this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2024
24 points (100.0% liked)

TechTakes

1490 readers
29 users here now

Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
all 11 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

One thing he failed to mention here is that all software fails eventually. So imagine one of those fancy graphics scenes he commissioned being a 100+ car pileup because a software glitch caused a car to make a sudden right-hand turn to a street that doesn't exist.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

He did mention it. Even showed an example with Tesla causing a 8 car pile up

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

He showed an example of that happening today. He seemed to be of the impression that something like that can eventually be ironed out, which it can't. At least that was my interpretation.

[–] Tar_alcaran 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

Hmmm, for something that took so long to make, with such a visibly huge production value, I think the point is rather weak.

The video spends a lot of time on "but AVs cause accidents too", without ever opening a single page of statistics, just some horrible articles for shock value. Those few examples are then followed by "drivers kill 40k a year", which gives me entirely the wrong impression.

Then it veers off into plausible-sounding, but ultimate unsupported wild speculation, with only a single example about a town going carcentric getting ruined (I'd love a case study on that, it seemed far more interesting than most of the video).

For a channel that's normally very good about showing examples and supporting data i can't help but notice the stark contrast in this video. And that's not a good look, especially since the case could be made without proclaiming cybernet to be the end of walking.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

You want studies about a potential future? First I don't think that's reasonable and second those would be funded and poisoned by the car lobby. Massive industries have been capturing and derailing scientific research since asbestos and radium.

I totally agree with the author learning from history is our best approach.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

His overall point appears to be that a city fully optimized for self-driving cars would be a hellscape at ground level, even allowing for fewer accidents, so no real reason to belabor that point, which is mostly made in service to pointing out how dumb it is when your solution to reducing accident rates is "buy a new car" instead of anything systemic. like improving mass transit.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

They're gonna ruin cities by further limiting the rights of pedestrians to work around their mediocre programming.