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This incident occurred on 7 May 2016, but is reported on the front page of *The New York Times* in an article by Bill Vlasic and Neal Boudette on 1 Jul 2016. In short, it is the first known fatal accident involving a vehicle under automated control. Joshua Brown (a Navy veteran who had founded his own technology consulting firm) was the "driver". "Neither the autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of a tractor-trailer [which made a left turn in front of the Tesla] against a brightly lit sky, so the brake was not applied. The crash casts doubts on whether autonomous vehicles in general can consistently make split-second, life-or-death driving decisions on the highway." Karl Brauer (a Kelley Blue Book analyst): "This is a bit of a wake-up call. People were maybe too aggressive in taking the position that we're almost there, this technology is going to be in the market very soon, maybe need to reassess that." Although Elon Musk has praised the Model S as "probably better than a person right now", Tesla noted on 30 Jun that its use "requires explicit acknowledgment that the system is new technology." [PGN-ed] Perfection is obviously unrealizable for any computer-based system. But a death is a death, and we should do what we can to reduce every one. Drunk driving is clearly a problem. Drive-by shootings are rare events, but gun controls for loony-tune folks might help. The problems are holistic (as usual), and there are many relevant factors. But I would think the expectations on the operational risks of automated vehicles and automated highways will be much higher than those for conventional vehicles and their fallible drivers. It will be interesting to see how the insurance industry assesses the difference. For example, who is liable for accidents involving self-driving or computer-assisted vehicles? Law suits tend to go for deep pockets. There are many issues here. Perhaps when you buy an automated vehicle, the contract says the car is "experimental" and the maker explicitly disclaims all liability and responsibility, and requires the person in the driver's seat to be awake and aware. Perhaps their lawyers would claim that the driver was negligent to have faith in the software/hardware system. Even more intriguing might be accidents involving multiple self-driving vehicles. And what happens when the police insist on backdoors to be able to redirect or stop the vehicle for inspection or arrest? And then there is the fantasy of the automated highway. Lots of issues remain to be resolved, and I suspect this will all happen -- but hopefully very slowly and carefully. Let's hope that the snake-oil salesmen peddling supposedly secure point solutions don't do the same for the automated highway—as they are already doing for the Internet of Things. For the record, Monty Solomon noted a whole string of NYT articles on Tesla and related topics in early July: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/01/business/self-driving-tesla-fatal-crash-investigation.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/02/business/a-fatality-forces-tesla-to-confront-its-limits.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/02/business/international/bmw-tesla-self-driving-car-mobileye-intel.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/04/your-money/as-self-driving-cars-hit-the-road-innovation-is-outpacing-insurance.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/05/business/tesla-and-google-take-different-roads-to-self-driving-car.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/07/business/us-safety-agency-investigates-another-tesla-crash-involving-autopilot.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/08/automobiles/wheels/makers-of-self-driving-cars-ask-what-to-do-with-human-nature.html and others as well: http://m.theregister.co.uk/2016/07/08/bmw_vulns/ http://m.theregister.co.uk/2016/06/06/mitsubishi_outlander_hack/ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/20/business/audis-virtual-cockpit-moves-the-display-on-screen.html [I'm working on a blog on this subject, which hopefully will appear shortly in ACM's Ubiquity. PGN]
Human driven cars get into accidents all the time, with sometimes fatal results. Worldwide, over a million people are killed each year in auto crashes, where self-driving vehicles not involved. In the USA, 10's of thousands of people lose their lives every year, in highway crashes, where self-driving was not a factor. http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general-statistics/fatalityfacts/state-by-state-overview http://asirt.org/initiatives/informing-road-users/road-safety-facts/road-crash-statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year Now we have a death in an auto accident where the human in the driver seat was not driving. He was using the Autopilot of a Tesla model S, while he watched a Harry Potter movie. He is now dead, because the car's camera failed to distinguish a tractor trailer against a bright sky, and the human was not paying attention. There are times of day I don't like to be driving in certain directions, because I cannot make out what a traffic light is communicating, when the sun is right beside it. I hold up my hand to try to block the sun, but still see the traffic light. By the time I figure it out, the lights have changed. According to witnesses of the Florida accident, the Tesla car went underneath the tractor trailer, sheering off the top half of the car, and continued at highway speeds, as if nothing had happened. This one story will probably get more news media attention than the tens of thousands of accident victims where a human was driving. Why is the news media only now covering this story, 2 months after it happened? http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/01/business/self-driving-tesla-fatal-crash-investigation.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/11/business/fatal-tesla-crash-draws-in-transportation-safety-board.html?_r=0 This Florida accident is being investigated by * Florida Highway Patrol * NHTSA = US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration * NTSB = US National Transportation Safety Board http://www.nytimes.com/topic/organization/national-highway-traffic-safety-administration?inline=nyt-org http://www.nytimes.com/topic/organization/national-transportation-safety-board?inline=nyt-org http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-08/driver-automation-to-be-scrutinized-in-ntsb-probe-of-tesla-crash http://www.press.org/events/npc-luncheon-ntsb-chair-christopher-hart There's been more than one crash involving semi-autonomous driving, while others are not yet fatal. There's also a great deal of interest in an accident in Pennsylvania, where a Tesla X SUV rolled over, while the car was in Auto-Pilot, according to the driver. Tesla disagrees. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/deadly-tesla-crash-exposes-confusion-over-automated-driving/ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/07/business/us-safety-agency-investigates-another-tesla-crash-involving-autopilot.html http://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/2016/07/05/southfield-art-gallery-owner-survives-tesla-crash/86712884/ http://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/2016/07/01/experts-worry-tesla-crash/86611662/ Some people claim this is not a case of a self-driving car, only a partially self driving. Tesla's self-driving is pretty limited compared to Google and other competitors. There are also ethical questions about the notion of making auto drivers the testers for beta systems, which may not yet be ready for all driving conditions.
