We Demand Perfect Machines yet Tolerate Human Carnage

I think there are a few things to consider here.

First, when a human screws up, it's obvious who takes the blame for the mistake. If an autonomous vehicle does, who pays the fine/goes the prison? Putting the blame on the owner feels like it takes away a lot of the incentives to buy a autonomous vehicle, but I suspect the companies making these things don't want to be the ones paying out for their mistakes, and will probably lobby to prevent it if possible.

Secondly, this isn't just a vehicle thing, it's a technology thing in general. For better or worse, the expectations for safety and security are much higher for new devices than they are for existing ones, or for manual human driven solutions. Some of this is definitely driven or inspired by vested interests (like how pollution and safety regulations for renewable energy sources and nuclear plants are higher than for coal/gas power plants, despite the latter being worse in almost every way), but a lot of it is just humans being deeply skeptical of new tech and major social changes, even if the benefits of the new system clearly outweigh those of the existing one.

I think it ought to be said here in the comments that magazine's front page is anathema to the ideals of the comment section of HN, and whoever is funding these blowhards clearly doesn't share our ideals. Proceed with caution.

The full title is "Why We Demand Perfect Machines Yet Tolerate Human Carnage"

The "Why" makes a difference.

To me, the key is here.

   Empathy is a cognitive tool we use to forgive human error. But a machine’s error is different, like it’s the product of a bad corporate decision or poor coding. Often, there isn’t one person to blame or forgive; we are stuck with an opaque version of fate that is hard to accept. Forgiveness needs an agent that perhaps could have done something differently and can be held responsible. When a person makes a serious mistake, we have somewhere to place the blame and, eventually, someone to absolve.


    People tend to lose confidence in a machine more quickly than in a human when the two make identical mistakes. We prefer a worse human over a better algorithm if the latter has made an error. Behavioral scientists call it algorithm aversion. With no trusted party to explain what happened, visible mistakes dominate people’s judgments of a better system.

But, by reading the word Carnage, I expected the article to say that the common demand that OTHERS be perfect (projecting one's imperfection onto others, IMO), is a cause of wars and carnage.

"Whataboutism" as an excuse to attack.

I get the feeling that the point is to make machines more like humans in the sense that we empathize with humans, whereas machines are opaque.

And I expect that if that's fone, it will be a sleazy con job.

Having done some programming, I tend to look past the opacity to the designers and coders. And direct my "comments" and feeling of powerlessness [0] to those anonymous people.

While open source can give me a real human to gripe at, I would rather use the open source mechanism to make suggestions, and feel empowered.

Does that put the "humanity" into machines for you? I presume that HAL was closed-source.

[0]Yes, I feel powerless dealing with the home computer when things go off the rails, and while I could write scripts, apps, and flying hot patches, the vendor changes things constantly. And nags me daily, on every damn device when I don't go along.

To a lesser extent this happens with open source, but at least I can see what changed, or as noted above, be part of the whole process.

If my suggestion or code isn't accepted, I can be told why, up to and including "Well, that's because you're an idiot", which has happened in the past, so I can discount the comment, or just try changes on my own.

The chances of any of this actually happening are minuscule, but, getting back on point, it's possible, unlike those black boxes created by anonymous people.