Self-driving cars are currently illegal, I assume largely because of these unresolved tail risks. But I think excluding illegality I’m not sure their economic value is zero—I could imagine cases where people would use self-driving cars if they wouldn’t be caught doing it. Does this seem right to people?
Intuitively it doesn’t seem like economic value tails and risk tails should necessarily go together, which makes me concerned about cases similar to self-driving cars that are harder to regulate legally.
I could imagine cases where people would use self-driving cars if they wouldn’t be caught doing it. Does this seem right to people?
Rather than people straight-up ignoring the risks, I imagine things like cruise control or automatic emergency braking; these are example self-driving use-cases which don’t require solving all the tail risks. The economic value of marginal improvements is not zero, although it’s nowhere near the value of giving every worker in the country an extra hour every weekday (roughly the average commute time).
Intuitively it doesn’t seem like economic value tails and risk tails should necessarily go together...
Totally agree with this. I do think that when we know some area has lots of tail risk, we tend to set up regulation/liability, which turns the risk tail into an economic value tail. That’s largely the point of (idealized) liability law: to turn risks directly into (negative) value for someone capable of mitigating the risks. But there’s plenty of cases where risk tails and value tails won’t go together:
Cases where there’s a positive value tail without any particular risks involved.
Cases where we don’t know there’s a risk tail.
Cases where liability law sucks. (Insert punchline here.)
I don’t think self-driving cars are actually a hard case here, they’re just a case which has to be handled by liability law (i.e. lawsuits post-facto) rather than regulatory law (i.e. banning things entirely).
I really like this post.
Self-driving cars are currently illegal, I assume largely because of these unresolved tail risks. But I think excluding illegality I’m not sure their economic value is zero—I could imagine cases where people would use self-driving cars if they wouldn’t be caught doing it. Does this seem right to people?
Intuitively it doesn’t seem like economic value tails and risk tails should necessarily go together, which makes me concerned about cases similar to self-driving cars that are harder to regulate legally.
Rather than people straight-up ignoring the risks, I imagine things like cruise control or automatic emergency braking; these are example self-driving use-cases which don’t require solving all the tail risks. The economic value of marginal improvements is not zero, although it’s nowhere near the value of giving every worker in the country an extra hour every weekday (roughly the average commute time).
Totally agree with this. I do think that when we know some area has lots of tail risk, we tend to set up regulation/liability, which turns the risk tail into an economic value tail. That’s largely the point of (idealized) liability law: to turn risks directly into (negative) value for someone capable of mitigating the risks. But there’s plenty of cases where risk tails and value tails won’t go together:
Cases where there’s a positive value tail without any particular risks involved.
Cases where we don’t know there’s a risk tail.
Cases where liability law sucks. (Insert punchline here.)
I don’t think self-driving cars are actually a hard case here, they’re just a case which has to be handled by liability law (i.e. lawsuits post-facto) rather than regulatory law (i.e. banning things entirely).