TL;DR: faking out a self-driving system is always going to be possible, and so is faking out humans. But doing so is basically attempted murder, which is why the existence of an exploit like this is not interesting or new. You could also cut the brake lines or rig a bomb to it.
this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2024
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People seem to hold computers to a higher standard than other people when performing the same task.
Because humans have more accountability. Also it has implications for military/police use of self-guided stuff.
What is the purpose of accountability other than to force people to do better? If the lack of accountability doesn't stop a computer from outperforming a human, why worry about it?
The lack of accountability means that there is nothing and no one to take responsibility when the robot/computer inevitably kills someone. A human can be faced with legal ramifications for their actions, the companies that make these computers have shown thus far that they are exempt from such consequences.
That is true for most current "self driving" systems, because they are all just glorified assist features. Tesla is misleading its customers massively with their advertisement, but on paper it's very clear that the car will only assist in safe conditions, the driver needs to be able to react immediately at all times and therefore is also liable.
However, Mercedes (I think it was them) have started to roll out a feather where they will actually take responsibility for any accidents that happen due to this system. For now it's restricted to nice weather and a few select roads, but the progress is there!
The driverless robo-taxis are also a concern. When one of them killed someone in San Francisco there was not a clear responsible entity to charge with the crime.
That is simply not true. The law since basically forever had held that manufacturers are liable if their product malfunctions and hurts someone when it's being operated in accordance with their instructions.
Edit: I hope all y'all who think the rule of law doesn't exist are gonna vote against the felony party.
Excuse us for being sceptical that businesses will actually be held accountable. We know legally they are, but will forced arbitration or delayed court proceedings mean people too poor to afford a good lawyer for long will have to fuck off?
The current court cases show that the manufacturers are trying to fob off responsibility onto the owners of the vehicles by way of TOS agreements with lots of fine print and Tesla in particular is getting slammed for false advertising about the capabilities of their self-driving features while they simultaneously try to force all legal liability onto the drivers that believed their advertising.
I think human responses vary too much: could you follow a strategy that makes 50% of human drivers crash reliably? probably. Could you follow a strategy to make 100% of autonomous vehicles crash reliably? Almost certainly.
Or if it's a Tesla you could hack someone's weather app and thus force them to drive in the rain.
Awwww. Why did you have to break the circlejerk? People were enjoying it!
I was so close to finishing, too. Time to look for another doomsday thread, I guess.
More exciting would be an exploit that renders an unmoving car useless. But exploits like this absolutely will be used in cases were tire-slashing might be used, such as harassing genocidal vips or disrupting police services, especially if it's difficult to trace the drone to its controller.
You don't even have to rig a bomb, a better analogy to the sensor spoofing would be to just shine a sufficiently bright light in the driver's eyes from the opposite side of the road. Things will go sideways real quick.
It’s not meant to be a perfect example. It’s a comparable principle. Subverting the self-driving like that is more or less equivalent to any other means of attempting to kill someone with their car.
I don't disagree, i'm simply trying to present a somewhat less extreme (and therefore i think more appealing) version of your argument
This is the real reason Elon Musk doesn't want people tracking his plane. If we know where he is, Wile E Coyote could catch up to him and trick his car into crashing into a brick wall, by painting a tunnel on it
What a great analogy
Human-driven cars can be crashed with a brick, or a quart of oil.
Wait until you see what my uncle Jerry can do with a 5th of vodka and his Highlander.
It is old.
I mean, not this certain attack, but the principle is well known.
The solution is also known: any sensor (or at least any critically important sensor) in a robotic system must be able to recognize it's own state of "blindness". The system must react accordingly. (For example, with the camera behind the windshield, it would activate the wipers and the heating in the windshield to remove possible rain, snow or dirt). If several sensors go "blind" at the same time, the system must do a safe stop of the car.
It's basically chaff, lol. We've known chaff is an effective radar countermeasure since the 40s, and it seems like the researchers have found the lidar and optical equivalents of chaff. What really scares me is the idea of this evolving into more sophisticated deception attacks like range or velocity gate pulls. No idea how you'd do that with lidar or optically, but I'd bet money that's a line item on a black budget somewhere
Its still a problem, A sheet held across the road on a string would show up as a wall to both cameras and lidar. I for one am buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo looking forward to the emerging profession of road pirates robbing automated trucks this way.
road pirates robbing automated trucks
Ok but the problem of road pirates isn't new either, is it? Let's watch 'Herbie' again :-)
There is just one risk that is kinda new (but actually coming with every automation): systematic errors could bring vulnerabilities that get exploited in large numbers.
Just ban the goddamn things already.