I wonder if the thought process even goes that far. Oftentimes, the motive seems more like self-conscious social pressures, e.g., fear of embarrassment.
> The text of the Georgia statute you cited only uses detectable human heartbeat as an example ("including"), not a requirement for personhood.
Yes, an unborn child is as you state, but the state will count an unborn child in "population based determinations" only if the heartbeat is present. That's a big threshold, and it's my understanding that abortions in Georgia may be freely performed if no heartbeat is present, so it's in effect stating "no heartbeat = no personhood".
> This would seem open-ended enough to apply to individual eggs.
Hmm, not sure about that one. The definition of "unborn child" is not met if the gestating egg is not "in the womb."
> > This would seem open-ended enough to apply to individual eggs.
No sources here cuz I just got home and I'm tired, but I swear there was some press recently(?) about IVF clinics fretting about egg storage/disposable for exactly this reason. I don't remember if anything came of it, but I think some IVF technicians were worried about going to jail if they, for instance, forgot to put an unfertilized egg back in the freezer and it went bad.
And then when you get to fertilized but non-implanted embryos, of course, that's when the "life begins at conception" crowd starts having their say.
Those IVF technicians seem a bit paranoid. Obviously, forgetting to put an unfertilized egg back in the freezer will hurt trust in your business, but I can't imagine anyone could successfully sue the IVF clinic on the basis that an illegal abortion had occurred.
The issue of fertilized but non-implanted embryos is already well-understood, as that is the entire basis behind opposition to embryonic stem cells and derived products. The interesting part will be to see how various religions will react if you tell them the fertilized egg will grow in an artificial womb.
I think the point is that if the vehicle's software can't figure out how to cope with something as simple as a cone on its hood, it's woefully unprepared for real driving conditions and a liability to everyone
I had largely the opposite takeaway, the cars are built to prioritize safety in unexpected situations, and are doing this here.
It might seem trivial, but it's not too hard to imagine a traffic cone on the windshield actually being a fairly dangerous situation if the car simply drove off, for instance if could roll over the top of the car and impact another vehicle behind it.
And that's even assuming that the traffic cone can be identified as 100% being a normal traffic cone, and not something else (say, a heavy object suspended in some meansm, in which case driving into it would damage the car) or a person or animal that happens to look like a traffic cone.
So by demonstrating that the cars stop under unexpected situations they are showing that the cars successfully identify a potentially dangerous situation and prioritize safety over navigation.
The cone is placed close to the windshield and sensors, I seriously doubt a cone would wind up in that spot pretty frequently in normal driving conditions.
Also, I doubt it's a software problem: the cone is blocking a pretty substantial field of view. No amount of software can fix an occluded sensor. They might as well be spray painting over the cameras.
I don't understand why this part isn't talked about more. Seems like an elephant in the room to me.
Have most people just not encountered confusing road conditions?
A couple weeks ago, I was in West Virginia bobbing up and down hills around hairpin turns on loose gravel. The whole time, I was thinking to myself "The first autonomous vehicle that attempts this route is going straight into the ravine."
One time evacuating from a hurricane, the route I found required me to drive through an open field. How well does LIDAR cope with tall grass?
Another time, I'm headed north on I-95 and there's a several car pileup. Police divert all traffic off the nearest exit and close the highway with a few road flares. I'd wager anything an AV would blow right past the flares and wreak havoc on the scene of the accident.
Until AI can cope with completely novel scenarios it was never trained for, it's going to be prone to catastrophic failure.
Personally, I don't expect to see it in our lifetimes.
Unfortunately, idiots can carry guns and have a propensity for acting on said racism. Refusal to confront that problem in the name of some free speech ideological purity is tempting history to repeat.
I wonder if the thought process even goes that far. Oftentimes, the motive seems more like self-conscious social pressures, e.g., fear of embarrassment.