Reply to post: Re: Surely

Remember the Uber self-driving car that killed a woman crossing the street? The AI had no clue about jaywalkers

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Surely

"The other is that word "usually". I think most of us rate the probability as usually small but greater than zero and keep reassessing it on the basis of observation whilst the object is in view."

It's not unusual for computer based systems to not account for edge cases. The thing is though, the human brain WILL always account for those edges cases when they happen and deal with them in some way. The problem with computers and so-called AI is that they can't because, as we see from this case, they can't classify them. The fail-safe option is the only real solution, and the dev team and/or Uber senior people decided that edge cases should be risk assessed beforehand and below some threshold, discounted as too expensive to account for and that the fail safe option should not impede the vehicle from getting where it's going.

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