- cross-posted to:
- energia@feddit.it
- cross-posted to:
- energia@feddit.it
Wapo journalist verifies that robotaxis fail to stop for pedestrians in marked crosswalk 7 out of 10 times. Waymo admitted that it follows “social norms” rather than laws.
The reason is likely to compete with Uber, 🤦
Wapo article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/12/30/waymo-pedestrians-robotaxi-crosswalks/
Cross-posted from: https://mastodon.uno/users/rivoluzioneurbanamobilita/statuses/113746178244368036
the funniest thing to me, is that this probably isn’t even the fault of AI, this is probably the fault of software developers too lazy to actually write any semi decent code that would do a good job of (not) being a nuisance.
software developers too lazycompany owners too greedySoftware developers don’t get a say in what gets done or not, profit and cost cutting do.
Ethics is an important component of what every worker should do for a living, but we’re not there yet.
i mean that’s true to an extent, but most software development teams are led by a fairly independent group. It’s so abstract you can’t really directly control, ultimately here, there is somebody with some level of authority and knowledge that should know to do better than this, but just isn’t doing it.
Maybe the higher ups are pressuring them, but you can’t push things back forever, and you most certainly can’t pull features forever, there is only so much you can remove before you are left with nothing.
This hasn’t been true at any of the places I’ve worked.
There’s always been some pressure from management, usually through project managers or business users, for urgency around certain features, timelines, releases, etc. Sometimes you’ll have a buffer of protection from these demands, sometimes not.
One place I worked was so consistently relentless about the dev team’s delivery speed that it was a miserable place to work. There was never time to fix the actual pain points because there were always new features being demanded or emergency fixes required because most code bases were a wreck and falling apart.
You might have a say in how to implement the requirement, but in this case, if the company decided to follow societal norms and not laws, it’s 100% on the management. You might pin this on devs if they were pressured to release an unfinished product - sometimes the pressure is so big devs are afraid to admit it’s not really done, but in this case, it’s such a crucial part of the project I think it’s one of the first things they worked on.
Realistically, it’s more profitable not to stop - customers are impatient, other drivers too, and pedestrians are used to that. To maximize profit, I’d rather risk some tickets than annoy other drivers or customers.
Most developers take pride in what they do and would love to build in all the best features for launch.
But that’s not possible. There’s a deadline and a finite budget for programmers. Ipso facto, a finite number of dev hours.