Future Imperfect #32: Against Autopilot
Welcome to Future Imperfect! This week I’ve been reading about Consumer Reports’ Tesla proposal, human-pig chimeras (seriously), the need for algorithmic auditors, and a great sci-fi short on just how terrible this summer’s Olympic Games could be.
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Against Autopilot
A couple weeks ago I wrote about the difference between oversight and overreaction when it comes to autonomous capabilities in the auto industry. This week, a reaction to the Tesla crash that perhaps straddles the line between the two.
“By marketing their feature as ‘Autopilot,’ Tesla gives consumers a false sense of security,” says Laura MacCleery, vice president of consumer policy and mobilization for Consumer Reports. “In the long run, advanced active safety technologies in vehicles could make our roads safer. But today, we’re deeply concerned that consumers are being sold a pile of promises about unproven technology. ‘Autopilot’ can’t actually drive the car, yet it allows consumers to have their hands off the steering wheel for minutes at a time. Tesla should disable automatic steering in its cars until it updates the program to verify that the driver’s hands are on the wheel.”
Companies must commit immediately to name automated features with descriptive — not exaggerated — titles, MacCleery adds, noting that automakers should roll out new features only when they’re certain they are safe.
“Consumers should never be guinea pigs for vehicle safety ‘beta’ programs,” she says. “At the same time, regulators urgently need to step up their oversight of cars with these active safety features. NHTSA should insist on expert, independent third-party testing and certification for these features, and issue mandatory safety standards to ensure that they operate safely.”
All told, Consumer Reports lays out four action items for Tesla:
1) Disable Autosteer until it can be reprogrammed to require drivers to keep their hands on the steering wheel
2) Stop referring to the system as “Autopilot” as it is misleading and potentially dangerous
3) Issue clearer guidance to owners on how the system should be used and its limitations
4) Test all safety-critical systems fully before public deployment; no more beta releases
Why does this matter? There’s a possibility that a Tesla loss in the court of popular opinion could set back vehicle autonomy for several years. Consumer Reports is not off-base here—there is clear evidence that Tesla customers believe Autopilot to be far more capable than it actually is. There’s a big gap between partial autonomy and full autonomy (The NHTSA of course has guidelines for that). Action items #1–3, while short-term setbacks for Tesla, would do much to inspire confidence in their vehicles in the long term.
Action item #4, however, could set a very bad precedent. Beta testing is a very common practice in the software industry and, let’s face it, the cars of the future will be more software than steel. Almost any system in a car, outside of the radio, could be considered to be safety-critical in some manner (especially if you’re driving 60mph). So I’d say maybe pull back the rhetoric a little bit on that one.
Playing God … or Spore
Number one on the list of “things I never thought I would have to ponder the ethical quandaries of: Human-pig chimeras that can grow human organs to shore up transplant deficits.
In order to create the desired organ, they use gene editing, or CRISPR, to knock out the embryo’s pig’s genes that produce, for example, the pancreas. The human stem cells for the pancreas then make an almost entirely human pancreas in the resulting human-pig chimera, with just the blood vessels remaining porcine. Using this controversial technology, a human skin cell, pre-treated and injected into a genetically edited pig embryo, could grow a new liver, heart, pancreas or lung as required.
First of all, that’s creepy. Second of all, of course things aren’t so simple. What happens if the chimera becomes more human than pig?
A chimera is a genetic mix. This means that, although the aim might be to isolate only certain organs to express human genetic material, the whole chimera will in fact comprise the genetic material of both humans and pigs. It is not a pig with a human pancreas inserted into it — it is a human-animal chimera, whose pancreas resembles a human’s, and whose other organs are a blend of pig and human. This could affect the chimera’s brain. Pablo Ross, the lead researcher in the pig experiment, is quoted by the BBC as saying: ‘We think there is very low potential for a human brain to grow.’ Even if in this particular case he is correct, given that some of this kind of research is indeed focused on neurons, it is possible that some future chimeras will develop human or human-like brains….
At present, chimeras created in laboratories are destroyed as embryos. But in order to harvest organs, full gestation would be needed. When that happens, do the human-animal chimeras have a moral right to continued existence? If there is any doubt about the cognitive abilities of this new life form, we should check the chimera for its functionality….In the absence of conclusive research on these questions, any such chimera should be accorded the highest moral status consistent with its likely nature. If there is a chance a new lifeform could experience pain or might not be able to interact socially, and we don’t know, it should be treated as if it does experience pain and will have problems of social adaptation. Likewise, if it could plausibly have higher cognitive functions, it should be treated as if it would have them. In considering the new life forms we create, we should err on the side of sympathy and generosity.
