes for signs that are similar to ones that police officers look for when they suspect impairment during traffic stops.

Even breathalyzers aren’t as fool-proof as they sound. Apparently eating certain meals right before using a breathalyzer can trigger false positives. Even breathalyzers have not insignificant numbers of false positives they would become a huge problem if forced upon the entire driving population.

So even with breathalyzers, it’s still about magical thinking about technology’s ability to monitor people’s behavior.

Indeed the wording is vague, and the response to a positive sensor detection is not specified at all. So maybe it’s premature to worry too much about the amount of damage it might do, since we don’t even know what it will do, and it hasn’t passed yet?

Do you think the goal is worth pursuing? Imagine we could achieve zero false positives, would you be in favor of it then? Would it depend on what the system does with a positive detection? If we could have perfect detection of drink driving, should we? Or, said another way, should it be anyone’s right to choose whether they drive drunk?

It’s worth remembering that it was argued that mandatory seatbelts were also terrible overreach, as well as other mandatory safety measures like airbags, child seats, mandatory motorcycle helmets, etc, despite the fact that the safety results are unequivocally positive. It seems like in the US we tend to have a problem with things that are mandatory, regardless of the benefits or outcomes.

The difference is between this and say mandatory seatbelts is that the car won't refuse to start if it thinks that someone isn't buckled. I would refuse to buy a car that did try that, as that's just asking for inconvenient sensor failures that leave you stranded.

> I would refuse to buy a car that did

ok, but if it's mandated that means you'll do without a car

There are enough used cars available today that I'm pretty sure I could just buy used for the rest of my life and not have to worry about that.

I don't think I will have to worry about it though because if such legislation ever passed, it wouldn't be long before someone got stranded in the middle of nowhere and died next to a perfectly functional car that refused to start up, the media would make a big deal about it, and the legislation would be reverted.

I see it as an issue of convenience vs actual benefits. Create a system that can tell if I am drunk with near-perfect accuracy from just me being in a vehicle and I am ok with it.

However the current systems we have imply that I'd have to blow into something every time to start my car, that straw thing would get full of saliva, and on top of that there could be false positives so it's obviously a big no.

> Mandatory breathalyzers

I assume you mean mandatory breathalyzers as car equipment, alongside high-visibility vest, documents etc. It is law in some countries - I know of France. I judge it one of the most absurd conceivable piece of legislation.

You cannot go to people who are possibly abstinents and suggest that they may drink: it is offensive. Even if well below the median, even if only the third, tenth standard deviation refrained from intoxication, you still cannot go to some random individual and assume they drink - in their culture, that could be a disrespectful to defamatory act.

Plus, it is a matter of prudence: also on a matter of proper relation, you do not want to put those people in the condition of discussing why they find it offensive - forcing them to possibly offend the inquirer.

Not to mention the ongoing maintenance and calibration costs of the breathalyzer.

I think a lot of the proponents for these sorts of rules/restrictions tend to be anti-car and/or throwing bones to their various transport unions, and don't care that they are overreaches or impractical.

The article notes MADD (Mother’s Against Drunk Driving) as one of primary sponsors.

MADD is notorious for demanding government overreach in reducing or eliminating alcohol consumption altogether. They have a history of ignoring any possible negative consequences of their proposals for other people, and this is a good example.

Nope. As the article mentions, the major push is from modern-day temperance organizations like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, which was the major lobby that got the US drinking age raised from 18 to 21. Although you are right that these organizations have authoritarian impulses and don't care that these are overreaches and impractical.

maybe match the low reliability of classification with a low impact rule, if the system thinks you're drunk you just have to drive slower ?

Yeah make them do 30mph on the highway this will surely reduce the danger /s

Honestly, if the sensor suddenly thinks you're drunk in the middle of a highway segment, there's something very wrong since long before.

idk man, Discord thinks a picture of my fingers is explicit content, google Lens thinks my gf's cat is a dog, tesla can't detect people _asleep_ at the wheel...

AI is fun until you start applying it to real world issues, then it crumbles apart.

those are all terrible implementations though, nobody would ask a discord like dev team to work on safety critical systems, and musk has a serious problems overselling his driving aid..

doesn't mean a good team of serious guys could make a useful device (I'm no proponent of it btw)

Anything short of 100% reliability and 0% error will be a pain in the ass to thousands of people worldwide every single day

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