Wednesday, March 22, 2017

How to Trap A Smart Car



Knowledge without context can be a serious problem. We see it all the time in the world of dogs, where people generalize beyond their experience bubble, by opining that the way you teach a dog to run weave poles is the same way you teach a dog to not chase squirrels or stop jumping on guests.

Here we see a self-driving car rolling into a trap it cannot get out of because it "knows" it can cross a line with dashes on its side, but it also "knows" it cannot cross a hard line with dashes on the other side.

This "lack of context trap" is very much like the trap a lot of pet owners put themselves in when they say that "aversives don't work" or "e-collars are bad" or "slip collars are cruel'" or some other bit of mumbo jumbo they "learned" from someone with very limited experience working to stop self-reinforcing behaviors.

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