Uber Troubles For Uber

[kerbiloid]

45 minutes ago, YNM said:

Imagine a stone-age village.

They didn't need to have any form of connection to other villages; They are self-sufficient.

They had trading paths from Red Sea to Central Anatolia, and from Anatolia to Zagros. 9000 years ago. That's how Jericho, Chatal-Huyuk and others rised.
Stone from Anatolian volcanoes, shells from Red Sea, sea food from Mediterranian coastline, crops and meat from Canaan and Zagros, etc. A chain of pedestrial routes.

Since a settlement achieved some critical (afaik ~10 k) population, its growth began drastically force  technologies and abilities because of resource concentration and division of lanour.

Even earlier a settlement had enough free hands to build stone walls and protect goods from neighbors.
Once such fortress appeared, it became a regional trade center and deposit of goods. It could quickly create an army to withstand the neighbors' tribal warboys.
First states appeared.

45 minutes ago, YNM said:

Until we hit their limits, just like all the crumbled civilizations.

All crumbled civilizations were rural, btw.

***

Anyway, a transportation system can be regulated and automated much easier in an urban area, rather than in suburban or rural one, and I just wanted to say that as (I'm sure) urban areas will consume population from rural and suburban ones, depopulating the latter, all these clever robocar efforts look like driving a plane with a pack of eagles - technically possible, practically useless.
Railways, capsule transportation pipelines, conveyor belts, elevators - that's the future, and this will be automated much easier, without AI vision and silhouette recognition.

Edited March 26, 2018 by kerbiloid

[YNM]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

All crumbled civilizations were rural, btw.

What, do you think Aztecs, Mayan, and Incas were rural ? (alright, they were killed by europeans.)

But you could argue that other stuff might end our "modern" civilization.

 

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, YNM said:

What, do you think Aztecs, Mayan, and Incas were rural ?

Industrial?
Even Ancient Rome and medieval European kingdoms were rural, while American civilizations didn't even use metals except the softest of them. Plowland and/or pastures owning was defining everything.
Whole feudal system (in every part of the world) is/was based on "which part of ground is owned by this person", peasants as applied tools. Just because almost any goods were produced manually growing/herding them on this ground.

When industrial manufacturing took over, the capitalism has appeared, when it doesn't matter how much land do you own (if any at all), only your financial capitals have a meaning, while land is just a kind of goods.
(This was not just a declaration. On industrial revolution/capitalism appearing in XVIII-early XIX, productivity increased up to 30 times, causing first crisis of overproduction in history. Medieval guilds disappeared, totally changing face of cities. This in turn cause growth of population, overpopulation of villages, lack of plowland, and forced a mass migration of peasant to cities, giving a big crowd of workers, allowing the industry to grow up even faster.)
 

Edited March 26, 2018 by kerbiloid

[tater]

6 hours ago, YNM said:

Not really. Urbanization means increased need of built environment. Urbanization means a basic need to transport something from as far as needed. There's also the problem of most urban areas being located in relatively fertile lands, leaving behind less desirable lands to do other things.

Everything I've ever read about environmental impact says that cities are far better than people spread out in terms of environmental impact.

I've never lived in an apartment in my life, except the dorms at university (and part way through, a group of us rented a house, instead). I can agree that urbanization is better, even if I'm unsure if I would ever choose it for myself. I actually love a good city, it's simply a matter of cost for a lifestyle I would consider acceptable. We'd happily live in a smaller home in a great city, but you'd still have to be able to work, and to afford a place that you want to live in.

1 hour ago, YNM said:

What, do you think Aztecs, Mayan, and Incas were rural ? (alright, they were killed by europeans.)

They were already failing when Europeans showed up. While the Mexica city of Tenochtitlan was a large and beautiful place according to the Spaniards, it was still only about 200,000 people. It was urban for the time, but not urban in any modern sense.

[YNM]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

Even Ancient Rome and medieval European kingdoms were rural...

Holy heck.

Do you seriously consider something that made portland concrete 1500 years before portland "rural" ? (Medieval Europe, with all the dark age stuff, might well be. But not Baghdad.)

39 minutes ago, tater said:

Everything I've ever read about environmental impact says that cities are far better than people spread out in terms of environmental impact.

The problem is those suburban and rural sprawl around towns.

Maximum efficiency is either extremely rural (like in the outback) or extremely urban (arcologies).

41 minutes ago, tater said:

it was still only about 200,000 people.

Only. When in a time Europeans having hard times fighting plagues.

[tater]

23 minutes ago, YNM said:

Holy heck.

Do you seriously consider something that made portland concrete 1500 years before portland "rural" ? (Medieval Europe, with all the dark age stuff, might well be. But not Baghdad.)

