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Should cars be fully driverless? No, says an MIT engineer and historian

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Re: Should cars be fully driverless? No, says an MIT engineer and historian

#61

Post by IanCal »

jessaustin wrote: post #51
snowwrestler wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how is the vexing situation resolved? Either the onboard computer must be able to manage 100% of all situations, or the human driver must have an option to take control to resolve it themselves. You can't have a car that makes human control impossible, and then gets itself into vexing situations. You'll be stuck there forever.

For nearly every mistake that human drivers make, a good way to prevent it is to slow down. Not every situation must be navigated at maximum speed. Robocars will be better drivers than humans, but slower will still be safer. I'm not talking about cars parked in the lane indefinitely because they're confused by some dirt obscuring the center line. If that had been a thing the Google cars would already have fixed it.

> For nearly every mistake that human drivers make, a good way to prevent it is to slow down.

This is an important point, one where the comparison to aircraft doesn't work. Aircraft and the Apollo missions couldn't have a failsafe that just says "I think something is wrong, come to a gentle stop".

Re: Should cars be fully driverless? No, says an MIT engineer and historian

#62

Post by Lewton »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #27
sandworm101 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So long as the self-driving car can cover every situation. What doesn't work is a system that expects the human to sit idle for hundreds of hours, then suddenly throws him/her the wheel and jumps ship. (Like the autodrive system in that simpsons episode where homer becomes a trucker.)

I agree. Self-driving system that expects humans to take over randomly every now and then when something unexpected happens is much more dangerous than 100% self-driving or no self-driving - it exposes only the worst aspects of human driving while removing the best.

That's not completely clear. It depends entirely on how often the human is expected to take over

Re: Should cars be fully driverless? No, says an MIT engineer and historian

#63

Post by Karunamon »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #27
sandworm101 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So long as the self-driving car can cover every situation. What doesn't work is a system that expects the human to sit idle for hundreds of hours, then suddenly throws him/her the wheel and jumps ship. (Like the autodrive system in that simpsons episode where homer becomes a trucker.)

I agree. Self-driving system that expects humans to take over randomly every now and then when something unexpected happens is much more dangerous than 100% self-driving or no self-driving - it exposes only the worst aspects of human driving while removing the best.

That assumes the tech is crap though, doesn't it? I think there's a case to be made that once the tech has progressed enough, there will be fewer deaths/injuries overall even if some of the number has moved from the "human did something dumb" to "human couldn't take over from autopilot fast enough"

Re: Should cars be fully driverless? No, says an MIT engineer and historian

#64

Post by IanCal »

rdtsc wrote: post #54
andrewray wrote: post #23

Cars seem fundamentally different than his other examples: Spacecraft, underwater vehicles, and airplanes. The importance difference is cars have a clear, visual grid of where they can travel and where they cannot travel. Painted lines on the road and navigational signs provide a construct of the environment around them. Maybe the closest comparison is subway / metro rails. There are already many fully automated subw…

> difference is cars have a clear, visual grid of where they can travel and where they cannot travel. Visual grid for people to look at. All those cues and signs were not designed to be read and processed by robots. And there are crazy pedestrians, crazy drivers, maybe cattle crossing the street, an accident, ice, fog, ice and fog and cattle, unpaved roads, etc. I would think an airplane's environment when in the air…

> And there are crazy pedestrians, crazy drivers, maybe cattle crossing the street, an accident, ice, fog, ice and fog and cattle, unpaved roads, etc.

All of which people often don't do that well on themselves.

> All those cues and signs were not designed to be read and processed by robots

No, but they were designed to be clear and quickly identifiable by humans with vague glances. We're not asking for them to identify a subtly sarcastic remark, signs are more of the "BIG RED CIRCLE WITH STRAIGHT WHITE LINE" variety.

> I would think an airplane's environment when in the air seems more predictable and stable, than an environment for car on the streets

Possibly, but the risks are significantly higher. If something unexpected happens you can't just come to a halt and put your warning lights on 30,000 feet in the air.

> Same thing for underwater vehicles

I disagree on this one, the environment is going to be largely unknown and more importantly for exploration you aren't just saying "go here". When I drive somewhere, many of the roads will have been driven over thousands of times the same day.

