crunchyfrog

If such a system existed, we would basically have no technology. Engineers, like all humans, are fallible. Those mistakes can cost lives. If an engineer made an error in designing a part for a piloted car that caused the car to fail and kill people, should he go to jail too? Mistakes like this happen all the time. Ever had your car recalled?

Engineers can and should go to jail for negligence but that is an entirely different standard than criminalizing mistakes.

> Instead they are concentrating that risk into a small subset of residential streets in some poor neighborhoods.

These cars already safer than human drivers and they are common on the streets around Google. So unless you mean "risk" as "risk of being slightly inconvenienced", neither of your points is accurate.

> But because they are low income they don’t expect to be able to afford self driving cars in the next 10+ years.

It is pretty clear that Waymo primarily intends to sell a taxi service, not cars directly. This taxi service would be cheaper and safer than any currently available so people of all incomes would benefit both directly and indirectly (fewer DUI drivers).

UPS drivers almost never turn left.[1]. It is both safer and more efficient to plan your route using almost only right turns.

I am sure Waymo knows this but I'd guess they don't want passengers to feel like the car is taking "crazy" routes. People could act in unpredictable ways if they felt the car was out of control and turning away from their destination.

In the long term, when people are more comfortable with the technology, I suspect they'll change this.

[1] https://theconversation.com/why-ups-drivers-dont-turn-left-a...

Anyone else find it strange that this person worked in sales for one company which called itself a startup despite being nearly two decades old but keeps making these sweeping generalizations about startups and tech?

> Here was the biggest surprise about working in tech: even though everyone wears their team T-shirts and hoodies, rah-rah chants at the monthly all-staff meetings and competes for the sombrero of shame at the tropical off-site, no one loves the start-up they work for. No one feels secure. No one is loyal. There’s no certainty your start-up will exist in a year—or next week.

I can testify from personal experience all of these generalizations are false. Did it never occur to the author that maybe they were just being exploited by a crappy company?

I think the main reason Google decided not to support DNT is that Microsoft turned it on by default in IE. Microsoft did this knowing full well that Google would be put between a rock and a hard place: either implement DNT and instantly start losing a ton of money or ignore DNT and look like the bad guy. Meanwhile Microsoft could sit on their high horse since it wouldn't cost them any money.

I suspect Google would have respected DNT if Microsoft had made it opt-in as it was intended.

This is something that any number of scientists elsewhere in the world could have done but did not do because the technology is not tested and understood at a level that would make this safe. No competent ethics board would have signed off on this. This is troubling, not impressive.

> If Einstein tried to get a cat in a carrier, and the cat didn't want to go, you know what would happen to Einstein. > > He would have to resort to a brute-force solution that has nothing to do with intelligence, and in that matchup the cat could do pretty well for itself.

Wouldn't it be better to simply motivate the cat to get in the carrier with a can of tuna fish?

This is a very simple form of modeling the cat's mind, using that model to predict its behavior and choosing a course of action that results in the desired outcome. We do this for other humans all day and most of us never resort to brute force. I think it is pretty fair to imagine an AGI that is both better at modeling human minds and better at evaluating possible actions and their outcomes.

The argument as I understand it is more about speed limits. Human thought is limited to the speed at which the underlying chemical reactions in neurons can happen. But a simulation of a neuron is only limited by the speed of the computation involved. If you can perfectly model a neuron at 100x the speed of the physical world, it becomes just a question of resources whether you can think at 100x the speed.

Mars as a first step is definitely debatable but the importance and advantages of establishing colonies in space are clear. We can create homes in the solar system that are actually superior to life on Earth in the same way our houses are superior to life in the wilderness. We can build them from the ground up to suit not just our needs but our preferences (e.g. no mosquitos). These new homes will displace nothing but dead rock and will be incredible new worlds. Resources in the solar system in terms of materials and energy are far superior to what is found on Earth and once industry is established, the resources can be extracted far more efficiently. We can comfortably house literally trillions of humans in just our solar system using only technology currently available to us. All that is required is the will and the initial investment (which I will admit is considerable). Old Earth can be returned to nature and only those who want live in harmony with it.

Who wouldn't want to be a part of that?

This article seems like a giant non-sequitur. Just because Silicon Valley was founded with investment from the military doesn't require they continue to take this investment. Georgetown University was saved financially by selling slaves, I hardly think anyone would argue that this fact means they should continue to deal with slave traders.

You can certainly argue these companies/employees are being naive or unpatriotic or whatever but Silicon Valley's original source of funding is irrelevant to this discussion.

The latest report is that they sent out a body double in Khashoggi's clothes:

https://www.apnews.com/2e7cc6f821a14c90bec0253fe9ae9527

It seems like they expected to throw up enough distractions that their denials would hold at least among those who wanted to believe them. I think they failed to anticipate how closely Turkey was watching their consulate or that his fiancée would be waiting outside.

Of course the narrative has changed because Tesla's success has forced it to change but the underlying conclusion (i.e. "Tesla is doomed") has remained the same through out.

It would be ridiculous if they were still running articles about how Tesla will never build the Model S or the Model 3 or reach 5,000 cars a week or are always bursting into flames or whatever because reality has proved them wrong time and again.

Saying this new narrative is plausible unlike all those previous narratives ignores that all those previous narratives where plausible and wrong when they were pushed.

> There are also reasons to be optimistic, for example, US corporate earnings are way up -- 2018 is up 20% over 2016 alone -- that's huge.

Isn't that mainly the result of the large cuts to corporate taxes? Deficits are also up as the article notes for the same reason making it harder for the US government to respond with stimulus in the event of a recession.

And Google is going to be in big trouble when IBM releases their search engine.

It always seems like it should be easy for legacy companies to stamp out disrupters but it almost never works out like that. It is very hard to refocus giant companies.