11 ms·
A few software engineers work a weekend to fix the issue, and it never happens again?
by NullHypothesist 9mo ago
A few software engineers work a weekend to fix the issue, and it never happens again?
- belter 9mo agoDo such software engineers reflect on the child the could have killed, or are the stock options too sweet?
- justonceokay 9mo agoI’m ideologically alighted with you but that isn’t an argument in good faith. We let convicted murderers buy cars. Your quip about stock options is actually funny, because if the engineers were killing people then those stock options shouldn’t be worth so much.
- belter 9mo agoLooking at the massive downvote of my comment and all the subsequent replies, lots of people here missed their MIT class of Ethics in Software Engineering... In safety critical engineering, ethics are not opinions but process guarantees. Waymo system is ML dominant, non deterministic, and validated statistically, without a public end to end safety case, formal failure bounds, or provably safe fallback under unknown conditions. Shipping anyway is not a technical necessity but a choice to externalize unbounded risk onto non consenting bystanders. Comparing that to bad human drivers or stock prices misses the point that this about what risks you knowingly impose. Looks like the Waymo Software team could apply at Boeing. I hear they are hiring....
- Workaccount2 9mo agoI know this might be a hot take but: I'd bet all my money, and all the money I could borrow, that a waymo would stop/swerve for a child running out before the sensory nerves in a humans eye reacted to that child. Just thinking it's not as egregious a violation when committed by something with a 0.1ms response time. Still a violation, still shouldn't do it, but the worst case outcome would be much much harder to realize than with a human driver. Also just to add, the fact that there aren't cases of this from Phoenix or SF seems to signal it's a dumb mistake bug in the "Atlanta" build.
- klooney 9mo agoDoes SF have school buses?
- nobodyandproud 9mo agoYou’re giving a technical answer to a question that’s actually about the economic and policy incentives. Yes, electronic sensors can enable the car to react more quickly: But react how? A buggy or unexpected reaction will just lead to equal or faster tragedy. Individual drivers are incentivized to keep their behavior (or be taken off the road). What legal incentives are there when a faceless company is involved and creates one or two drivers “at scale”?
- belter 9mo agoIf your safety argument is a bet, you already failed the ethics test.
- alpha-male-swe 9mo agowow nice virtue signal. and your point is???
- belter 9mo agoMy point is, if you cant own yours, by posting anonymously, it cant be worth much....
- alpha-male-swe 9mo agowow nice ad hominem. care to address my original question or what?
- belter 9mo agoMy point is Waymo engineers are as unethical as the Boeing MCAS team.