I also think the desire of some for an absolutist interpretation of driving regulation in this thread would result in chaos too.

How many seconds is one supposed to stop at a stop sign? The law is silent on the matter. There is so much around laws or rule systems that forms as conventions around the rules that are often just as important as the text of the rules themselves.

See also solid white lines (do not cross) in the US. People cross them for pragmatic reasons in many locations all the time, often in full view of law enforcement.

There are also many road users for whom laws are almost never enforced and often disobeyed, such as cyclists. In many places cyclists are bound to obey the same traffic lights as motor vehicles. This plainly doesn't happen 100 percent of the time, and again is often tolerated by law enforcement. A car with an absolutist interpretation of driving regulations would therefore still have to deal with the fact cyclists and others may not share in this view.

> How many seconds is one supposed to stop at a stop sign?

I don't see a need for the law to specify a time. You have to stop and you proceed as soon as you have the right of way and it is safe to do so.

My point still stands regardless. Rule systems are more than just their printed texts.

A strict interpretation by your car may mean that it yields to a person standing just off the curb is in the crosswalk with no intention of crossing. Your car won't go though because the law says they have the right of way.

Not moving when given the chance is indicative of non-intent.

For a working AI, it can still stop safely if the pedestrian starts moving into the street in the few seconds the car is crossing.

What if someone stands in the cross walk, or is intentionally slowly moving to cause an issue?

I'm not sure what else I would do when driving except to wait for them to move. I suppose if it became clear that someone was intentionally trying to obstruct me, I might try to slowly move around them if it was safe to do so.

This is one of the fundamental pain points of AI. All those moral dilemmas and trolley scenarios we've philosophized about since ancient history? Well it's come time to choose.

Computers do exactly what they are told to do and never do what you did not tell them to do. They do not have any common sense that you did not give them. As you build more and more capable computers and give them more influence and control, you damn well better have an exhaustive, complete and comprehensive set of values for it to follow.

Mmmm. That's the case with programs, but it's definitely not the case with neural nets. Much like you or I, NNs do things based on training, experience, and data.

They do, but that doesn't mean our data has the answer for every possible scenario. This is important because AI will run into ethical scenarios humans rarely or never have to think about.

At first this will be due to AI's one current superhuman ability: speed; a classic is the do you drive into the old couple or the little kid car scenario. It's not really an issue for humans because the situation is over before we can make more than a reflexive response, but the AI can take its time to make a concrete decision. This isn't a thing we spend a lot of time thinking or blogging about and a societal consensus probably has not formed and wouldn't show up in the data. Presumably the AI would pick at more or less random as we are forced to do, but I can see an entity capable of superspeed choosing to perform random actions as causing other as yet unforseen problems.

The big pinch is if and when we create transformational AI. We will be presented with options we had never imagined being possible. Do you keep Mars as a memory of the old days, or do you use its crust to construct interstellar spaceships and build better lives for Earth humans? Do you allow humans to live lives as they do now, or do you modify their biology and neurology to live longer lives and never engage in antisocial behavior?

These are lazy obvious examples that I came up with but there will be many less-cosmic decisions we will be presented with that we absolutely do not have an existing moral template to guide us.

> absolutist interpretation

What's absolutist - the driver blew right through the crosswalk while someone was literally in it...

Standing close enough to a crossing that you appear to be preparing to cross is easily enough for drivers to stop and wait in some European countries, e.g. here in Denmark.

If the pedestrian remains still, but the driver sees no reason they shouldn't cross, eventually the driver might well gesture, honk etc.

An AI should never make an illegal honk like that.

Sorry, are you saying that it'd be a problem that pedestrians could cross when they intend to? I'm not following

No, that a human could be standing near but not in a crosswalk, talking. The law says you must treat them as attempting to cross, even though it is obvious they are not. Caress like this abound.

I don't think the law says that you need to treat people not entering a crosswalk as attempting to cross it. We can play this game all day if you just want to be obtuse about using words. But nothing you described was impossible to work out, nor was the scenario you most immediately described in your recent post even remotely troublesome. Do you mean if people are in the crosswalk but don't cross? How often does that really happen? Ironic considering that in this case, the pedestrian was in the crosswalk and the car drove through anyway. Pretty dangerous IMO