[gretch]

You can already do this to humans pretty much just as easily, I just need some orange cones

Then what? You have 20 palettes of dog chew toys or asian pears....? Some of the goods have serial/tracking numbers.

The reason people don't rob 18 wheelers or trains is because it's not a good criminal enterprise

[mstade]

People absolutely rob 18 wheelers, and in creative ways too. There was a story in Sweden some time ago I found particularly crazy – robbers entering the back of a truck, while driving at about 50 mph. They climbed from the hood of a trailing car on to the truck, stole a bunch of stuff, and then climbed back out again. I wouldn’t have believed it if it weren’t for the fact that the affected shipping company (the national post service) rigged trucks with cameras to catch them in action. Mind boggling.

Also, not all valuable cargo are gps tracked smartphones and laptops, and not all situation mean having to stop and threaten a driver. For example: tree logs. They are often loaded onto trailers that are then left standing waiting to be picked up, or left standing part way to their destination because it’s driven by multiple drivers (usually happens when they have a long way to go.) It can take days before anyone even realizes the cargo is gone, because there’s a gap between drop off and pick up.

This kind of stuff is easy to steal, not especially hard to fence, and definitely not something your garden variety meth head does on a whim because of the logistics involved. This is enterprise level crime.

I’ve heard this is especially popular close to unmonitored border crossings (i.e. most EU borders) as it then makes the investigative work harder because jurisdiction.

Sure, gps tracking helps finding the stolen trailer – if it’s even being tracked – but by the time the police get there the goods are long gone and essentially untraceable. Nobody puts trackers in tree logs, and it can take days before anyone realizes it’s even gone because of the gap between drop off and pick up.

Just because it doesn’t make the news doesn’t mean it’s not happening.

[tachyonbeam]

> Then what? You have 20 palettes of dog chew toys or asian pears....? Some of the goods have serial/tracking numbers.

Your comment made me laugh. Very true. Besides the fact that there is no black market for 20 palettes of dog chew and asian pears, the other problem is that unless you successfully steal a few highly valuable items, you would need one or multiple trucks to carry what you've stolen from that semi. You probably don't want to use the semi you just stopped, because it could have multiple GPS trackers onboard.

If you knew that you were stopping a truck full of laptops, then maybe it would be worth it somehow, but as you pointed out, laptops have serial numbers... And then what, you load a few hundred laptops into a van, but your van is now "burned". It's been photographed and you need to dump it somewhere, further complicating your operation.

Then, I don't know, it seems to me like people just love to come up with imaginary reasons why self-driving cars/trucks can't work. They seem to fail to realize that, well, we can come up with even better safety measures. You could make your automated truck very hard to open. It doesn't need to have a lock that can be opened by a human with a physical key. It can have an electronic lock inside the door, shielded behind a 5mm thick steel plate, that's completely invisible from the outside.

You could also install a remote-controlled drone on top of the truck (value < $1000). The truck has cameras all around that record continuously, and as soon as the truck gets stopped (or even slightly before), it phones home. A remote operator sees everything the cameras saw. The thieves waste precious time opening and unloading the truck, and just when they're about to take off, the remote controlled drone starts up and follows them around for as long as its batteries will allow (~10-20 minutes), informing the authorities as to their position.

If robberies of automated trucks became rampant, I'm pretty sure we could come up with many ways to mitigate the problem. I mean, heck, we could even install pepper sprayers around the truck. But the robbers can just wear full-face masks, you say. Sure they can, but those masks aren't foolproof, and it's an additional piece of logistics they need to deal with.

[gwern]

> Then, I don't know, it seems to me like people just love to come up with imaginary reasons why self-driving cars/trucks can't work.

The way I like to put it (https://www.gwern.net/Complexity-vs-AI#technology-forecastin...) is: 'The critic asks “can I think of any reason this system might not work?” and stops as soon as they find one excuse, but the forecaster needs to ask, “can I think of any system like this which could ever work?” and keep going.'

[riversflow]

I don’t think this is a fair characterization of adversarial attacks on AI. People on hacker news are simply forecasting the future of hacking. People aren’t really saying ‘it won’t work, forget about it!’ they are simply pointing out that historically technology and criminal enterprise have followed a similar pattern to the garter snake and the rough skinned newt[1]. The more sophisticated deterrents evolve, the more clever adversarial strategies become.

[1] https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-a-deadly-camping-t...

[gwern]

> The more sophisticated deterrents evolve, the more clever adversarial strategies become.

And yet, not clever enough to be so successful as to stop automation, or economic development, or increasing global wealth, or...

[starlust2]

You'd also have to dodge every other vehicle in the fleet, which are all technically drones.

[0x8BADF00D]

It’s relatively trivial to attach a shock baton or flash bang ordnance to the drone, which would incapacitate the thieves as well.

[CPLX]

> seems to me like people just love to come up with imaginary reasons why self-driving cars/trucks can't work

You do have a point. The core reality that self-driving is equivalent to full artificial intelligence and passing the Turing test should be sufficient I'd think.