(Posted by BeauHD on Thursday June 30, 2016) <https://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/06/30/217215/us-regulators-investigating-tesla-over-use-of-autopilot-mode-linked-to-fatal-crash> quoting a report from CNBC: The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said on Thursday it is opening a preliminary investigation into 25,000 Tesla Motors Model S cars after a fatal crash involving a vehicle using the "Autopilot" mode. The agency said the crash came in a 2015 Model S operating with automated driving systems engaged, and "calls for an examination of the design and performance of any driving aids in use at the time of the crash." It is the first step before the agency could seek to order a recall if it believed the vehicles were unsafe. Tesla said Thursday the death was "the first known fatality in just over 130 million miles where Autopilot was activated," while a fatality happens once every 60 million miles worldwide. The electric automaker said it "informed NHTSA about the incident immediately after it occurred." The May crash occurred when a tractor trailer drove across a divided highway, where a Tesla in autopilot mode was driving. The Model S passed under the tractor trailer, and the bottom of the trailer hit the Tesla vehicle's windshield. Tesla quietly settled a lawsuit with a Model X owner who claims his car's doors would open and close unpredictably, smashing into his wife and other cars, and that the Model X's Auto-Pilot feature poses a danger in the rain. <http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/30/us-regulators-investigating-tesla-over-use-of-automated-system-linked-to-fatal-crash.html> <https://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/06/29/2145207/tesla-admits-defeat-quietly-settles-model-x-lawsuit-over-usability-problems>
(Posted by BeauHD on Tuesday June 28, 2016) <https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/16/06/28/2215232/the-moral-dilemma-of-driverless-cars-save-the-driver-or-save-the-crowd> ughPickens.com writes: What should a driverless car with one rider do if it is faced with the choice of swerving off the road into a tree or hitting a crowd of 10 pedestrians? <https://news.mit.edu/2016/driverless-cars-safety-issues-0623> The answer depends on whether you are the rider in the car or someone else is, writes Peter Dizikes at MIT News. According to recent research most people prefer autonomous vehicles to minimize casualties in situations of extreme danger—except for the vehicles they would be riding in. "Most people want to live in in a world where cars will minimize casualties," says Iyad Rahwan. "But everybody wants their own car to protect them at all costs." The result is what the researchers call a "social dilemma," in which people could end up making conditions less safe for everyone by acting in their own self-interest. "If everybody does that, then we would end up in a tragedy whereby the cars will not minimize casualties," says Rahwan. Researchers conducted six surveys, using the online Mechanical Turk public-opinion tool, <http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6293/1573> between June 2015 and November 2015. The results consistently showed that people will take a utilitarian approach to the ethics of autonomous vehicles, one emphasizing the sheer number of lives that could be saved. For instance, 76 percent of respondents believe it is more moral for an autonomous vehicle, should such a circumstance arise, to sacrifice one passenger rather than 10 pedestrians. But the surveys also revealed a lack of enthusiasm for buying or using a driverless car programmed to avoid pedestrians at the expense of its own passengers. "This is a challenge that should be on the mind of carmakers and regulators alike," the researchers write. "For the time being, there seems to be no easy way to design algorithms that would reconcile moral values and personal self-interest." <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/06/23/save-the-driver-or-save-the-crowd-scientists-wonder-how-driverless-cars-will-choose/>
Stephanie Condon for Between the Lines, ZDNet, 0 Jun 2016 The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened a preliminary investigation into the advanced autonomous driving technology following a May 7 accident. http://www.zdnet.com/article/federal-agency-probing-teslas-autopilot-feature-after-fatal-crash/
At some point in the nearer-than-might-be-comfortable future, an autonomous vehicle (AV) will find itself in a situation where something has gone wrong, and it has two options: either it can make a maneuver that will keep its passenger safe while putting a pedestrian at risk, or it can make a different maneuver that will keep the pedestrian safe while putting its passenger at risk. What an AV does in situations like these will depend on how it's been programmed: in other words, what ethical choice its software tells it to make. If there were clear ethical rules that society could agree on about how AVs should behave when confronted with such decisions, we could just program those in and be done with it. However, there are a near infinite number of possible ethical problems, and within each one, the most ethical course of action can vary from person to person. Furthermore, it's not just the passengers who have a say in how AVs behave, but also the manufacturers, and more likely than not, government regulators. Gabriel Goldberg, Computers and Publishing, Inc. gabe@gabegold.com 3401 Silver Maple Place, Falls Church, VA 22042 (703) 204-0433