It was still an agrarian society, with the majority of humans working to secure food. Hence still rural. The beginnings of cities is fine, and it's not hunting and gathering, but it was not urban in the modern sense, though clearly headed in that direction.

 

23 minutes ago, YNM said:

The problem is those suburban and rural sprawl around towns.

Maximum efficiency is either extremely rural (like in the outback) or extremely urban (arcologies).

Rural is never maximally efficient with modern population sizes.

Arcologies are unlikely to be a thing, and cities right now are fine. The suburban sprawl is baked into the calculations that show urbanization as being more efficient. To the extent they fill in and become more urban, it only improves.

 

23 minutes ago, YNM said:

Only. When in a time Europeans having hard times fighting plagues.

Doesn't matter, still agrarian. If the majority of the humans are required to secure food you are not an urban society.

Where we put the line is somewhat arbitrary, but there is an order of magnitude change going on in this graph. Modern urbanization is closer to 5% agricultural workers than 50%.

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, YNM said:

Do you seriously consider something that made portland concrete 1500 years before portland "rural" ?

What every good Roman man should know in life. (Cato Maior guarantees this).

https://la.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_agri_cultura

https://la.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_re_rustica_(Varro)

They were absolutely rural and agricultural. War, farming and politics were occupations of a noble man.
Plowland, pasture, other land resources were a measure.
Just money itself meant almost nothing for social status.
Banking was a disgrace for a nobleman, as well as crafting. Only libertines (i.e. retired slaves), commoners, and foreigners (i.e. inferiors) were doing this. A nobleman could only own a workshop.
Almost all goods were of agricultural origin, i.e. food, skins, furs.
Though yes, buildings were great. Mostly Greeks were making them, then some Romans took part (what a shame!).
And noblemen were mostly living in their rural and suburban mansions, using the City as HQ.

1 hour ago, YNM said:

The problem is those suburban and rural sprawl around towns.

A city doesn't necessary require a suburban area. Just historically it is usually there, but not always. Cities built in XX from scratch may consist of urban areas only.

P.S.
I believe, arcologies will appear not intentionally but like a drop of water forms a sphere.
Early New Amsterdam was not designed as a pack of skyscrapers. But lack of money made to get vertical. As well as Roman insulas. Rent 1000 m² of land and lease 100000 m² of floor.
(Shanghai, Kuala Lumpur, etc as well)
Connect them with passages, add artificial light, and you have a beginning of Manhattan arcology.

Suburban areas have one disadvantage: to live comfy you need enough rich neighbors. It's expensive to have pipes, cables and roads to a former fashionable area if only 1 of 4 its houses pays for light and water. So, if 3 of 4 have no salary, the last 1 will need to evacuate from there, no matter has he money himself or not.
(Or he should use to live without light and water.)
So, if a suburban area gets all "for sale" and nobody buys, they will just cut it to ground to prevent it from becoming a nest of robbers.
I think, that's how nowadays cities will become arcologies. The biggest of them. Not so biggest - see about abandoned suburban areas.

And as we can see, a self-driving car needs human-level AI, which in turn means that once such car appears, human labourers will be replaced with same AI in other places.
(And this would cause a mass migration to biggest towns, making them to build apartments for former farmers and small towners).
So, a full-featured self-driving car creation would immediately mean its moral obsolescence.

(finished editing)

Edited March 26, 2018 by kerbiloid

[YNM]

2 hours ago, tater said:

To the extent they fill in and become more urban, it only improves.

That only sets the precedent for even more complicated measures. (But I like complicated measures ! Why is this soo torning !)

2 hours ago, tater said:

If the majority of the humans are required to secure food you are not an urban society.

You're referring "industrial" there.

Also, your graphs are IMO slightly skewed - not all parts of the world has gone that way.

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

A city doesn't necessary require a suburban area. Just historically it is usually there, but not always. Cities built in XX from scratch may consist of urban areas only.

Yeah...

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

Suburban areas have one disadvantage: to live comfy you need enough rich neighbors.

... Or get small houses. (like we do.)

Too small and people will scream "slum" though.

 

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

And as we can see, a self-driving car needs human-level AI, which in turn means that once such car appears, human labourers will be replaced with same AI in other places.

I think this is slightly more relevant to initial topic.

@LordFerret, do you think they'd need such stuff ? Is there any form of AI "learning" that isn't just optimization algorithm ?

[tater]

45 minutes ago, YNM said:

You're referring "industrial" there.

For the modern world, the 2 are related. If you need to make up a new word, whatever. The reality is that modern, urban areas are far more ecologically efficient than rural areas, period. A billion people urbanized in the modern way have lower impact than the same billion with 70% on farms.

 

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

And as we can see, a self-driving car needs human-level AI, which in turn means that once such car appears, human labourers will be replaced with same AI in other places.

