Unsafe at Any Level
[I]magine you are part of a two-person team required to complete an assignment. Imagine that only your teammate was given the instructions for what was needed to complete the assignment. Conversely, you were only told that at some point your teammate may be unable to complete the assignment and, without prior notice, you will need to immediately finish it. You were also told that if your team fails to complete the assignment, it is entirely your fault.
In this case, I would say that this
would be a very stressful and anxious situation for me. Because I don't know
all the information, I don't know the specific content of the task I'm dealing
with, the progress of my teammates, the potential progress and risks. It is
also a very unfair situation. Everything is unequal. I can't get the same
information, I can't take the same responsibility, and I can't complete the
task equally. I will bear huge responsibility risks, and I may need to bear all
the subsequent processing, and all these pressures will make the project
impossible to complete. The fundamental reason is that this is a bad team
structure. It is difficult to complete this project with opaque information
about the task, uncertain tasks, and uncertain responsibilities. The most basic
principle of team work is to maintain communication, then ensure the
distribution of tasks, and share responsibilities. It is this kind of
collaboration ability and trust between people. In a seriously unbalanced team
structure, it is difficult to obtain effective results.
Then the article actually
introduces a similar situation, but the task becomes driving, and the auto driving
becomes the teammate. Under the premise that the auto driving cannot take
responsibility and provide guarantees, it cannot complete the distribution of
responsibilities and tasks. At present, people only focus on the algorithm
side, without considering how to combine it with the driver's work and how to
complete the interaction. In today's autonomous driving, human drivers are
faced with situations like this: without understanding the situation, they need
to be responsible for all emergencies that occur. Automotive companies try to
give people the illusion that consumers are passengers in the autonomous
driving scenario, but in fact, for companies, consumers are always drivers and
are the responsible party. We have to admit that joining autonomous driving is
beneficial, reducing driver fatigue and bringing economic, safety and comfort
benefits. However, the effectiveness of these advantages lies in the implementation
of the distribution of responsibilities, better and fairer task distribution,
and we cannot try to attribute the problem to the driver to solve the existing
problems. As mentioned in the article, this problem also occurs in aircraft.
How to design an automated system to make it fully compatible with the
capabilities and limitations of humans in the system is a problem that the
aviation industry has been thinking about. Now for autonomous vehicles, the
same thinking should be taken seriously, we should learned from history. The
responsibilities of autonomous driving manufacturers should be implemented,
just like aircraft manufacturers, who should be responsible for accidents and
problems.
