Tuesday, December 16, 2014

The Ethics of Autonomous Cars

  Patrick Lin wrote an article about the dangers of Autonomous cars and he wrote about 2 different scenarios for when the autonomous car has to make a daring choice of what to crash into when in a crash scenario .  The first scenario is either crashing into an SUV or a Mini Cooper.  SUV's today have been advertised to have the best safety ratings and are usually large and bulky.  While Mini Coopers are relatively small and their safety ratings aren't as good as the bulky SUV's.  But the question now is what does the car hit? Does the autonomous car hit the bulky SUV or the fragile Mini Cooper? The simple answer would to hit the SUV since the people in the SUV have a better chance on surviving the crash than hitting the Mini Cooper. But is that the most logical solution?  What if the SUV contained a new born baby in the back the the autonomous car hits the back door, Bye Bye baby.  What is the SUV was being driven by a young driver and the autonomous car hits the front, Bye Bye driver.  If you knew that a young driver was driving or a baby was in the back would you want your autonomous car to drive into the SUV?  Now I understand that the type of automobile your driving isn't stated but let's say you are driving a big rig, would you still crash into the SUV? This is a controversial issue that critics argue all day and all night.  Some critics say that the car should hit the SUV no matter who's in it due to its higher safety ratings and a higher chance of survival while some critics argue that the car should find another solution, like to run into the guardrail.  In my opinion the SUV should be the choice for the automobile to hit but I will consider to make the car hit something else.  The second scenario we discussed was that you were in the same situation but this time you had to chose between a motorcyclist wearing a helmet and one without a helmet.   Obviously you crash into the motorcyclist wearing the helmet due to better survival chances but critics don't agree with that.  So you are giving the guy not wearing a helmet a surviving chance for not being safe?? Critics argue that the algorithm that is running the chances system is faulty because as you can see in this situation you are injuring the guy that is following safety protocols by wearing the helmet and letting the violator go scotch free? They believe that if this happened companies like Mercedes who take pride in safety will start losing money because motorists aren't gonna wear helmets so that they aren't targeted by this biased system.  This isn't like the SUV/Mini Cooper scenario were the people are in cars, these people are exposed to the elements.  Nothing is coming between the crashing car and the motorist.  In my opinion I would want the car to hit the motorists that isn't wearing a helmet because 1) He is violation safety protocols and 2) The autonomous car shouldn't be promoting "Hey motorists, don't wear helmets or else I'm gonna hit you!!" NO that's bad.  We don't want that. The government wants everyone to be safe.

  One idea to fix this algorithm problem is to replace it with a random-number generator.  For example if the number the autonomous car gets is even, then it will crash into the SUV, if its odd the Mini Cooper.  This way the car doesn't have to base its crash point on statistics and have biased opinions. I am totally on board with the random-number generator because the car with chose randomly so it can decide what to do, not have predetermined data (as previously stated) and go from there.

   Alexander Karasula's posed a question which stated, "If the driver is not making control decisions, should the driver be responsible for any outcomes at all?"  In my opinion this is a tricky question.  It can be Yes and No.  But if I were only allowed to chose one I would chose No because the driver had no interference or decision in the situation.  For example an accident. The driver shouldn't be accused of anything because it wasn't his decision to crash into that specific car, it was the on board computer. All in all, we have seen that the decision of letting autonomous cars go into production is controversial due to all the scenarios and questions that are floating around. Volvo has announced that they would like to start the production of autonomous cars in 2017, 3 (almost 2) years from now. Is this too soon? Did they cover everything they should have? All we can do is pray for the best.

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Passion Project #2

- I have started making surveys for the Reecee's and Starburst part.  I have finished all the information for the Jolly Ranchers and I started finding information for Reecee's.  I have encountered less obstacles since the last time so I am very happy about that.

Monday, October 6, 2014

Passion Project #1

Hello Rogate.  So far I decided to do all the notes first before I start to create the powerpoint.  As of right now I am finishing up the notes for Jolly Ranchers and will soon be starting the Reesee's Pieces Peanut Butter Cup.  The only obstacle that I have had to face, and its a big one, is that there arn't a lot of websites and facts about the history of this company.  My next step is to create a survey about their favorite flavors of Jolly Ranchers. I plan on doing this on every different pieces of candy.  I hope by the end of this month that the Jolly Ranchers and Reesee's Pieces Peanut Butter Cup notes done.  See you in two weeks!!

Sunday, March 30, 2014

Passion Project Update

  The progress I have made was determine the categories I would like to have in my power point.  I have started reading a book to help guide me with this project.  There are two obstacles that I am facing at this point; 1) We still have to rent and watch the movie I am going to incorporate into the project and 2) I have been slacking off and losing focus.  Like I said before I still need to watch the movie but on top of that chose the scenes that I want and crop them. I also have to get the information portion of the project done too.  To overcome my laziness I have to learn time management.

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Passion Project Updates & Reflections

  For my passion project I still have to find more facts and also do my 2nd half of the project(it's a secret).
I have many things to overcome like to find specific information.  To find this I have to search very specific stuff to get what I want.  This is the only obstacles I have to overcome.  This is my Passion Project update.

Thursday, October 24, 2013

School Grades; LETS CHANGE

  Grades; What are Grades?  Well grades are the foundation of what teachers give us to score us on given items like tests, quizzes, essays, etc.  But I want us to go deep into the word "grade" and find out what the purpose of "grades" are and other things.  Let's begin...

  Grades are what teachers give when "grading" specific skills or specific rules given to a certain project or essay.  In my opinion, I think that teachers are just to lazy to give us comments and talk about our mistakes instead of writing a few things and giving a "grade" (let's say B) to reflect what the conversation.  So know the student doesn't know what to improve on but instead being told "do better next time" from a B.

  My opinion on the 100 point grading scale is that it really doesn't reflect the students real grade in school.  For example I know that teachers may take 5 to 10 points off the average grade if you turn in a project late. It think that this is very disappointing for the teachers to do because of WHAT they do, not how they do it.  The student may have had issues getting the supplies or other things so I think that the teachers should change how they take off the points because what if the student does an amazing project or essay,  they shouldn't be taken off points for that.  Instead the teachers should create different sections of grading so although the project may be amazing the teachers mark that they are"irresponsible" and tell them to improve instead of taking 5-10 points off straight away.

I think that we should switch to standards based grading system because this would help us (the students) know what kind of techniques we need to improve.  Also, the teacher would be able to give us direct comments to help us improve instead of a percentage to do all the talking.

So all in all this is my conclusion of grades.  Enjoy!!

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

My Amazing School Year and life

Hi.  I'm Louka Klentzeris.  For all of those who know me.....Hi.  My school year has been very well.  I am one the school soccer team, our record is 3-4 and I have scored 3 out of those 4 games.  So yeah...life's good.  My friends well I don't have many "close friends" but I have some.  It's not easy trying to talk to people and then being told off.  My life is pretty normal.  I have one brother,younger, and have both a mom and a dad.  I have an amazing uncle, he's my trainer, and too many to count cousins.  So yeah, that's my sum of my school life and life in general.