Driverless cars worse at detecting children and darker-skinned pedestrians say scientists

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 560 points –
Driverless cars worse at detecting children and darker-skinned pedestrians say scientists
kcl.ac.uk

Driverless cars worse at detecting children and darker-skinned pedestrians say scientists::Researchers call for tighter regulations following major age and race-based discrepancies in AI autonomous systems.

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But the fact that AVs detect dark skinned people and short people at a lower effectiveness is a reflection of the lack of diversity in the tech staff designing and testing these systems as a whole.

No, it isn't. Its a product of the fact that dark people are darker and children are smaller. Human drivers have a harder time seeing these individuals too. They literally send less data to the camera sensor. This is why people wear reflective vests for safety at night, and ninjas dress in black.

This is true but tesla and others could compensate for this by spending more time and money training on those form factors, something humans can't really do. It's an opportunity for them to prove the superhuman capabilities of their systems.

That doesn't make it better.

It doesn't matter why they are bad at detecting X, it should be improved regardless.

Also maybe Lidarr would be a better idea.

They literally send less data to the camera sensor.

So maybe let's not limit ourselves to using hardware which cannot easily differentiate when there is other hardware, or combinations of hardware, which can do a better job at it?

Humans can't really get better eyes, but we can use more appropriate hardware in machines to accomplish the task.

That is true. I almost hit a dark guy, wearing black, who was crossing a street at night with no streetlight as I turned into it. Almost gave me a heart attack. It is bad enough almost getting hit, as a white guy, when I cross a street with a streetlight.