[tachyonbeam]

I believe in incremental improvement. We can design vehicles that are increasingly more autonomous. They might never become completely autonomous (case in point, they will likely always need someone to come and repair them when damaged), but they can become autonomous enough to be useful. We're not far from the point where autonomous vehicles can become useful in specific scenarios, such as always following the same path on the same stretches of highway.

[pault]

The thing I've always wondered about is: if governments can put street signs for humans on every road, why can't they do the same for autonomous vehicles? Sure, you could vandalize the signs and wreak havoc, but you can also remove a stop sign or hack a traffic light and do the same now. If a standards committee was formed to develop a spec for autonomous vehicle guides it seems like we could get to full autonomy far faster than waiting for AGI. Maybe you still have to drive on backcountry dirt roads, but wouldn't automating 90% of traffic be an enormous win for society?

[lmm]

Partial automation might be worse than no automation at all - if the human is forced to take over they'll be less prepared for it.

[gvb]

Hijacking trucks (stealing trailers) is happening already with drivers and security guards. Remove the drivers and security guards and it will make it a lot easier.

"The Curious Case of the Disappearing Nuts" https://www.outsideonline.com/2186526/nut-job

"$370,000 worth of iPhone X devices were stolen from a UPS truck" https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/3/16601970/iphone-x-devices...

"As Freight on Trucks Becomes More Valuable, Thieves Get Creative in Their Attempts to Steal It" https://www.ttnews.com/articles/freight-trucks-becomes-more-...

[shadowgovt]

Honestly though, that's win-win.

A heist where a human is involved has enhanced risk of injury or loss-of-life if the driver / guard decides to be a big hero or the criminal gets jumpy.

A world where vehicles are modestly easier to steal from (but audit the thefts) pushes risk from human lives towards insurance companies. Toss in a few honeypot shipments that are tailed by a handful of squad cars, and things are probably fine.

We don't have rampant highwayman theft because there are human drivers. We don't have it because most people don't want to do it.

[netsharc]

It seems to me the heist risk is being overrated...

But if your logic is solid, the next solution would be for these self-driving trucks to carry a human or two who'll sit there and not do anything. So, literal human shields.

Like the joke about how to solve the self-driving car trolley problem to your benefit: make sure you're in a car with a few newborn babies.

[shadowgovt]

I haven't heard that joke before and it's pretty good :)

But the human shields are still solving for the wrong problem: placing the value of a load of (usually) consumer goods over the value of a human life.

[jdminhbg]

> Hijacking trucks (stealing trailers) is happening already with drivers and security guards. Remove the drivers and security guards and it will make it a lot easier.

I'm not sure taking away bribe-able workers with keys to the truck will make it easier to hijack.

[tashoecraft]

Feel like we already have ways to reduce this, having a lone trucker doesn’t magically make it all safer, if anything it should make it much riskier as there is a human life on the line.

If robberies start happening, insurance will adjust. Maybe a security driver will tail multiple vehicles headed to the same destination. Worrying about these cases seems helpful, but the industry will resolve these as the savings and improvements seem to make it a simple equation. This is all assuming the tech works ofcourse

[Qworg]

People rob 18 wheelers all the time - there are particularly valuable loads from particularly interesting places.

Source: my father had to prevent this for film/cassette/DVD distribution, especially prerelease goods.

[eloisant]

then robbery would still happen, but without endangering the life of a driver...

So I get it's a good thing?

[loeg]

> people don't rob 18 wheelers

Haven't you seen the documentary, The Fast and the Furious (2001)?

[SergeAx]

You mean "Love, Death & Robots", episode "Blind Spot"?

[BigBubbleButt]

I have not thought much about robbing trucks before, but I disagree this is the same as a manned truck. I think it's much more like the difference between robbing a house that is empty and a house while the owners are home. Most burglaries happen when nobody is home. Why would trucks be any different?

Besides that, it is (likely) easier to trick an unmanned truck into stopping as OP mentioned. A person would easily recognize what's happening and it would be easier for him to just drive around the obstacle. It's not as easy to create an AI that can "think" around things like that. Besides that, I hear truck drivers are often armed. I would guess that punishment for property crimes is less severe than armed robbery against a person, but I don't actually know.

In the grand scheme of things though, I think this is a negligible concern compared to all of the other problems self-driving trucks have to solve first.

[tyfon]

The unmanned truck would likely be _crammed_ with cameras and other surveillance tools like hidden gps senders in the containers.

It might initially be easier but I'm not sure if you would get very far with the stolen goods.

[knodi123]

I used to work for a company that made long-life self-contained GPS locators, for commercial asset tracking. I remember how much we chortled ironically when a shipment of our devices was literally stolen by a hapless meth addict who noticed keys left in the ignition.

