From the little I know, it looks like google cars are at least able to tell when they need a human to take over (and stop when said human doesn't).
Okay, this makes perfect sense, thanks.
It does feed into another conjecture I heard (I forget where), that most deaths from robot cars are going to happen when they unexpectedly hand control to a human, who needs time to transition into the right mental context to drive.
Yep. It already happens with airliners, where pilots do errors specifically because they are too used to automation and fall prey to boredom induced sleepiness.
If there are sufficiently few special case, we could have the car stopping before it switches to manual mode. The goal being that the human would take control at leisure, and not in the midst of motion.
Or, switch to a semi manual mode, where safeties are still on. Even when lost, the car can still see nearby obstacles, sense weather the tires stick to the road etc.
We could also keep a fully manual ...
Discussion article for the meetup : Berkeley: How Robot Cars Are Near
WHEN: 19 December 2012 07:30:00PM (-0500)
WHERE: Berkeley, CA
Location and time for this Wednesday's meetup are confirmed! It will be at 7:30pm (not 7pm) at Zendo. I will not be there, but Michael Keenan will be giving a talk about robot cars.
Michael Keenan is an entrepreneur, activist and futurist who works with The Seasteading Institute and the Center For Applied Rationality. His talk, How Robot Cars Are Near, describes how robot cars will save millions of lives, billions of hours and trillions of dollars.
Michael will also be speaking at the Extreme Futurist Fest on December 22.
For directions to Zendo, see the mailing list:
http://groups.google.com/group/bayarealesswrong
or call me at:
http://i.imgur.com/Vcafy.png
Discussion article for the meetup : Berkeley: How Robot Cars Are Near