hmm, maybe there should have been 4 laws of robotics.
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Self-driving Tesla knocks over autonomous robot
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A development that comes as no surprise to anyone who has read Philip K. Dick’s “Second Variety”.
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Naming Conventions
Robot named Terminator terminates.
Robot named Bender bends.
Robot named Clamps clamps.
Beelzebot/Robot Devil is the/a … robot devil.
A robot named Killbot kills.
Robocop is part robot and a full-time cop.
Mechagodzilla is a mecha Godzilla.
∴ Is it really unforseen that a robot named Tesla would shock us with its actions.
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#justiceforpromobot
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Bot on Bot violence! It’s real, people!
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The future is already here; it just hasn’t evenly screwed us all yet.
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Tesla isn’t a self-driving (aka autonomous) car. The Autopilot doesn’t (at least not yet) have the same sort of capability as e.g. the Uber’s or Google’s autonomous cars have. It is basically only souped up lane assist and adaptive cruise control, heavily relying on a few cameras to keep the car within its lane and away from the vehicles/obstacles in front of it. And the system is far from infallible - there are ample examples where the Tesla’s on Autopilot “failed to notice” obstacles and drove (or attempted to drive) into them, including a few fatal crashes. The use of the Autopilot requires an attentive driver at all times, ready to intervene should anything go south.
Given the darkness and that the bot was parked on the side of the road, it is completely plausible the system didn’t even notice it. However, in this case it is very much the driver’s fault as they are responsible for the use of the Autopilot.
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Even more plausible is that the entire stunt was faked. As @genecowan notes above, there are no lane markings painted on that road. Autosteer won’t even engage under those circumstances.
Given that, it’s hardly even worth pointing out the more minor points that make it quite a bit less than “completely plausible”. (Stipulated, of course, that obstacle avoidance is far from perfect. It’s just that this particular case stinks to high heaven.)
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Is the car even capable of engaging autopilot in these conditions? I would expect not but the way the all-but-certain self-driving revolution is unfolding I fear cautious progress will take a back seat to reckless one-upmanship resulting in experiment features being released to the public too soon. It’ll be like the cell phone industry but with lives at stake.
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So much Tesla hate! The headline could also read:
“Robot left on Highway Tips Over From the Breeze of a Car Driving By”
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“Your new iCar actually targets pedestrians?”
“It is a feature, not a bug.”
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There’s at least 6 or 7 if you google around. Even Asimov came up with the Zeroth Law – “A robot shall not allow humankind to come to harm…” thus overriding "shall not all harm to [a single person]. Later on philosophers came up with all sorts of stuff. My favorite is “A robot shall know that it is a robot.”
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Wake me when an autonomous vehicle knocks up an autonomous robot.
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I looked through my box of shits and fucks and couldn’t find a single one to give about this incident. My reserve of empathy is primarily for animate and sentient life forms.
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Promobot needs to up its game.
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Tesla has a radar for detecting vehicles out to about 150 meters, even if they’re blocked by other cars. It will also detect pedestrians standing close to the road.
I doubt this Tesla was in autopilot for all the reasons listed previously.
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aw man I tried telling a replicant they were a robot one time and he started talking all about how that was a misunderstanding about how the Tyrell corporation’s technology gave them free will and yadda yadda yadda. And then he started getting all weepy and moany about how robots can live forever but not them, boo hoo.
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You saying the car took that kern too fast…?
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