This is patent nonsense.

Self-driving requires nothing even approaching human level intelligence. Narrow systems can be superhuman at driving, and will be, shortly. Recognize hazards, avoid them. Route finding is not that big a deal.

 

On topic:

One, the accident victim was homeless. This tells us rather a lot. This means there is a better than even chance she was mentally ill, and many of those are self-medicating (ie: drunks). Hence the inattention to signage, etc. Two, the "driver" Uber hired to monitor a car? A convicted felon. When they started, they used their engineers. Now? Not so much, lol.

Edited March 26, 2018 by tater

[YNM]

5 hours ago, tater said:

For the modern world, the 2 are related.

Just because smoking is related to lung cancer doesn't mean lung cancer is smoking.

5 hours ago, tater said:

... homeless... mentally ill...

Oh, seriously.

 

[tater]

12 minutes ago, YNM said:

Just because smoking is related to lung cancer doesn't mean lung cancer is smoking.

We are discussing the modern world, which is, duh, post industrial revolution. Talking about a fantasyland where rural populations have no modern tech is just that, fantasy. So forget about non-industrialized, urban areas, or take it to a thread about raising unicorns as farm animals. People use power, and industrially produced products, and those are distributed more efficiently in cities.

 

12 minutes ago, YNM said:

Oh, seriously.

20-25% of the homeless have serious mental illness (according to the healthcare advocates who track this). That number is just 4% for the pop at large. ~18% of the pop at large has some lesser form of mental illness, expect the homeless % to mirror the 5X factor for serious mental illness. Make it less as you like, but it still must be higher than 1:1, since 5X more homeless have serious mental illness. Even at just twice the incidence, we're over 50% of the homeless exhibiting some form of mental illness. I'm sure with your encyclopedic experience of living in US urban areas you see a majority of homeless who aren't nuts... They're mostly crazy in my experience. My wife's, too, and she has to treat them in the hospital.

[YNM]

29 minutes ago, tater said:

We are discussing the modern world, which is, duh, post industrial revolution.

I know.

To an extent, however, some of those new needs are also liabilities. Take electricity : the slightest moment it's entirely interrupted would mean an instant disruption to our "modern" world.

 

45 minutes ago, tater said:

... since 5X more homeless have serious mental illness. ...

Hold that thought to your mind.

It is wrong. More so for using it to justify hitting them.

[tater]

1 minute ago, YNM said:

I know.

To an extent, however, some of those new needs are also liabilities. Take electricity : the slightest moment it's entirely interrupted would mean an instant disruption to our "modern" world.

So what? We're talking (tangentially) about the environmental impact of city dwellers vs the same population spread out in the countryside. The latter is more impactful.

 

1 minute ago, YNM said:

Hold that thought to your mind.

It is wrong. More so for using it to justify hitting them.

No, the incidence of mental illness in the homeless is a measurable fact. You can not like that, but it doesn't make it untrue. Most bums in the US are mentally ill. heck, that would be true just from substance abuse, if you call that a mental illness as many do.

Where did I justify hitting them, exactly? I said it helped explain what led to her violating the law---and common sense---that resulted in her death. There are multiple factors that could contribute, exacerbated by her homeless state. Mental illness if present (they are often not always aware of dangers, I've seen them walking in the middle of traffic in broad daylight), substance abuse (I actually witnessed a drunk woman step right in front of a car (not even within braking or reaction distance, maybe 2 car lengths at 40 mph) as I said up thread), exhaustion (living outside), dehydration, hunger. The list goes on. All would impair ones ability to effectively cross a street in a normal period of time, and many would also impair judgement.

[YNM]

49 minutes ago, tater said:

The latter is more impactful.

In where they asks for the same amenities, yes. "Otherwise", not really.

49 minutes ago, tater said:

No, the incidence of mental illness in the homeless is a measurable fact.

... Which tells there's something wrong. Or is being mentally ill makes you automagically loses home ?

49 minutes ago, tater said:

Where did I justify hitting them, exactly ?

Somewhere back in the thread, perhaps ?

Hitting them per chance, not intentionally. But you could argue the fact that the chances exists in relatively high numbers makes for a compelling question "why's nothing done to it ?".

Edited March 27, 2018 by YNM

[tater]

3 hours ago, YNM said:

In where they asks for the same amenities, yes. "Otherwise", not really.

The same amenities. Like medicine, transportation other than walking, any electrical power at all, modern biology. Basically anything that involves tech levels of metallurgy and above. For the exact same number of people. Minus modern tech, including agricultural tech, those billions starve to death, so I suppose they do have less impact once they are dead. I'm happier to have them alive than dead, YMMV.