Re: Should cars be fully driverless? No, says an MIT engineer and historian

#65

Post by sklogic »

His 40 years of experience obviously did not include the only recently available GPUs and ASIC deep neural networks which are at the heart of the current self-driving robotics research. There is a game changer, and any previous experience is irrelevant.

Re: Should cars be fully driverless? No, says an MIT engineer and historian

#66

Post by TeMPOraL »

snowwrestler wrote: post #52
TeMPOraL wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In context of this discussion we're evaluating the technical drivelessness, not legal one, so Google cars and the hours they logged qualify.

I disagree; I think sandworm nailed an essential issue. At the top of this subthread, Zikes claimed that Google's cars are a "proven technology." Not even Google claims that now, and legality is indeed part of that. Driverless elevators are an example of an actual proven technology. There's no human operator standing by to jump on the manual brake in case the automation fails. And if a driverless elevator does fail a…

I agree with you here. Also, the example of "driverless elevator" is excellent; I'll be remembering it for consideration in further discussion about self-driving technologies. Thanks for bringing this up.

Also, wtf is with downvoting in both Tesla threads today? Especially 'sandworm101 is taking a heavy hit for bringing up reasonable counterpoints (with most I disagree, but it doesn't change they're reasonable).

Re: Should cars be fully driverless? No, says an MIT engineer and historian

#67

Post by paulsutter »

agumonkey wrote: post #60
paulsutter wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but cars can already navigate traffic autonomously. And there is much more to landing men on the moon than physics. Check out Tesla's live shipping code: http://jalopnik.com/teslas-autopilot-system-is-awesome-and-c... Are you predicting that cars will never be fully autonomous?

As a website commenter I'm not sure I should predict anything. To explain a bit more my previous message, as complex as going to the moon was, it seems a problem scientists knew how to define. One vehicle, 2 planets, the system is describable. Traffic with lots of agents potentially interacting with every other agent, hence my chaos analogy, lots and lots of variable, ... is blurry. There's successful research to des…

Good point on air vs car accident rates.

By the way, I find that making a prediction causes me to net out the different aspects of an issue quickly, and snaps me out of the mode of enumerating pros and cons. That's why I asked.

Re: Should cars be fully driverless? No, says an MIT engineer and historian

#68

Post by TeMPOraL »

Lewton wrote: post #62
TeMPOraL wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Self-driving system that expects humans to take over randomly every now and then when something unexpected happens is much more dangerous than 100% self-driving or no self-driving - it exposes only the worst aspects of human driving while removing the best.

That's not completely clear. It depends entirely on how often the human is expected to take over

Basically, the less often the worse. If it's like once every 5 seconds it's fine. Once every 5 minutes, it's dangerous and annoying. Once every hour is a lethal idea.

Re: Should cars be fully driverless? No, says an MIT engineer and historian

#69

Post by TeMPOraL »

Karunamon wrote: post #63
TeMPOraL wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Self-driving system that expects humans to take over randomly every now and then when something unexpected happens is much more dangerous than 100% self-driving or no self-driving - it exposes only the worst aspects of human driving while removing the best.

That assumes the tech is crap though, doesn't it? I think there's a case to be made that once the tech has progressed enough, there will be fewer deaths/injuries overall even if some of the number has moved from the "human did something dumb" to "human couldn't take over from autopilot fast enough"

I think the danger is that semi-self-driving with occasional human intervention will be more dangerous than pure human driving. If the interventions are so rare that the average deaths/injuries fall below the current level, then of course we've made some progress. But hopefully by this time we'll be able to go full-auto. It's hard to imagine an extremely unexpected dangerous situation, in which giving control to human would be better than just making the algorithm try and recover.

Re: Should cars be fully driverless? No, says an MIT engineer and historian

#70

Post by lukaslalinsky »

aclissold wrote: post #40

On the topic of boredom and attention lapses while driving, I wonder if it would actually be made safer by being made more difficult, in contrast to the never-ending search for ease of use. Something that's difficult, mentally stimulating, and requires actual skill like a video game or musical instrument. Would there be more or less mistakes (collisions) if people were forced to be engaged 100% of the time in order t…

When I'm on a highway, I like driving a little faster than the cars around me precisely for this reason. If I drive just 1 km/h faster, I need to switch lanes and overtake cars occasionally, which brings some action into the driving. And the funny thing is, I usually do it while using cruise control. So I think it's not about a technical challenge, it's about changing what is happening around you and having the need to be aware of the changes.
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