Other scenario: Waymo will beat out Uber no matter if slowed, so any deaths stopped by stopping Uber is better. In order for yours to be true, we have to believe that Uber is contributing to the future of self-driving tech. I think they will be perpetually playing catchup to Waymo until their bankruptcy.

It would be utilitarian if we knew that self-driving tech was the best outcome out of all potential alternatives. We don't.

Not disagreeing, just curious: besides the obvious "drive it yourself", what are the in-the-works alternatives to self-driving cars? I'll admit I don't follow the space too closely.

I'm not in this crowd, but mass-transit advocates argue that the resources/attention poured into self-driving could be better allocated toward investment in mass transit infrastructure.

Mass transit infrastructure will not provide VC's with 100x returns.

This also assumes a good market of people who want to use mass transit vs something private.

Ehhh, I think given enough time and money just about any problem can be solved. Given what we know today, it seems pretty reasonable to say that we will achieve a car that can drive itself in any situation and not cause deaths...at some point in the future.

If everyone on earth gives me all their money and property and absolute power to rule, I will do so benevolently and in a way that maximizes the happiness of the world's population.

Therefore, every moment you spend not actively giving me money and property and power, and persuading others to do so, is a moment in which you are actively causing harm and suffering to billions of people who would have had happiness sooner if not for your delay.

You monster.

> Counterintuitively, it is the most ethical choice to continue to accelerate self driving car development even if it is sometimes conducted in an unsafe manner.

However, conducting self-driving car development in an unsafe manner is a good way of making people oppose self-driving cars, which leads to development of self-driving technology taking longer.

Who is setting back self-driving tech? Law enforcement who are trying to keep real people safe? Or Uber by being their cavalier selves about safety standards?

See, the issue is not just in utility. "Overeager operators disable safety checks for an experiment, death ensues, entire field of engineering suffers a major setback" has been seen before: have you heard of Chernobyl? (You have, thousands of times, just like anyone else from 1986 on) Yes, today's reactors are far safer and whatnot - yet the disaster is so ingrained that any discussion of nuclear power is practically destroyed just by bringing that name up.

"People behave rationally" is the greatest error assumed by utilitarianism, do not underestimate the reptile brain and its response to fear.

This assumes that self-driving cars will be safer. I think this is an unrealistic idea.

Look on the road some time. You see a lot of cars with dented bodywork, running one headlight, often poorly maintained, and depending on the make and model very cheaply made. Many of the cars may be ten years old, or older. They are often sold used, with limited warranty or dealer service.

And you really want to add self-driving to this? You think a 8 year old kia whose operator hasn't updated it because he can't afford the dealer service fees is going to be safer?

> This assumes that self-driving cars will be safer. I think this is an unrealistic idea.

I've seen this suggested a few times, and it makes me wonder if this is caused by religious beliefs or general pessimism.

The reason is that the only way it is an unrealistic idea is if we assume that human intelligence can not possibly be matched by a machine and/or if we assume that the progress towards genera AI will be so slow that we for the intents and purposes of the debate will take very long to match it.

The only thing that will stop us from eventually matching human intelligence with machines is if there is some super-natural soul necessary to match it. Even then, for that to stop us, said soul would need to be a necessary condition to make self-driving cars safer than human, which sounds even more implausible to me, given the many advantages self-driving cars can obtain:

Additional views of the road. Benefiting from accumulated knowledge from billions of hours of driving. Potentially wireless information exchange with the other automated cars in the vicinity (can't see through the fog very well? well, maybe the 10 cars around you can fill in blanks).

I think it's a totally unrealistic idea that self-driving cars won't get to a safety level where human drivers will be outlawed on public roads.

You completely missed the meat of the comment which was about how cars get old, worn out and damaged over time, and aren't always well maintained, and that this will apply to self-drivers too and affect their safety.

No, I didn't. There's no reasons we can't build self driving systems that aren't sufficiently hardened in terms of hardware that they will outlast the care and/or with sufficient self-diagnostic ability to refuse to drive if they are degraded in any way.

Well that's alright then.

If we can make cars that actually drive themselves, I'm sure we can make them refuse to run if there are serious maintenance issues.

Ah, DRM will save us, you say? Today's farmers disagree - "make them refuse to run" will be misused by vendors, as it already is today. https://hn.algolia.com/?q=tractors+repair

That assumes Uber had a reasonable chance at advancing self-driving tech. Everything demonstrated to date makes them seem more like Theranos, and it would be difficult to find someone willing to argue they were advancing medical progress.

That amounts to "the ends justify the means." Some people go for that, some don't. Personally, I usually don't.

> That amounts to "the ends justify the means."

That, uh, is what "utilitarian" means.

That way eugenics lies.