There's a whole kind of unpleasant but interesting topic about attacks against behavior of self-driving cars. I think I saw an earlier HN thread that suggested that they might put occupants at greater risk of kidnapping because the cars could refuse to take evasive actions that endanger or injure a kidnapper (or just violate a traffic law). This risk might be farfetched, but it may illustrate the concern about people knowing the limits that self-driving cars will respect and then exploiting those limits in some way.
> I think I saw an earlier HN thread that suggested
I might also have heard about some of these problems from Brad Templeton, who describes "Abusing robocar collision-avoidance" among many other interesting problems at
http://www.templetons.com/brad/robocars/downsides.html
I don't remember if he also mentioned the kidnapping scenario when I heard him present about this.
Re:The Fight for the “Right to Repair”
by imtringued on Thursday July 14, 2016 @01:43AM
(#12091878)
>I think I saw an earlier HN thread that suggested that they might put occupants at greater risk of kidnapping because the cars could refuse to take evasive actions that endanger or injure a kidnapper
What alternative would a human take? Would they kill the kidnappers by driving over them?
I guess that's the simplest one that a self-driving car's software might not approve of. Or intentionally collide with a kidnapper's vehicle, or just make a prohibited turn or run a red light to try to escape.
These scenarios are kind of vague because they don't make it clear whether the self-driving car lets a human driver take over and take full responsibility.
Re:The Fight for the “Right to Repair”
by DavidWanjiru on Thursday July 14, 2016 @07:13AM
(#12092857)
I think a human would drive over a kidnapper. Say your car is bullet proof. A man in a ski mask wielding a machine gun jumps in front of the road and orders you to stop. You refuse, he starts shooting at your car as you get near him (this is why I made your car bullet proof, to keep you alive but unequivocally demonstrate clear and present danger to you). In such a scenario, if your only escape route is over the dead body of the man in a ski mask, I bet a human will take that option.
Re:The Fight for the “Right to Repair”
by darpa_escapee on Thursday July 14, 2016 @10:17AM
(#12093963)
Manslaughter is a likely situation that needs to be addressed in the next Tesla OTA update.
Wow, where did the machine gun come from!
As this is happening in the future, the gun was probably 3d printed by the kidnapper.
To continue your example, I'll pose that any system with unilateral behavior of self-endangerment is extremely problematic. Motivating example: assume that self-driving cars will always avoid head-on collisions with other vehicles, even if there's no safe alternative. Including driving off a cliff. Attack: manual driver drives down the wrong side of the road (or maybe the middle of a two-lane road), forcing all of the self-driving cars off the cliff during evening commute hours to a hillside residential neighborhood. I suspect all systems that don't hew to some baseline of self-preservation are subject to similar modes of attack.