(Motherboard,/Vice, 6 Jul 2016) "Sufficiently Advanced Technology is Indistinguishable from Magic" <https://duckduckgo.com/html/?q=Sufficiently Advanced Technology Indistinguishable from Magic> did you, too, feet like nodding knowingly with a smile when hearing, reading, or thinking about that meme? (Arthur C. Clarke's 3rd law)?!? but was that followed by "White or Black Magic?!?" thoughts? ..or "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced" (Gehm's corollary)? ...don't miss the knowing smiles when reading this article : When AI Goes Wrong, We Won't Be Able to Ask It Why <https://motherboard.vice.com/read/ai-deep-learning-ethics-right-to-explanation?trk_source=recommended> (Written by Jordan Pearson, July 6, 2016)
Jen Nowell, *Palo Alto Daily Post*, front page story, 13 Jun 2016 Mall robot runs over tot; After two incidents, units are shut down A 16-month boy was knocked over by a security robot at Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto, which then ran over him, leaving him bruised and scared. The 5-foot 300-pound Knightsope K5 Robot failed to stop as it approached Harwin Cheng, hit him in the head, knocked him to the ground, and then ran over his right foot. His mother pulled him away just as the robot was about to run over his left foot. The robot uses a combination of cameras and sensors ... The same robot had previously run over another child, so *all* K5 robots have been taken out of service!!!! A logical guess for repetitive accidents of this type might be that the sensors are positioned to that they cannot detect standalone small children!
[Note: This item comes from friend Jen Snow. Jen's comment: It is going to be an interesting next several years as technology starts to change society in radical ways'. DLH] Allee Manning, Vocativ, 8 Jul 2016 The robot used, however, is not uncommon—more than 350 U.S. police departments have them <http://www.vocativ.com/338397/dallas-shooting-bomb-robot/> After hours of negotiations and an exchange of gunfire, the Dallas shooting ended when police used a *bomb robot* to kill one of the shooting suspects on Thursday night. While Dallas Police Chief David Brown did not specifically describe the device, his language at a press conference indicated that it was a bomb disposal robot that ultimately killed Micah Xavier Johnson. "We saw no other option but to use our bomb robot and place a device on its extension for it to detonate where the suspect was. Other options would have exposed our officers to grave danger," Johnson had told the hostage negotiator that police would eventually find the IEDs that he planted in the downtown Dallas area. The usage of this type of robotics technology to kill a civilian as a policing mechanism is the first of its kind in the U.S., as bomb disposal robots are typically used for the opposite purpose: to remove explosives from an area in order protect those in its immediate vicinity from the loss of life. Sometimes they will do so by triggering a controlled explosion. Normally, however, a human is not the target for those explosions. As Fusion reports, the use of robots weaponized with bombs for the purpose of killing is a practice typically reserved for the U.S. military. In *The Changing Character of War*, military historians outlined how MARCBOTs, created for the purpose of detecting the enemy's presence and/or explosives, was first repurposed by U.S. soldiers to kill during the war in Iraq. Bomb disposal robots (properly termed Explosive Ordnance Disposal robots) have been in use since 1972, when the U.S. military pioneered the technology. But since then, these robots, which can now be operated remotely, have become increasingly advanced. They've also become an increasingly common tool used in U.S. policing since the Department of Defense created a program for transferring surplus military equipment to these departments in 1990. The Center for the Study of the Drone discovered that this program has led to the procurement of these types of devices by over 350 police departments across the country. [...] [See also Bomb Robot' Takes Down Dallas Gunman, but Raises Enforcement Questions, noted by Monty Solomon: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/09/science/dallas-bomb-robot.html PGN]
Fantasy writer Terry Pratchett probably didn't consider his "Luggage", a slavishly devoted mobile trunk that sometimes ate interlopers, as something designers should aspire to. http://www.gizmag.com/olive-robot-suitcase/44085/ > Olive is the brainchild of Iran-based Ikap Robotics, and although it > may look like a standard piece of luggage, it has a Segway-like, > self-balancing auto-locomotion system that maintains stability while > riding on two wheels by using 3D accelerometers and gyroscopes. With > an in-built stereoscopic camera, it can build up a visual map of its > surroundings and follow its owner using skeleton tracker algorithms > that is claimed to allow Olive to distinguish individuals even in > crowded environments. I'm having enough trouble trying to figure out all the potential risks of something like this operating mostly as intended (consider the recent "hoverboard" recall). Let alone what could be done if someone hacked "intelligent" suitcases or—perish the thought—produced versions with malevolent firmware.
