• ThrowawayOnLemmy@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      ‘Inventors’ killed by their inventions happens way more than people probably realize. First one that comes to mind is the Segway guy. Then there’s the more recent dude who built that shitty submarine for dives to the Titanic. Anyone else care to share any incidents?

        • Mr_Blott@feddit.uk
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          1 year ago

          My favourite is the guy who invented leaded petrol and poisoned us all, then invented CFCs and poisoned the atmosphere, then…

          Thomas Midgley Jr. (1889–1944) was an American engineer and chemist who contracted polio at age 51, leaving him severely disabled. He devised an elaborate system of ropes and pulleys to help others lift him from bed. He became entangled in the ropes and died of strangulation at the age of 55.

          Fuckin lol 😂

      • drcobaltjedi@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        Well, the segway guy, Dean Kamen, is alive. The owner of the company or something like that died though.

        So having removed one, I’ll add in the guy that made leaded gas.

        • squiblet@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          A British businessman purchased Segway in 2009, and in 2010 accidentally reversed off a cliff while walking his dog by the ocean, and died.

          • SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            1 year ago

            Marie curie wasn’t really an inventor. She was a scientist discovering new physics… which turned out to be dangerous. She died likely due to lacking safety precautions people didn’t know were needed since radioactivity is harmful mainly in the long-term. Even then she lived a reasonably long time.

      • BradleyUffner@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Musk didn’t invent shit. He bought his way in to being the CEO using his daddy’s money. These companies are successful despite musk, not because of him

        • dx1@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I think basically it’s a situation where he did manage to create the “scientific prodigy” reputation around himself, this created public buzz around whatever he was doing, and that did translate into different forms of funding. So some of the success is due to him, but basically on account of fraud. Same basic principle as Trump.

      • ArxCyberwolf@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        There’s the French dude who tried building his own parachute, climbed to the lower level of the Eiffel Tower, and tried making a spectacle of proving how good his parachute was by jumping from it. He promptly died on impact when it didn’t, in fact, prove very good at all.

      • Dettweiler@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Well, the main salesman for Skydrol (a phosphate based, non-flammable hydraulic fluid for aviation), did not invent the product; but was known to drink some of it during his pitch to “prove” that the fluid was safe. He died of stomach cancer.

      • Num10ck@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The Chief Designer of the ‘Titanic’ Saved Everyone He Could as His Ship Went Down. Thomas Andrews died in 1912, when the ship he had designed sank, after encouraging the Titanic’s passengers to get off the ship if they could.

      • Redhotkurt@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        I had something real witty all planned out as a response to your irony comment, but before I can click the “reply” link, out of nowhere IT’S LIKE RAAAIIIIIIAAAAAIIIIINN ON YOUR WEDDING DAAY steamrolls into my head like Yoko Ono on a goddamn bullhorn and I get lost in the song and completely forget everything I was going to say. And I was so proud, too. Damn you, Alanis!

      • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        A song named “Ironic” filled with a bunch of scenarios but not a single one is ironic is… a little bit ironic, don’t ya think?

    • vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 year ago

      Dean Kamen is still alive. The person you’re thinking of was the new ceo after he sold the company, not the segway’s inventor

  • brygphilomena@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    “That’s why we’ve not released this to the public yet. That’s the first intervention for the whole drive.”

    Why is it on any car, even his, on public roads? Why should untested, unregulated software be controlling thousands of pounds of metal at all?

    • AndyLikesCandy@reddthat.com
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      1 year ago

      Looking at it another way: we’re all guinea pigs if we consider untested public policy that should work in theory.

      Self-driving is not untested, but the problem is that deep down AI is just a lot of statistically derived rules and life is random and will inevitably find a loophole. Technically it’s still less likely to kill you on average, maybe even on average if you exclude drunk driving, street racing, and the like.

      It’s really a philosophical question: would you take dying by your own fuck-up over dying because an AI confused a piece of cardboard for a brick wall or pedestrian?

      I think the sweet spot is having the AI back up the human instead of the other way around, but that won’t sell as well as reading a book on your commute.

      • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It’s really a philosophical question: would you take dying by your own fuck-up over dying because an AI confused a piece of cardboard for a brick wall or pedestrian?

        It’s a “philosophical question” that implies that we must choose between manual driving and AI driving that can be confused by a piece of cardboard.

        There’s nothing saying that Tesla’s full self driving is something we have to accept. Musk himself artificially limited the solution by disallowing lidar (amongst other bullshit decisions).