Why does this matter? Well that depends. I think it’s safe to say that most people are willing to grow and harvest pigs to save their loved ones from death by transplant list. But most people don’t see pigs as sentient, they see them as bacon. What makes a human, human? If you’ve got a human brain, heart, liver, pancreas, etc.—AND if you have proof of consciousness—well that makes things a lot more complicated. I can’t imagine that such harvesting would be in any way ethical.
Let’s stick to the lab-grown organs, please.
The invisible algorithmic hand
Lots from Aeon this week—here’s a great bit about humanity’s obsession with algorithms. Beyond autonomous vehicles which we discussed earlier, we’re thrilled to hand over control to algorithms to moderate our news updates for us, help companies figure out which ads are fit precisely to our needs, and even to predict which of us are more or less likely to commit crimes (yes, that’s really a thing). So what gives?
What lies behind our current rush to automate everything we can imagine? Perhaps it is an idea that has leaked out into the general culture from cognitive science and psychology over the past half-century — that our brains are imperfect computers. If so, surely replacing them with actual computers can have nothing but benefits. Yet even in fields where the algorithm’s job is a relatively pure exercise in number- crunching, things can go alarmingly wrong.
Indeed, a backlash to algorithmic fetishism is already under way — at least in those areas where a dysfunctional algorithm’s effect is not some gradual and hard-to-measure social or cultural deterioration but an immediate difference to the bottom line of powerful financial organisations. High-frequency trading, where automated computer systems buy and sell shares very rapidly, can lead to the price of a security fluctuating wildly. Such systems were found to have contributed to the ‘flash crash’ of 2010, in which the Dow Jones index lost 9 per cent of its value in minutes.
Last year, the New York Stock Exchange cancelled trades in six stocks whose prices had exhibited bizarre behaviour thanks to a rogue ‘algo’ — as the automated systems are known in the business — run by Knight Capital; as a result of this glitch, the company lost $440 million in 45 minutes. Regulatory authorities in Europe, Hong Kong and Australia are now proposing rules that would require such trading algorithms to be tested regularly; in India, an algo cannot even be deployed unless the National Stock Exchange is allowed to see it first and decides it is happy with how it works.
Here, then, are the first ‘algorithmic auditors’. Perhaps their example will prompt similar developments in other fields — culture, education, and crime — that are considerably more difficult to quantify, even when there is no immediate cash peril.
Why does this matter? I love this concept from the article: algorithmic auditors. “Trusted representatives of the public who can peer into the code to see what kinds of implicit political and ethical judgments are buried there, and report their findings back to us.”
Hey, Consumer Reports—I think I found your niche! Seriously though, if we need an independent auditor, a nonprofit with their track record isn’t a bad choice at all.
Lord of the Flies
From Terraform, a worst-case scenario (well, a tongue-in-cheek scenario at the very least) of this summer’s Olympics in Rio.
The Olympic Village was designed explicitly so that all of our needs would be taken care of. With no one around, we were totally helpless, in the middle of the jungle, on our own: Everyone knew, instinctively, there wasn’t enough to go around. Ten thousand Olympic athletes forced to survive on — and compete for — what was left in the restaurant hall.
Almost nobody made it to the restaurant before the athletes who were already there when shit started to go down barricaded themselves inside with the food. We don’t know exactly who is in there, but we’re pretty sure most of the Russians, Hungarians, and Turks — swimmers, weightlifters, wrestlers, and boxers, probably — locked themselves in the massive restaurant facility. They were always eating, after all, and we haven’t seen them since.
So, that was how it was going to be. The distance runners immediately formed a pack and tore ass for the city, hoping to find something there. I wonder if they made it.
Word began to spread that the Village coffee shop had some provisions. The badmintoners got there first, presumably because nobody thought to ask “where are the badmintoners” when shit got nasty.
Dog-eat-dog Olympic grandeur-fueled rage took over almost immediately. Turns out that athletes primed for gold go lord of the flies faster than a bunch of stranded schoolboys.
GIF of the Week: Flawless victory
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