A Suddenly Unavoidable Podcast
I'm on the Center for Auto Safety Podcast. We talk "unavoidable" and architecture.
I recently joined Anthony, Michael & Fred on the Center for Auto Safety podcast. Topics we discussed include:
Waymo hitting a school child and also dozens of times caught driving past stopped school buses. This includes what it really means for a crash to be unavoidable in the real world rather than a narrow mathematical model. What Waymo could be doing to avoid these situations, but chooses not to do because they are comfortable taking the risk with other people’s kids. (And why not all stop signs are created equal.)
The architecture report by The Autonomous on hardware approaches to managing redundancy for safe autonomous vehicle computing systems.
The irony of the US chasing China by trying to weaken automotive safety regulations while China is busy strengthening theirs.
A mention of my book on Embodied AI Safety. Chapter 10 is about how the AV industry might rebuild the trust they are letting slip through their fingers. Brief video explaining this topic here; a blog post on this topic here; more details in the book, and a discussion in this podcast episode. Short version: opacity and deflection stop working in the long term. Transparency is required.
And a lot more!
Listen to the full show here (free): https://rss.com/podcasts/autosafety/2521953/
Tee up at about 3:11 on this podcast. Here's the priceless quote from Phil Koopman, in regards to the use of word, "Suddenly."
"I think Waymo and Zoox both are trying to use the word “suddenly” to somehow imply, well, there's nothing we could do.
And, and that's not necessarily true.
I think that's the takeaway here. “Suddenly” is a great word. Well, it was sudden. What do you want me to do about it? Right?
... lots of mishaps are sudden. The question is not, did it happen all at once? So a kid shows up from behind an SUV suddenly. Well, how is that not sudden?
I mean, how do you show up from behind a vehicle? … was he supposed to do the hokey pokey? I mean, how do you not be sudden showing up from behind a vehicle?