OOTS #1172 - The Discussion Thread

[GreatWyrmGold]

Spoiler: So this is a thread about self-driving cars now

Show

Oh no! That’s the beauty of machine learning! We’ll have literally no idea how cars work.

We'll have a better idea of how the cars work than how our brains work.

Well, we'll know for sure a thing or two about how the engine work and what side of the road cars should roll over in normal circumstances.
We'll have no idea how car think, but since we have no idea how people do it either that can't possibly be a problem, right?

At the end of the day, we'll handle both systems the same way; you get taught, if you do well enough you can keep driving, otherwise we kick you off the road. The big difference is that we can copy a self-driving program that works well to millions of different cars, whereas legal and ethical restrictions prevent us from copying the mind of a good driver into everyone who drives a car. (Also, the self-driving cars risk existential annihilation for failure where humans would only get a fine.)

Also, maybe we know what it is going to do? (Wolfram's proposal is really interesting. The applicable part is the bit about computation contracts to specify what the AI could do.)

Cool on several levels. Thanks for sharing the link!

I actually don't think you even NEED that much machine learning to have working self-driven cars - at least in the scenario that ALL cars are computer-controlled.

Assuming all pedestrians, bikers, and passing wildlife are also computer-controlled? Sure. Otherwise, making self-driving cars isn't meaningfully simpler than if some cars are still human-driven.

Hackers? Bah.

The part that worries me about self-driving cars is that sooner or later, some bright spark will realize that a car is now a cage for a captive audience that can be delivered to whatever destination a bunch of advertisers wish it to be. You get in the car and sit around watching ads on a screen. You say, “Take me to Pizza Stockade.” It replies, “If you want pizza, let’s go to Pizza Fortress!” and you don’t have a way to override the controls. And you’ll sign a User Agreement when you buy the car (or rent the autocab) that signs away your rights to decide where you’re going.

The only time people have agreed to things like that have been A. when nothing obviously tangible was on the line and B. when some service was being offered in return (e.g, watching an ad that consumes nothing but time and phone charge before you can play a game). I can't think of any way to make that sort of business model work when the end user has to literally surrender their right to decide where they get to go. Especially since Pizza Fortress is unlikely to get enough unwilling customers to balance out the horrible backlash they'd get for kidnapping said customers.

That already exists as a concept. It's called "kidnapping." I highly doubt anyone would be dumb enough to implicate themselves by putting their intent to kidnap in writing before the fact. But hey, I'm always willing to be surprised.

And also in computer code, which is in some ways far more damning than asking people to sign over their right to be kidnapped. One just says "I might kidnap you when I feel like it," the other explicitly says "I will kidnap anyone who meets these conditions".

Spoiler: Ways the Plot Won't Be Resolved

Show

I would imagine that "giving someone a gift" isn't against the law though. So he should have just brought Belkar's clasp of Protection from Evil and given it to one of the dominated clan members, who would in turn give it to the next Dominated clan member. Even if it was against the rules, I imagine you could drop it on their head before turning into stone, and then they could drop it on the head of their neighbor, etc. Having half the council be Stone would be better than having them all be Dominated.

Durkon Elan: "Here, councilman who's been dominated by a vampire! Please, accept this gift of a clasp which absolutely isn't enchanted with anything!"
Gontor: "...No."

What if the council just made the rule, "For a vote to be officially counted, the voter must stand in the ray of sunlight in full view of all, explain his position at length, and raise his hand to declare his vote"?

Gontor isn't casting a vote, he doesn't need to stand in the sun. As far as we know, only vampires themselves are hurt by sunlight.

I'm guessing this has already been brought up... but in a story full of rules-lawyering already, including by Lawful types like Thor and Durkon, couldn't Dvalin just say "Uh, I can plainly see that all of the people voting 'Yes' are dominated by vampires, which means that they are not voting, the vampires are voting, who do not have standing here to cast a vote"?

It's not entirely clear how Dvalin's oath to the dwarves went, but it seems that it doesn't require him to actually pay more attention to the proceedings than the clan heads and their families do. And given that this entire arc has painted dwarven honor as being sillily restrictive, it's quite possible that he forgot to write himself an "In case of obvious stupidity" clause into the oath.

Spoiler: Misc

Show

I'm kind of confused why some of you are talking about respecting the council members being willing to sacrifice themselves, when it was clear at first they didn't actually think the situation was real and were merely speaking hypothetically or were being tested.

Because some people take things people say when they "know" they're being tested more seriously than they should.

I just assume most posts in this forum are on autopilot and everyone's just testing to see if their chatbot can learn morality.

I am on the GitP website so you are a robot.

dare we hope that Durkon also has some ranks in Knowledge (Engineering)

Clerics don't get enough skill points to tie their own shoelaces, and while Durkon has a higher Intelligence than Elan or Belkar, it doesn't seem exceptional.
But he still has some skill points. If he doesn't spend them on Knowledge (religion) or Spot, what does he spend them on? Could be cross-class ranks in (Architecture & Engineering).

And she only got to that point because not a single dwarf cleric or paladin thought "Screw it, we'll set up a payment plan after I cure disease".

I assume that most churches have doctrine forbidding their clergy from forming HMOs.

Nah, we have the destination of the self-driving threads set to Star Wars here. We're trying to get a chatbot that can write a better script than the Prequel movies.

So far, all we've gotten are ones that bitch about the sequels.