Serious question: how will it make life better for all? I haven't given that question a lot of thought, and I haven't heard legit answers from others yet.
If autonomous systems reach the point where they are measurably safer than human drivers, there's an obvious benefit to using them.
Again it's an if, but lots of people drive long distances and don't enjoy it. An autonomous vehicle would relieve them of the driving task. It would also add a transport option for people that are unable to drive long distances.
It's likely to reduce the cost of taxi like services, as drivers are currently a significant portion of those costs (autonomous driving turns pricing into almost a pure calculation about return on investment).
I guess you might dismiss those as not being "legit" enough since they are all contingent on the systems working well.
No, I'm with you here. Just thinking through the other side of some of these. Lost jobs. Not sure "safety" is a big enough issue here. On a larger scale, I'm significantly concerned that society (thru tech) is becoming increasingly optimized for comfort and safety. That bothers me. It removes so much of what is good about life. I don't want guaranteed life until 100. I don't want comfort all the time; that stunts growth. There is a lot of grey area here, of course. But this has been on my mind for a while now.
Losing truck driving jobs isn't removing what is good about life. Neither is too much safety. The people whose lives are being saved by technology aren't worrying about having too much safety. Only those who are privileged and don't have to worry about anything, realistically.
Living in a city where people park on the side of the road, I can't wait for autonomous cars to completely transform the urban space.
Currently, there are two lanes of parked cars, plus two sidewalks and (usually) two lanes for traffic.
Autonomous driving would allow cars to park themselves off-site, such as underground garages a block or two away. That alone could double the space available for pedestrians, or other uses of public space such as outside cafes, green spaces etc.
The ability to quickly call a vehicle, adaptable to your current needs (minivan for family on Saturday, open two-seater for a summer date) could also start a major move away from car ownership, reducing the total number.
Improvements in traffic management (shorter distances between cars, coordinated starting/stopping, interleaving intersections) also have the potential to allow us to reduce 4-lane roads to just two. We might even find ways to make one-way streets work for most residential area. All this again frees up public space.
I don't know about that. Let's talk unemotionally about it. People die. Not all of them live until natural death. That's ok. That's how life works. There is plenty of good that comes from this. Is a goal of keeping every person alive until X# (90? 100?) a good one? I'm not sure it is. Simply saying "people dying is bad" isn't a very reasoned thought if you take away the assumption that everyone agrees with this.
Sure, fewer people dying is a bit undifferentiated if you want to go for ethical discourse. I would probably be okay with a few extra dead people if that increased the overall happiness of the remaining people. I'm not sure that having people die in traffic is a good way to achieve that.
I get that, but this product development aimed at prolonging life, comfort, and safety through technology should not be taken lightly without this discussion right here (ethical discourse, as you call it). I can't divorce the two in my mind.
Again it's an if, but lots of people drive long distances and don't enjoy it. An autonomous vehicle would relieve them of the driving task. It would also add a transport option for people that are unable to drive long distances.
It's likely to reduce the cost of taxi like services, as drivers are currently a significant portion of those costs (autonomous driving turns pricing into almost a pure calculation about return on investment).
I guess you might dismiss those as not being "legit" enough since they are all contingent on the systems working well.