[gwbas1c]

> We've all got to learn sometime.

The lesson should be that San Francisco isn't the right place to run a highly disruptive experiment.

Do these experiments where the potential for disruption is a lot lower, like a smaller city with less congestion.

[grecy]

How many learner drivers do you think hit the streets of San Francisco every week?

Should they be banished too?

[gwbas1c]

People are not machines. Machines are not people.

But I'll take your bait:

I grew up close to a city, (Worcester MA,) with plenty of weirdo streets like San Francisco, and had plenty of teenage friends who lived in the city or travelled through it.

Needless to say, we didn't get behind the wheel for the first time in Worcester. We stayed in calmer streets until we were ready. When we drove in Worcester with learner's permits, we had adult supervision. Afterwards, we were only allowed to drive without adult supervision once we passed the driver's test. (I should also point out that, at the time, Worcester had a very serious problem with unlicensed drivers.)

Clearly, Cruise's vehicles aren't ready to drive in San Francisco without adult supervision.

But let's get back to the thesis: It is highly inappropriate to equate a machine with a human. Machines have no rights whatsoever. The "We've all got to learn sometime" attitude doesn't apply to this discussion, because an autonomous car is not a human.

What instead applies to this argument is conventional engineering and business development: Where is it appropriate to run Cruise's early marketing experiments, where bugs (and other unanticipated behavior) is expected? What are the appropriate limitations to put on vehicles when they have no driver? For example, what if the first use of the vehicles was a private resort (like Disney World) where the nature of a malfunctioning vehicle is easier to absorb because there are very few passenger vehicles.

[grecy]

> When we drove in Worcester with learner's permits, we had adult supervision. Afterwards, we were only allowed to drive without adult supervision once we passed the driver's test.

Am I to assume you never made a single mistake while doing so?

Of course not. Learner drivers stall, they forget turn signals, they don't keep up well with the flow of traffic. That is fine, that's all part of learning and perfectly normal.

> Clearly, Cruise's vehicles aren't ready to drive in San Francisco without adult supervision.

I don't think that is clear at all. Sure, they're making mistakes, but so did you and I and everyone else that ever learned to drive.

> But let's get back to the thesis: It is highly inappropriate to equate a machine with a human. Machines have no rights whatsoever. The "We've all got to learn sometime" attitude doesn't apply to this discussion, because an autonomous car is not a human.

I don't think that has anything to do with it. Driving a car is not a "right" that all humans have, it's a privilege that can be quickly taken away.

Everyone is afforded the opportunity to learn at some point, and we need self-driving vehicles to have that opportunity too. Fast forward 20 (or whatever it is) years to when self-driving vehicles are much, much safer, they mean long-haul truckers don't have to be away from home in an unsafe and unhealthy profession, they mean less vehicles on the road, etc. etc.

Society NEEDS those benefits, and if we never give the self-driving vehicles the opportunity to learn, we'll never get there.

> What instead applies to this argument is conventional engineering and business development: Where is it appropriate to run Cruise's early marketing experiments, where bugs (and other unanticipated behavior) is expected? What are the appropriate limitations to put on vehicles when they have no driver? For example, what if the first use of the vehicles was a private resort (like Disney World) where the nature of a malfunctioning vehicle is easier to absorb because there are very few passenger vehicles.

Absolutely, those are very important discussions to have. They are being had, by people in a position to make those decisions. Like a million things in our society, if you don't like the decisions they're making, you need to get yourself into that position.

[gwbas1c]

Again, the whole thesis of your argument is that you're equating robotic cars with humans. Your statements are irrelevant because robotic cars are not humans.

For example: Yes I did stall, but I did not block traffic for 20 minutes. I started the car and moved the shifter from 3rd to 1st. I did not require outside intervention to move my car.

I am also a person with fundamental human rights. A self-driving car has no rights, and deserves no empathy.

Which is why I'm trying to refocus the discussion back to "tech."

For example, when we talk about disruptive tech: The early customers need to be willing to put up with the "faults." In this case, San Francisco's emergency response departments aren't willing to put up with these faults.

Likewise, when we talk about choosing a market for early markets: That means making sure the market is well-chosen to suite the capabilities of the tech. One of the issues in San Francisco is that demand for self-driving cars outstrips the capabilities at this point. IE, it's better to choose a place where Cruise can meet the demand.

[grecy]

> I am also a person with fundamental human rights. A self-driving car has no rights, and deserves no empathy.

Are you saying that driving a vehicle is a fundamental human right?

Becuase it is absolutely 100% not.

> In this case, San Francisco's emergency response departments aren't willing to put up with these faults.

What are you talking about? San Francisco's emergency response departments absolutely ARE putting up with these faults, and the regulators and people who make decisions about if they should or should not be on those streets are deciding they should be.

I understand the self-driving cars can be inconvenient right now, but that always happens when you're aiming for improvement or progress. When lanes get added to a road the traffic suffers during construction. When you renovate your kitchen it's painful to live in during the work, etc. etc. Just because it's inconvenient doesn't mean you shouldn't do it - the eventual improvement will be worth it.!

[gwbas1c]

I think you've missed my point: San Francisco is a poor choice for the earliest market of Cruise.

This argument comes from my interpretation of two books: "Crossing the Chasm" and "The Innovator's Dilemma."

Cruise can choose any market they want: any city, any municipality, any closed road network like a resort. I keep arguing that San Francisco is the wrong choice right now.

Choosing an early market is an important step in developing a technology business. It doesn't matter how wonderful your technology is, your company needs to succeed in its first market in order to move to another market and then to larger markets. Furthermore, your customers must be willing to put up with the bugs and shortcomings of your product compared to existing technology.

If a company overestimates the maturity of their product, they can lose the goodwill of the future customers who don't want to put up with bugs or other shortcomings.

I think the big problem that Cruise is facing is that they will be regulated out of existence before they fully debug their product. (For the sake of argument,) if they had used resorts as their first customer, They wouldn't have to worry about being regulated out of existence because they would only have to deal with a government; and they would have had a much easier situation to debug the product.