[blakeja]

"What if a massive truck comes careening down the road straight at you, and your only avenue of escape is through a playground full of children? What does the car do?"

We are going to let a computer make that decision? I don't think so.

[TeMPOraL]

Why not? A computer can make a much better decision than you do (doing a proper evaluation of options and probabilities) and then execute it much better than a human ever could.

I mean, not pushing for autonomous driving just feels... weird.

[mikeash]

The thing is, not only will we let a computer make the decision, but I'm sure we already have.

Automatic collision avoidance is a real-world feature. There are real cars out there you can buy which you can drive straight at a brick wall with the accelerator to the floor and it will not let you hit. I'm sure that avoiding collisions with pedestrians (or big trucks) is part of the deal. If the correct answer isn't "brake" then the computer will get the wrong answer, and almost certainly has already somewhere in the world.

People discuss autonomous driving as basically flipping a switch. We have manually driven cars, and then one day we'll wake up and there will be an autonomous car on the road. But it won't be like that. Autonomy will be a gradual process. Car makers are steadily bundling in more and more automatic driving features. Eventually they'll fill in all the gaps, one by one.