Charlie Osborne for Between the Lines, ZDNet, 29 Jun 2016 Customer deceit and circumventing software has cost the automaker dearly—and the story isn't over. http://www.zdnet.com/article/volkswagen-to-pay-up-to-14-7-billion-in-us-emissions-scandal-probe/
If the axle count of trains in Switzerland is a multiple of 2^8 (i.e., 256), their control system does not detect the existence of that train! http://i.imgur.com/DrEinPB.png https://twitter.com/mitsuhiko/status/752398314528731137 [Thanks to Steve Bellovin for spotting this one. PGN]
[Please read this to the end. PGN] A new paper [1] suggests that as many as 40,000 scientific studies that used Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to analyse human brain activity may be invalid because of a software fault common to all three of the most popular image analysis packages. ... From the paper's significance statement: "Functional MRI (fMRI) is 25 years old, yet surprisingly its most common statistical methods have not been validated using real data. Here, we used resting-state fMRI data from 499 healthy controls to conduct 3 million task group analyses. Using this null data with different experimental designs, we estimate the incidence of significant results. In theory, we should find 5% false positives (for a significance threshold of 5%), but instead we found that the most common software packages for fMRI analysis (SPM, FSL, AFNI) can result in false-positive rates of up to 70%. These results question the validity of some 40,000 fMRI studies and may have a large impact on the interpretation of neuroimaging results." Two of the software related risks: a) It is common to assume that software that is widely used must be reliable, yet 40,000 teams did not spot these flaws[2]. The authors identified a bug in one package that had been present for 15 years. b) Quoting from the paper: "It is not feasible to redo 40,000 fMRI studies, and lamentable archiving and data-sharing practices mean most could not be reanalyzed either." [1] "Cluster failure: Why fMRI inferences for spatial extent have inflated false-positive rates" by Anders Eklund, Thomas E. Nichols and Hans Knufsson. <http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/06/27/1602413113.full> [2] That's so many you begin to wonder if this paper might itself be wrong? Expect to see a retraction in a future RISKS. ;-) [Also noted by Lauren Weinstein in *The Register*:] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/07/03/mri_software_bugs_could_upend_years_of_research/ [And then there is this counter-argument, noted by Mark Thorson: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2016/07/07/false-positive-fmri-mainstream/ The author (Neuroskeptic) notes that Eklund et al. have discovered a different kind of bug in AFNI, but does not apply to FSL and SPM, and does not "invalidate 15 years of brain research." PGN]
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/revolutionary-internet-software-moves-voting-191300488.html > Web-Impac's voter software could potentially change the way Americans vote > and propel the United States election process into the 21st Century, and > Web-Impac is featuring The World Votes, which is a virtual election, live > and open to anyone with access to the Internet. This system reportedly has a remarkable feature that renders it ridiculous for any serious election. With almost no effort, it is possible to vote as often as you like, and have all of your votes count. You can delete cookies, or pop up a new tab, or probably other hacks, after which it forgets you have already voted. That would *REALLY* change the way we vote!
