What We’re Reading
U.S. has 'real concern' about Tesla Autopilot driver interaction (Reuters, May 23, 2023)
Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg is adding to critical comments he made last week about Tesla’s use of the word “Autopilot,” now saying the federal government has “concerns about the interaction between ... Autopilot and drivers.” The concerns arise from NHTSA’s ongoing investigation into crashes between Teslas in Autopilot mode and first responder vehicles, which could impact up to 830,000 Tesla vehicles. Specifically, “NHTSA has said evidence suggested drivers in most crashes under review had complied with Tesla's alert strategy that seeks to compel driver attention, raising questions about its effectiveness.” The NTSB also has raised questions about Tesla’s “ineffective monitoring of driver engagement,” citing it as a cause of a 2018 Mountain View crash that currently is the subject of litigation (the same litigation in which Tesla recently drew criticism for attempting to rely on a “deep fake” defense).
Crash factor: Adding ethical considerations into autonomous vehicles (Digital Journal, May 21, 2023)
A new algorithm is attempting to “fairly” address the moral dilemma faced by software engineers in programming driverless cars to choose the lesser of two evils, such as killing the driver or multiple pedestrians, when faced with critical life safety decisions. The new approach based on German research attempts to make “more ethically differentiated decisions.” The ethical algorithm incorporates the 20 ethics recommendations of the EU Commission expert group for autonomous driving, which assesses the varying degrees of risk to pedestrians and motorists. The researchers also incorporated variables such as failure to obey traffic regulations and the size of involved vehicles into their responsibility calculations.
According to Maximilian Geisslinger, lead scientist and Chair of Automotive Technology at Technical University of Munich: “Until now, autonomous vehicles were always faced with an either/or choice when encountering an ethical decision. But street traffic can’t necessarily be divided into clear-cut, black and white situations; much more, the countless grey shades in between have to be considered as well. Our algorithm weighs various risks and makes an ethical choice from among thousands of possible behaviours—and does so in a matter of only a fraction of a second.”
The research that forms the basis of the algorithm is titled “An ethical trajectory planning algorithm for autonomous vehicles.” It can be viewed here.
Waymo, Uber set aside past rift to team up on self-driving taxis in Phoenix (PBS, May 23, 2023)
Five years after Uber paid Waymo $245 million to settle a bitter IP dispute, the two companies are partnering to launch a robotaxi and automated food delivery service in Phoenix. “The new alliance ... will involve Waymo dispatching some of its driverless vehicles to pick up passengers and deliver food when summoned through the Uber app at some point later this year.” The partnership benefits Uber, which is seeing an uptick in passenger ride-hailing while maintaining the food delivery momentum it gained during the pandemic, and Waymo, which is looking to introduce its technology to a wider audience.