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176

Cruise Knew Its Self-Driving Cars Had Problems Recognizing Children — and Kept Them on the Streets (theintercept.com)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by NightOwl@lemm.ee to c/worldnews@lemmy.ml

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When it comes to hitting kids, however, internal materials indicate the company’s machines were struggling to match the safety performance of even an average human: Cruise’s goal was, at the time, for its robots to merely drive as safely around children at the same rate as an average Uber driver — a goal the internal materials note it was failing to meet.

“It’s I think especially egregious to be making the argument that Cruise’s safety record is better than a human driver,” said Smith, the University of South Carolina law professor. “It’s pretty striking that there’s a memo that says we could hit more kids than an average rideshare driver, and the apparent response of management is, keep going.”

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[–] Nurse_Robot@lemmy.world 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I can question the intentions behind a billion dollar company without fear mongering. The article we both read brings up valid criticisms and the questionable way Cruise has handled them. If you only read what Cruise spokes persons write then I can understand why you're so confused about the very real issues being addressed. The only person being hyperbolic is you acting like a shill for this company.

[–] money_loo@1337lemmy.com 4 points 10 months ago

This entire article is about them discovering issues during simulations and then fixing them before deploying to the streets.

So if your attempt is genuinely to question their intentions then it should be very obvious what those intentions are.

The only person being hyperbolic is you acting like a shill for this company

Stating facts from the article and being reasonable is hyperbole?

Even before GM, Cruise has been using their vehicles on public roads since 2020. How many kids has it killed since then?

The answer is precisely zero.

Over that same period human drivers killed about 528 pedestrian children.

Now “foul!” You may cry, as the data is for national averages versus isolated incidents, to which I would both agree and point out that Cruise has been operating in 13 major metropolitan cities now.

“Well that’s all fine and dandy, money_loo, but just you wait until the day they hit and kill a kid!”

Which just brings us back to the entire point of the article, how they are doing everything they can to insure that, y’know, their cars never hit any kids…