Rodney Brooks

Factual · Technology

“(Spoiler alter: he thinks they are bad SciFi.)”

Rodney Brooks, roboticist, on X · 17 August 2020 · Post by @rodneyabrooks on X, 2020-08-17 (X)

Cory Doctorow thinks autonomous vehicles are bad science fiction.

Resolved true The record shows it happened or was so.

What would count as true or false

Test: Cory Doctorow has publicly called autonomous vehicles, or the claims made about them, bad science fiction, or said something essentially the same. True: a Doctorow piece published before 2020-08-17 (most likely the one Brooks is referring to) clearly argues that self-driving or autonomous vehicles, or the stories told about them, are bad SF or a fantasy. Mostly true: Doctorow is plainly dismissive of autonomous-vehicle claims as unrealistic fiction, but does not use the 'bad science fiction' framing. Mixed: Doctorow criticises some aspects of autonomous vehicles but not the idea as a whole. Mostly false: Doctorow's piece is about something else, or he is only mildly sceptical. False: Doctorow's piece expresses a favourable view of autonomous vehicles, or no such piece by Doctorow exists.

Evidence

1. Pluralistic: 16 Aug 2020 Pluralistic (Cory Doctorow's blog) · 16 August 2020

   “Indeed, these fairy tales require so much credulity to be taken seriously that they strain even the car-addled imaginations of American automotive culture, and also rely on the irrational exuberance inspired by imaginary self-driving cars to propagate and persist.”

2. Pluralistic: 16 Aug 2020 Pluralistic (Cory Doctorow's blog) · 16 August 2020

   “But that exuberance is sorely misplaced. Machine learning systems have brittle and unpredictable failure modes that can be triggered by accident or deliberately. The unconstrained problem of navigating busy cities with unquantifiable human activities is insoluble with ML.”

3. Pluralistic: 16 Aug 2020 Pluralistic (Cory Doctorow's blog) · 16 August 2020

   “But I'm a science fiction writer and that means I can tell the difference between "thought experiments" and "real things." Alas, the same cannot be said of corporate America.”

Reasoning

I rated this true. Doctorow's Pluralistic post of 16 Aug 2020, the day before Brooks's remark, calls the claims about self-driving cars "fairy tales" that rely on "imaginary self-driving cars" (E1). The post also says the excitement about them is "sorely misplaced" because city driving is "insoluble with ML" (E2). Doctorow writes as a science fiction writer who can tell "thought experiments" from "real things", and says corporate America cannot (E3). He never uses the exact words "bad science fiction", but the criteria count calling the claims "a fantasy" as true, and this post meets that standard.

Cite this claim

Rodney Brooks, “Cory Doctorow thinks autonomous vehicles are bad science fiction.” (said 17 August 2020). Verdict: resolved true. Reliability API, claim c_3207afbf2f56, method 0.1.0+c876030c. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_3207afbf2f56