        We’re not at the point of philosophical questions yet IMO, and we shouldn’t get locked into the false dichotomy of manual or musk’s version of automatic driving when there are other, much safer and more reasonable solutions both inside automobiles, as well as alternatives such as expanding public transit.

        • AndyLikesCandy@reddthat.com
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          1 year ago

          The process of it becoming good enough will be more gradual, with corporate interests lobbying for whatever is most marketable at the time. There will be no singular convention on driving where the philosophical question at the root of policy gets resolved - research will show new drivers benefit most, so at first first-time drivers might be obliged to have some AI backup then there will be some incremental movement as the political climate is favorable.

          Not to go off on a tangent, but I think gun control is a useful example of what I’m talking about: it’s so easy to make people fight bitterly over minutia while ignoring the core philosophical questions entirely (government monopoly on violence, civilian relationship to government, civilian disarmament), an earnest discussion of which would likely be more disruptive to either overarching agenda than losing any court case (by calling other policy into question - like militarized police who do not even see themselves as civilians anymore).

          So nVidia releases a better self driving AI than Tesla, and everyone is comfortable with letting it drive on the highway for you. Each step will be fairly uncontroversial until at some point we’re all comfortable with the thing and someone only wants to make it mandatory for some small segment of drivers, which itself will not draw much controversy because classic non-AI cars with manual transmissions and such will only be in the realm of enthusiasts and collectors.

          • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Not to go off on a tangent, but I think gun control is a useful example of what I’m talking about: it’s so easy to make people fight bitterly over minutia while ignoring the core philosophical questions entirely (government monopoly on violence, civilian relationship to government, civilian disarmament),

            All I see online is people (poorly) discussing these questions. The government doesn’t have a monopoly on violence or even legal violence, but someone always brings it up. If you really think this junk isn’t being discussed, I’d like to know what you’re even reading.

            Each step will be fairly uncontroversial until at some point we’re all comfortable with the thing and someone only wants to make it mandatory for some small segment of drivers, which itself will not draw much controversy because classic non-AI cars with manual transmissions and such will only be in the realm of enthusiasts and collectors.

            Yeah see here you go again, arguing it is inevitable that we’ll have to accept some junky AI driving with tradeoffs.

            It’s obviously the view of auto manufacturers (and especially auto manufacturers that masquerade as tech companies) that this is the future of transit for people, but who knows what the future holds?

            They’ve been at it for more than a decade and it still sucks.

        • AndyLikesCandy@reddthat.com
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          1 year ago

          Yes good point. Ends-means arguments are basically that people trust some rigid system more than the humans around them, even if it means them losing control and being helpless themselves.

    • skyspydude1@lemmy.world
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      As someone who works on AV SW for a living, it’s really not a big deal, assuming you’ve got certain limits already in place.

      However, unlike Tesla, we’re not just handing this out to random people who clicked “I agree” on the screen. We’ve got tons of dedicated training and have to demonstrate we can react to stuff and take over under worst-case conditions, and take incidents like this really seriously.

      It’s funny that he says “Oh, this is why it’s not released to the public”, as I did some driving with a Model 3 on the latest version of FSD within the last few weeks, and in a 1 hour drive had plenty of “Oh shit” moments like this. So yeah, they’ll totally release garbage like this to the public, no doubt about it

    • jadegear@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      The software is probably better tested than a good percentage of human drivers on the road in America, and definitely a better driver than some subset of that group. Good 'nuff, right?

      (But seriously, get this crap off the streets along with the people who shouldn’t have licenses.)

  • EpsilonVonVehron@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    2016,… “I really would consider autonomous driving to be basically a solved problem,” Musk said. “I think we’re basically less than two years away from complete autonomy.”

        • limelight79@lemm.ee
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          I’m almost 50, but I remember when I was a kid, my mom told me that by the time I turned 16, cars would drive themselves. Just tell it where to go and it would do it.

          That timeline would have been the early 90s. Oops.

          After driving a modern car with all of the current safety features, I’ve come to the conclusion that self-driving cars were even farther away than I thought. It frequently misinterprets the situation and screeches its irritating alarm noise.

  • Noxy@yiffit.net
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    1 year ago

    “That’s why we’ve not released this to the public yet. That’s the first intervention for the whole drive.”

    Which, fair enough!

    no, that’s not “fair enough”, it’s unacceptable for him to be testing this shit on public roads among other drivers.

  • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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    1 year ago

    15 years of ownership. Billions of dollars.

    Result: The world’s most expensive port of Burnout.