[ TANSTAAFL - but the Researchers report a not-obvious RISK-angle ] Multitasking Drains Your Brain's Energy Reserves, Researchers Say <https://tech.slashdot.org/story/16/07/03/1628243/multitasking-drains-your-brains-energy-reserves-researchers-say> (Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday July 03, 2016) quoting from an article in Quartz: "When we attempt to multitask, we don't actually do more than one activity at once, but quickly switch between them. And this switching is exhausting. It uses up oxygenated glucose in the brain, running down the same fuel that's needed to focus on a task... "That switching comes with a biological cost that ends up making us feel tired <http://qz.com/722661/neuroscientists-say-multitasking-literally-drains-the-energy-reserves-of-your-brain/> ...much more quickly than if we sustain attention on one thing," says Daniel Levitin, professor of behavioral neuroscience at McGill University. "People eat more, they take more caffeine. Often what you really need in that moment isn't caffeine, but just a break. If you aren't taking regular breaks every couple of hours, your brain won't benefit from that extra cup of coffee." EditorDavid asks: Anyone have any anecdotal experiences that back this up?
NNSquad http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-07/s-tii070716.php The truth is being suppressed across the world using a variety of methods, according to a special report in the 250th issue of Index on Censorship magazine. Physical violence is not the only method being used to stop news being published, says editor Rachael Jolley in the Danger in Truth: Truth in Danger report. As well as kidnapping and murders, financial pressure and defamation legislation is being used, the report reveals. "In many countries around the world, journalists have lost their status as observers and now come under direct attack."
Now, we are caught in a series of confusing battles between opposing forces: between truth and falsehood, fact and rumour, kindness and cruelty; between the few and the many, the connected and the alienated; between the open platform of the web as its architects envisioned it and the gated enclosures of Facebook and other social networks; between an informed public and a misguided mob. What is common to these struggles -- and what makes their resolution an urgent matter—is that they all involve the diminishing status of truth. This does not mean that there are no truths. It simply means, as this year has made very clear, that we cannot agree on what those truths are, and when there is no consensus about the truth and no way to achieve it, chaos soon follows. Increasingly, what counts as a fact is merely a view that someone feels to be true—and technology has made it very easy for these "facts" to circulate with a speed and reach that was unimaginable in the Gutenberg era (or even a decade ago). A dubious story about Cameron and a pig appears in a tabloid one morning, and by noon, it has flown around the world on social media and turned up in trusted news sources everywhere. This may seem like a small matter, but its consequences are enormous. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jul/12/how-technology-disrupted-the-truth
[NOTE: SRE refers to Site Reliability Engineering. PGN] https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/07/adventures-in-SRE-land-welcome-to-Google-Mission-Control.html But what is an SRE? According to Google Vice President of Engineering Ben Treynor Sloss, who coined the term SRE, "SRE is what happens when you ask a software engineer to design an operations function." In 2003, Ben was asked to lead Google's existing "Production Team" which at the time consisted of seven software engineers. The team started as a software engineering team, and since Ben is also a software engineer, he continued to grow a team that he, as a software engineer, would still want to work on. Thirteen years later, Ben leads a team of roughly 2,000 SREs, and it is still a team that software engineers want to work on. About half of the engineers who do a Mission Control rotation choose to remain an SRE after their rotation is complete.
As you may have suspected, your car is spying on you. Fire up a new model and it updates more than 100,000 data points, including rather personal details like the front-seat passenger's weight. The navigation system tracks every mile and remembers your route to work. The vehicular brain is smart enough to help avoid traffic jams or score parking spaces, and soon will be able to log not only your itineraries but your Internet shopping patterns. To read the entire article, go to http://bloom.bg/29KIPkx
[ Everyone (and their dogs) want to Monitor EveryOne and EveryThing...] Uber Plans To Start Monitoring Their Drivers' Behavior <https://tech.slashdot.org/story/16/07/03/2111209/uber-plans-to-start-monitoring-their-drivers-behavior> (Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday July 03, 2016) An anonymous SlashDot reader writes: Uber "has developed a new technology that it plans on using to track driver behavior, <http://blog.sfgate.com/techchron/2016/06/29/uber-plans-to-start-tracking-driving-behavior/> ...specifically if drivers are traveling too fast or braking too harshly..." according to the San Francisco Chronicle, which writes that "Information about how a driver is performing will be shared with Uber, but will also be shared with the driver, along with safety tips on how they can improve their performance." Uber will roll this out as an update to their app, using existing smartphone functionality, and "in some cities Uber will also monitor whether or not Uber drivers are picking up their phones (either to text or even just to look at maps) during a ride using the phone's gyroscope." Ride-sharing companies seem to be growing more and more powerful. One Florida county actually received a grant to offer free Uber rides to low-income workers, and to allow the county transit authority to arrange rides for those residents without a smartphone. Uber recently even became the "official designated driving app" for Mother's Against Drunk Driving, and published a graph suggesting Uber pickups correlate to a drop in drunk-driving arrests. And in other news, Uber rides have apparently even been used by a group of human traffickers to smuggle migrants from Central America into the United States.
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