Facebook, Uber and the end of the Great American Tech Delusion

[FarCenter]

We’ve been there before, in the crash of the dot-com bubble of 2000, when we believed that downloading pop music and porn would drive the economy of the future. We’ve done it again: We made another tech bubble on the premise that Americans would write the apps and Asians would make the hardware, and the miracle of connectivity would bring the world together in Mark Zuckerberg’s utopian vision. Internet community and Artificial Intelligence were the two blasts of hot air that inflated the bubble. Social media as a substitute for actual human interaction and computation as a substitute for human thought were going to waft us into the future.

Yesterday’s double crash of these delusions was the sort of irony that makes one intimate the hand of God in human history.

The crown jewel of Artificial Intelligence shattered when Uber’s autonomous SUV ran over Ms. Elaine Herzberg at the corner of Curry and Mill Street in Tempe, Arizona. And the concept of Internet community vaporized when news reports alleged that Cambridge Analytica improperly retained Facebook profiles of 50 million users. Facebook promptly lost 7% of its stock market value in yesterday’s trading, and other big tech names fell by 3% to 4%.

All the hype in the world can’t stand up to the ugly fact of a dead human body on the road. A few skeptics, including the distinguished physicist and venture capitalist Dr. Henry Kressel, have warned that AI in general and self-driving cars, in particular, are mainly hype. As Kressel wrote last year in Asia Times:

In a well-controlled environment (like driving on a track), the computer can be expected to respond to situations consistent with programmed information. The problematic situations are the accidental ones when something happens on the track that requires a quick response different from the programmed actions. This is where the awareness and quick response of a human driver come into play and where the response of a computer making the decisions is quite another matter. And this is the skill that differentiates race-car drivers from the rest of us – and computers from all of us.

A glance at the intersection where Uber’s vehicle killed Ms. Herzberg tells the whole story. It is one of those massive, amorphous, ill-designed and opaque suburban crossings that human drivers traverse in fear of their lives. One makes eye contact with other drivers and pedestrians, taps the breaks, and proceeds with extreme caution. To ask a computer to navigate through this sort of mess is foolish. We do not know the precise circumstances of Ms. Herzberg’s death; we only are surprised that it did not happen before. If that seems complex, try fighting the yellow cabs in Manhattan with a self-driving car.


http://www.atimes.com/article/facebook-uber-end-great-american-tech-delusion/

[brush]

1. Thanks for posting this. There are several self-driving adherents on DU...

who overlook the accidental occurrences on the road that can never be programmed into autonomous cars.

The problematic situations are the accidental ones when something happens on the track that requires a quick response different from the programmed actions. This is where the awareness and quick response of a human driver come into play and where the response of a computer making the decisions is quite another matter. And this is the skill that differentiates race-car drivers from the rest of us – and computers from all of us.

[Blue_true]

6. I am no self driving car adherent.

But if the cars are set up with a 200 degrees, continuous coverage out to 30 feet, feedback sensor cluster that rapidly sends information to a fast acting computer, accidents like the one in Tempe Arizona won't happen, nor would any other accident happen. The problem is that such a setup is both expensive and involves technology that mostly does not exist today. Even when the technology is fully available, corporations will cut corners in it's application.

[tonedevil]

2. The video of the Tempe car crash...

has been released. When I watched that I agree with the police assessment the accident was not avoidable by the vehicle regardless the pilot. As there is video we do know the circumstances and I understand Luddites can always find a reason to hate and fear technology, but in this case it isn't even close to warranted.

[mythology]

3. Automated cars 1 death this year Human driven cars 262,960 deaths this year

[Adrahil]

9. Dont confuse people with facts.

Plenty of folks here are technophobes.

[NCTraveler]

4. Very unique spin on reality. Nt

[gratuitous]

5. Let us indeed deal in reality

Well, there is a risk in driving, no doubt. There are about 12.5 fatalities per billion miles driven in the United States in 2016 (the pertinent citation is at footnote 11):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_United_States

Currently, self-driving vehicles are averaging . . . slightly more. About 333 deaths per billion miles:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bizcarson/2017/12/22/ubers-self-driving-cars-2-million-miles/#f0dc01ea4fe4

Is this a fair comparison? Probably not. Self-driving cars have so far operated only under optimal conditions, with on-board human monitors. No inclement weather conditions to challenge self-driving cars. Self-driving cars haven't faced snow, wind, hail, rain, ice, fog, or slick road conditions.

[Blue_true]

7. My guess.

Is self driving cars will handle every single one of the obstacles you listed better than humans one day, that day is far away, though. Very intelligent machines will have one advantage over humans, instant recognition and reaction, because the machines don't tire or become distracted and recognition to reaction spans of like a trillionth of a second.

[Skittles]

8. I had wondered how a computer would replace the eye-contact thing

I walk a lot, sometimes in rush hour traffic, and very often rely on the eye-contact with a driver to decide when / if to start crossing