Everyone was laughing because "ha, that idiot stole a thousand GPS trackers, he's the most tracked criminal ever!" But of course every single one of those trackers was in sleep mode, and the only tracking bug was not part of the shipment. Sure, he was caught red-handed within half an hour while a police dispatcher watched a moving dot on a google map, but he was only being tracked by a single device, and we had no way to remote-active the other thousand.

Just an amusing related anecdote.

[BigBubbleButt]

Set fire to the truck after you rob it to destroy any on-board evidence (like hard drives containing surveillance footage), only commit crimes in a wireless dead zone so no data is transmitted outside (or better yet, use a police stingray so you can do it anywhere), and put all cargo inside a faraday cage. Also I'm not sure there's any reason to believe those kind of security measures wouldn't already exist for a manned truck if the goods are expensive enough, so really it's the benefit of not having to deal with a person.

I'd much rather do all that than kill an armed truck driver.

Now that I actually am thinking about this more, I'd just get a sniper rifle and shoot the sensor units on the truck so it would be incapable of driving further (as opposed to throwing a mattress onto the road).

But again, I'm not in the business of robbing trucks. I'm just saying I'd rather rob a robot than a person. I doubt robberies are a big concern for driverless trucks.

[organsnyder]

Life isn't like a movie. Anyone who has the knowledge (of the vehicle and its surveillance systems, the schedule, the cargo onboard...) and the capability (skills and resources) to pull off what you're suggesting has plenty of lucrative legal opportunities. And any cargo load valuable enough to make a Hollywood-style heist actually worthwhile would be transported by more secure means.

[zp33]

It doesn't take that much skill to know that a certain stretch of road doesn't have cell signal and how to set fire to a truck. It takes even less skill when you know there's no human on the truck to stop you

[TeMPOraL]

It may or may not work, but I have no doubt that someone will try.

[dodobirdlord]

> Set fire to the truck after you rob it to destroy any on-board evidence

Trucks are big. They're also not particularly flammable. Hard drives are small and easy to fireproof.

> only commit crimes in a wireless dead zone so no data is transmitted outside

This put you pretty far out of your way, and you're eventually going to have to bring a truckload of goods back from the middle of Idaho or wherever. Plus, trucks can carry pretty big antenna.

> (or better yet, use a police stingray so you can do it anywhere)

This doesn't really work that way, and also this is an additional major crime. Plus, people are looking for these.

> and put all cargo inside a faraday cage

That's a big faraday cage. Plus, what happens when you have to take the cargo out of your truck-sized theft apparatus and fence it?

> I'd just get a sniper rifle and shoot the sensor units on the truck so it would be incapable of driving further

I doubt there's anyone on earth who could make that shot once, much less 5+ times in a few seconds. A truck is moving 60+ MPH and the target is a few inches across.

[HideousKojima]

As soon as low orbit satellite internet services like Starlink are operational then you'll be out of luck, there won't be any more dead zones.

[fphhotchips]

Also, every 10th truck probably has a guy with a shotgun in the back.

More to the point, I think if we're trying to secure the use case of "truck the same as it has been for 30 years gets a black box put in it" we're doing it wrong. After not too long you just flat out won't be able to get in, even if you do stop the truck from moving. You won't be able to drive it anywhere - what need is there for a cab on an auto-truck?

[silvestrov]

The problem is not doing the robbery itself. It's doing it again and again and again without being discovered/traced.

Serial killers have it easy: they can bury the body. You can't bury goods you need to fence. At some point there will be a pattern.

[BigBubbleButt]

I'm not saying robbing trucks is easy. I'm saying if I were to choose between robbing a manned truck vs an unmanned truck, I would definitely rob the unmanned truck.

[jpadkins]

why? the driver of the manned truck is going to comply just as willingly. No way they are going to put their life on the line (unless they own the cargo). The unmanned truck will cameras and video uploaded, which is stronger evidence than eye witness testimony. Also police response will be faster on unmanned (they can't call the police during the hold up, you can take the persons cell phone). No way you can stop the distress call from unmanned unless you had an EMP or something.

[zdragnar]

If the truck is manned, it's robbery.

If the truck is unmanned, it's burglary (or theft, since a truck isn't a building).

They typically carry different penalties, and the difference is even more stark if you happen to have anything that could be considered a weapon on you when you do it.

[TeMPOraL]

> No way you can stop the distress call from unmanned unless you had an EMP or something.

Wouldn't be so certain. Jammers are illegal, but they aren't that hard to make.

[jbeales]

People rob trucks all the time. It's actually a pretty big deal, especially in Canada for some reason.

See https://globalnews.ca/news/6419141/cargo-crime-greater-toron... and https://www.todaystrucking.com/canadian-cargo-theft-surpasse...

20 palettes of asian pears, (or any food item), is surprisingly easy to unload.

[slavik81]

A person in the truck is the difference between a burglary and a robbery. One is a property crime, while the other is a violent crime. The law views them as very different.

[harikb]

Or it is their lucky day and full of N95 masks and hand sanitizer bottles!