3 hours ago, YNM said:

... Which tells there's something wrong. Or is being mentally ill makes you automagically loses home ?

The mentally ill have trouble keeping jobs, even when given housing, they basically require large amounts of care to stay on meds, etc. Such people used to be put in mental institutions, which were judges to be "warehousing" and against their civil liberties, so now they fend for themselves. If truly poor (as they mostly are) they qualify for all kinds of government aid, BTW, but they are mentally ill, so they don't avail themselves of it enough. Helping them requires removing their liberty.

 

3 hours ago, YNM said:

Somewhere back in the thread, perhaps ?

Nope. I said as a reality check that the Uber driver was a convicted felon (so he inattention was unsurprising, as she's not a responsible human), and that the victim was a bum (homeless). Since they are often mentally ill, and/or self medicating (drunks), this could explain her poor decision making, or simply her lack of looking before she crossed. If it turns out she was impaired, that reduces the responsibility of Uber in the crash (people have to be assumed to take some care in crossing streets, after all).

3 hours ago, YNM said:

Hitting them per chance, not intentionally. But you could argue the fact that the chances exists in relatively high numbers makes for a compelling question "why's nothing done to it ?".

Done to what? To solve mental health issues? Like I said, people don;t want to be incarerated, but the mentally ill often require something like that level of intervention to stay on meds that make them functional. A typical scenario is that they take meds which are effective. They feel sane, and decide they are cured, and go off the meds.

[YNM]

33 minutes ago, tater said:

Minus modern tech, including agricultural tech, those billions starve to death, so I suppose they do have less impact once they are dead.

Well, I think if it's on the entirety, yeah.

36 minutes ago, tater said:

Such people used to be put in mental institutions, which were judged to be "warehousing" and against their civil liberties, so now they fend for themselves.

Well, you know the way out...

42 minutes ago, tater said:

Like I said, people don't want to be incarerated, but the mentally ill often require something like that level of intervention to stay on meds that make them functional.

 

 

1 hour ago, tater said:

I said as a reality check that the Uber driver was a convicted felon (so her inattention was unsurprising, as she's not a responsible human), and that the victim was a bum (homeless).

It's a bad case for Uber then.

[tater]

Assuming someone has standing to sue.

[YNM]

Legalities of "driverless" cars :

http://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-43937072/hemel-hempstead-autopilot-tesla-seat-switch-driver-banned

... And a new finding on the dead horse.

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/uber-finds-deadly-accident-likely-caused-by-software-set-to-ignore-objects-on-road?shared=56c9f0114b0bb781

A related "reverse case" :

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/inside-cruises-bumpy-ride-the-limits-of-self-driving-cars

Seems like they'd still need a lot of divine interventions ?

(yeah, the last asks for subscription. The middle one asks for e-mail; but I did it with a dud I had for deleting my twitter; it only sent an e-mail suggesting subscription.)

Edited May 8, 2018 by YNM

[LordFerret]

Related to the above...
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-selfdriving/uber-hires-former-ntsb-chair-to-advise-on-safety-culture-after-fatal-crash-idUSKBN1I81Z4?feedType=RSS&feedName=technologyNews&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FtechnologyNews+(Reuters+Technology+News)

 

Despite all of this news, it's still just speculation on the part of the media; There is an ongoing investigation, and until it's finished there is no official report of cause.

That being said; This paints a picture, one which says software is not and should not be referred to as being 'AI'... they're so far from sentience it isn't funny. Back to my original post; "... but it won't be machines that become sentient, it will be that Mathematics that becomes sentient. "

[YNM]

34 minutes ago, LordFerret said:

It's still just speculation on the part of the media.

Yep.

Does still paint a picture that they only learn what we tell them to learn, not everything else. Considering those two (extreme ?) cases, I wonder how would they react with the crazy amount of motorcycles here and "unofficial polices" guarding the U-turns ! (they block the main road just gathering money)

[tater]

Ars reporting the same:

 

[LordFerret]

Yes, I liked how one report I'd read worded it as the computer/software 'chose' to ignore the object in the roadway.

[tater]

Yeah, vs treating it as a false positive. That's got to be a substantial issue, since treating everythign as a real threat means that the car becomes paralyzed.

[LordFerret]

On 3/19/2018 at 8:28 PM, LordFerret said:

How does AI determine when presented the situation of having to chose the life of a 7 year old vs a 70 year old... swerving and dodging that (dog, cat, squirrel, cow, ???) running out into the street vs that oncoming bus in the opposite lane... or that instant where it's your life or the life in the opposite oncoming vehicle... or the AI's own life over yours? Now imagine that AI is truly sentient; Ask that last question again.

 

[tater]

Self driving cars are not AGI, nor sentient, and won't ever be. Driving is a mechanical task that requires neither capability.