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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

#101

Post by Houshalter »

Anechoic wrote: post #46
Zikes wrote: post #3

I must be missing something, because it seems like Mr. Mindell is saying cars shouldn't be fully driverless because they can't be. He cites numerous examples of other promised automation technologies that seem to have become a pipe dream over the past several decades. Except, Google's driverless cars have now logged over a million fully automated miles. It is a proven technology. These aren't exploratory machines goi…

Google's driverless cars have now logged over a million fully automated miles. It is a proven technology. Not even Google engineers go that far - see this Tech Review article [0] from last years that talks about how Google's driverless cars can't handle snow, heavy rain, or its sensors being blinded by the sun. Driverless cars may be coming, but it's still along way off. [0] http://www.technologyreview.com/news/53027…

That's just a matter of improving sensors. The point is that cars already exist that can drive just fine without getting into accidents.

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

#102

Post by snowwrestler »

Lewton wrote: post #75
TeMPOraL wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

His points really are not reasonable at all. He's completely ignoring that humans are generally pretty bad at driving cars and implying that AI driven cars need to be perfect before they should be replacing humans. If we banned human driving today and replaced it with the current tech (which probably isn't near being ready for actual use), we would still be far better off than we are now.

Where's the evidence to support this sentiment? I see it all the time and it looks to me that people just take it on faith that computers will be better.

I mean, here on HN, discussions of computing products like phones and operating systems are full of complaints large and small about problems, shortcomings, etc. Are there any programmers here who think their product is bug-free and safely survives all edge cases?

There just seems to be a huge mismatch between how people think about computers they use today, and computers they expect to drive their car in the near future. But it all comes out of the same companies and software development processes.

I also don't think people know the stats on car safety. The injury rate is 75 per 100 million miles traveled. About 35,000 people died from vehicle accidents in 2013. That sounds like a lot, but more people died from the flu, or from falls, than died from cars.

I won't deny that vehicle travel is dangerous, but the question is why we think computers would be better at it than humans, who are already pretty darn good at it.

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

#103

Post by TeMPOraL »

snowwrestler wrote: post #102
Lewton wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His points really are not reasonable at all. He's completely ignoring that humans are generally pretty bad at driving cars and implying that AI driven cars need to be perfect before they should be replacing humans. If we banned human driving today and replaced it with the current tech (which probably isn't near being ready for actual use), we would still be far better off than we are now.

Where's the evidence to support this sentiment? I see it all the time and it looks to me that people just take it on faith that computers will be better. I mean, here on HN, discussions of computing products like phones and operating systems are full of complaints large and small about problems, shortcomings, etc. Are there any programmers here who think their product is bug-free and safely survives all edge cases? T…

Humans aren't pretty good at it, and we know the problems we have are exactly the parts where machines are already stronger than us. We also have some good deployments of automated technology, notably in air travel, which is flying on decades old technology anyway.

> I mean, here on HN, discussions of computing products like phones and operating systems are full of complaints large and small about problems, shortcomings, etc. Are there any programmers here who think their product is bug-free and safely survives all edge cases?

The problems with phones and operating systems are often not because of engineers, but because of businessmen. Especially phones and webdev - you can often trace the problems back to decision made in order to increase sales or save money. Most phone vendors ship shitty UIs and buggy devices not because they have bad engineers.

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

#104

Post by Turing_Machine »

ekianjo wrote: post #16

Erm... the main point he makes is like "oh, we could not do it before no matter how hard we tried, so let's give up and keep humans in charge" basically. I'm sure no one believe we would send rockets into space if you look back long enough in time, yet we did it. Driverless cars are not a concept anymore, many prototypes are very close to being fully operational - it would be very disappointing to stop at this stage.

"I'm sure no one believe we would send rockets into space if you look back long enough in time"

Not even all that long ago, actually.

http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-amp-space/article/20...

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

#105

Post by jessaustin »

Animats wrote: post #71
hguant wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pulling over to the side of the road and putting your blinkers on is (almost) always an acceptable solution to an automotive error. Much harder to pull that off at 35,000 feet.

If you have a problem at cruising altitude, there's usually time to deal with it. Transport planes can glide 100-200 miles from that altitude if they have to. Most aircraft accidents happen during takeoff, approach, or landing. See NTSB reports.[1] High-altitude accidents are mostly in-flight fires, including two events involving lithium batteries. There is, however, one commercial aircraft crash from problems at alt…

That second report is fascinating. One might hope that even amateur pilots would know power curve characteristics at high altitude, and the flight team's "gosh we're saving a lot of fuel" comments on the CVR inspire a sort of grim amusement, but I wonder whether the incident might actually have saved lives in the long run.

If we're going to fly budget carriers like Pinnacle, those carriers are going to employ inexperienced flight crews and attempt to make up it up with training, simulation, and rules. This misadventure identified numerous shortfalls in those. I doubt anyone flying today's Endeavor Air ignores so many stick shakes, uses the same stall procedure at all altitudes, ignores airspeed, hasn't heard of "core lock", or lies so blatantly to ATC in potential emergency situations. I can understand why the report soft-pedaled the training gaps, because after all they didn't need to give the aircrew's survivors any more leverage in the inevitable lawsuit, but I'd expect training to improve anyway.

Is it common practice for pilots at budget airlines to read accident reports like this?

IANAPilot, but I'd like to be!

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

#106

Post by TrevorJ »

sandworm101 wrote: post #13
zhanwei wrote: post #9

He is comparing situations where human decision makers are highly trained professionals such as astronauts and passenger plane pilot to daily driving situations where the average human decision maker is more likely to be an idiot(people switch off while driving) distracted by his smartphone.

Astronauts and pilots also switch off. It's not a function of training, but boredom and/or distraction.

It's something that a lot of professions are specifically trained to avoid. Awareness is a hierarchy. No one can remain hyper vigilant all the time, but you can be trained to remain in a state of relaxed vigilance. In this state, you can react appropriately to situations and heighten your awareness state as the situation calls for it. If you are in a state of unawareness and are unprepared then your reaction to a situation that suddenly calls for heightened awareness will be very sub-optimal.

I think the issue with self driving cars that require a driver to be ready to step in at a moments notice, is that we, as a population are not trained to remain relaxed and aware at all times, nor is it reasonable to really expect most people to be able to do this.

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

#107

Post by icc97 »

zhanwei wrote: post #28
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…

There are still some elements of uncertainty in car driving. For e.g. driverless cars are confused by cyclist doing track stand[1]. Hopefully with enough data driverless car could overcome these difficulties. [1] http://road.cc/content/news/162468-cyclist-doing-trackstand-...

Interesting story. There's a later article [1] that describes the problems that the Google car has with assertiveness at junctions.

[1]: http://www.roboticstrends.com/article/a_cyclists_encounter_w...

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