Member-only story
Rough Choice: Lost Lives Versus Saved Lives to Achieve AI Self-Driving Cars
Dr. Lance B. Eliot, AI Insider
The controversial Linear No-Threshold (LNT) graph has been in the news recently. LNT is a type of statistical model that has been used primarily in health-related areas such as dealing with exposures to radiation and other human-endangering substances such as toxic chemicals.
Essentially, the standard version of an LNT graph posits that any exposure at all is too much and therefore you should seek to not have any exposure, avoiding even the tiniest bit of exposure. You might say it is a zero-tolerance condition (using modern day phrasing). Strictly speaking, if you believe the standardized version of an LNT graph, it means there isn’t any level of exposure that is safe.
In the classic LNT graph, the line starts at the origin point of the graph and the moment that the line starts to rise it is indicating that immediately you are being endangered since any exposure is considered bad. That’s the “no-threshold” part of the LNT. There isn’t any kind of initial gap or buffer portion that is considered safe. Any exposure is considered unsafe and ill-advised to encounter.
Succinctly stated by Nobel Prize winner Hermann Muller in the 1940s, he was the discoverer of the ability of radiation to cause genetic mutation, and…
