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by readonthegoapp 1047 days ago
to me, an argument i haven't heard yet is human dignity.

it's tough to hold onto it (as a human) when you're being threatened and/or injured/maimed/killed by robots.

the idea of yelling at a robot and having it ignore you is pretty fucked up, especially if it's squeezing your coworker to death, or running a dog (or human) over, etc.

2 comments

But they don't squeeze people to death or run over dogs (from a distance - the physics of cars unfortunately mean that some crashes are unavoidable by either human or machine).

Both Cruise and Waymo have an exceptional ability to detect collisions and brake immediately, to the point where regular users tugging on a door handle unexpectedly can immobilize a car.

"Human dignity" suffers much more when a human kills a pedestrian through sheer carelessness, or a child dies in an entirely preventable crash.

Who goes to jail when a self driving car kills someone?
How often do people go to jail when they kill pedestrians with their cars?
> it's tough to hold onto it (as a human) when you're being threatened and/or injured/maimed/killed by robots.

It's tough to hold onto human dignity if you're dead or maimed because a car hit you. If we can reduce the number of people who are dead or maimed by cars by introducing self-driving ones, why would we not do that? Why is it better to live in a world where more people are dead or maimed and humans are driving than one in which fewer people are dead or maimed and cars are self-driving?

> the idea of yelling at a robot and having it ignore you is pretty fucked up

So what about the inattentive driver looking at their phone? You yell at them, they don't hear you because they're in a car and it's loud, and they hit you and severely injure you. Is that not fucked up?