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A Tragic Loss

teslamotors.com

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Re: A Tragic Loss

#431

Post by rasz_pl »

daveguy wrote: post #383
rasz_pl wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Tesla system is a fancy lane following dressed in powerful PR. Btw I dont feel Imagenet results are relevant, it only tests static 2d images. Car system can have multiple cameras providing 3d reconstruction in near realtime. Mobileye (what tesla repackaged) probably has only one front facing camera and is too stupid beyond 'hey this uniformly colored blob is in my lane'

I was putting image net performance out there as a bare minimum capability. I agree 3d real-time reconstruction is harder (although aided by multiple cameras + radar, etc). You're right, it probably isn't a fair comparison because of the convolution of real-time needs and additional sensors/cameras available.

I meant the opposite, its immensely easier guessing shapes on a moving platform with multiple cameras providing 3d reconstruction than guessing exact name of an object from one random photo.

Car system doesnt need to know the name of a dog breed, all it needs is a shape on a collision course. You can do stereo 3d reconstruction on a 10 year old laptop in real time. You can even do 3d reconstruction with one camera in real time as long as objects move slightly perpendicular to camera http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~gk/PTAM/ http://vision.in.tum.de/research/vslam/lsdslam.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#432

Post by dang »

tr1ck5t3r wrote: post #301

Strip out the youngest & inexperienced drivers who drag the statistics down quite substantially and you will soon see these automated cars are not as safe as experienced drivers. The way the blog posting is written comparing miles driven per fatality, you are led to believe these cars are 38% safer than they really are. The figure being touted by Tesla counting miles driven doesnt tell you that those are interrupted…

Turning that into a national slur was quite distasteful and not allowed here. Please don't do it again.

We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12012001 and marked it off-topic.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#433

Post by fdsaaf »

crpatino wrote: post #385
fdsaaf wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer to talk about real utilitarian tradeoffs instead of putting I imaginary, arbitrarily virtuous angels against computers. Every day you delay automation of automobile traffic is another batch of lives lost. Are you more interested in saving lives or in expressing the short sighted and sanctimonious outrage of a Luddite?

Since when is caring about Engineering standards became Luddite? How many lives do you think autopilot is going to save if being as good as a sleep deprived teenager is good enough? And who benefits from that state of affairs? Anyways, you are a true beliver or a paid shill, so have a good night. EOM.

> Since when is caring about Engineering standards became Luddite?

Since you impose unrealistic standards on progress in an attempt to bolster your own moral position

Re: A Tragic Loss

#434

Post by fdsaaf »

ceejayoz wrote: post #365
fdsaaf wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly what standard do you hold beta features before release? For the sake of the future of humanity, we can't get into a situation where nothing new is allowed so long as someone, somewhere might get hurt.

> Exactly what standard do you hold beta features before release? With stuff that could easily kill you? If it were a drug, there'd be an ethical review and progressively larger trials in carefully selected groups of people receiving informed consent. Something like that might be more appropriate than "your car just updated! enjoy!" beta software.

First of all, given the number of miles Teslas have driven before this incident, any study would have seen zero accidents. Second, drug studies are also too cautious, and many useful drugs are denied to the public on the basis of rare and tolerable side effects. (For example, look at weight loss drugs.)

Re: A Tragic Loss

#435

Post by lkbm »

snowwrestler wrote: post #397
Fricken wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

94% of fatal accidents are due to human error, and preventable if you remove impairment, inattention, and poor judgement from the equation.

Ok but what about the limitations of technology? Yes, self-driving cars will save lives if we assume that the self-driving technology is superior to humans in every way. That's almost a tautology though. Self-driving cars don't get bored, but they don't seem to see white tractor trailers either. Technology has different shortcomings than people do. Whether tech shortcomings result in fewer lives lost than human short…

> but they don't seem to see white tractor trailers either

Isn't Tesla using pure vision? Google also uses lidar, which fixes the problem. EDIT: Looks like I'm wrong and Tesla uses radar.

> Technology has different shortcomings than people do. Whether tech shortcomings result in fewer lives lost than human shortcomings remains to be seen.

Technology also gets better. Ten years ago, people were as bad at driving as they are today. Ten years from now, they'll be as bad as they are today.

Now compare self driving cars ten years ago to self driving cars today. And ten years from now.

> If you read the comments on self-driving car stories, you'd think that technology can do everything better than people. If you read the comments on stories about iPhones and anti-virus, you'd think that everything has terrible bugs, vulnerabilities, and shortcomings.

Those aren't contradictory.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#436

Post by fdsaaf »

ceejayoz wrote: post #387
fdsaaf wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't answer the question.

Well, it's going to depend on the feature. Slightly improved UI on the radio's touchscreen is a bit different from Tesla's autopilot. In the case of autopilot, I'd say similar to a drug study, as it's something that can cause serious harm or death to the human subjects involved. Tesla should have an IRB for ethical monitoring, there should be a small trial group initially (and very gradual rollouts to larger groups),…

Your small-group drug study would have reported zero incidents in this instance.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#437

Post by daveguy »

rasz_pl wrote: post #431
daveguy wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was putting image net performance out there as a bare minimum capability. I agree 3d real-time reconstruction is harder (although aided by multiple cameras + radar, etc). You're right, it probably isn't a fair comparison because of the convolution of real-time needs and additional sensors/cameras available.

I meant the opposite, its immensely easier guessing shapes on a moving platform with multiple cameras providing 3d reconstruction than guessing exact name of an object from one random photo. Car system doesnt need to know the name of a dog breed, all it needs is a shape on a collision course. You can do stereo 3d reconstruction on a 10 year old laptop in real time. You can even do 3d reconstruction with one camera in…

You definitely need to know more than just "3d blob at position x" because your expectations and avoidance will be different for car, truck, motorcycle, road sign, human and especially for things like "grocery sack" vs "cinder block". Less relevant on the hwy, but it definitely isn't simply an "easier" visual task. It is convoluted with things that make it easier (multiple cameras) and things that make it more difficult (real time adaptation).

Edit: even not needing to know details like "dog breed" it still needs at least a solid 200 object classes to cover not-so-edge cases (which is what had the 6% error rate in 2014).

Re: A Tragic Loss

#438

Post by tlrobinson »

archagon wrote: post #330
jfrisby wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your friend/loved one more valuable than the 90 other people who die in automotive accidents (in the U.S. alone) daily? Your attempt at "humanizing" the situation is merely being dismissive of the values of others' lives. Everyone who dies is special and important to someone. To wring your hands and rail against utilitarianism is to try and apply tribalism to moral reasoning. Because this person matters more TO YO…

> Is your friend/loved one more valuable than the 90 other people who die in automotive accidents (in the U.S. alone) daily? To me, the key factor is blame. Who do we fault in an accident? We can't imprison an algorithm or put it in jail. But we can implicate a careless driver. A loved one should not have to die because a truck happened to be the right shade of white — not without much discussion and the possibility…

Who do we fault in an accident? We can't imprison an algorithm or put it in jail.

No, but you can sue the company that built the faulty product, and in certain extreme cases imprison the responsible individuals.

rights of individuals outweigh the utilitarian benefit

What rights are being violated here? People are choosing to use unproven technology, which actually appears to be approximately as safe as humans driving.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#439

Post by lkbm »

IBM wrote: post #113
Analemma_ wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I'm starting to get really weirded out by Tesla's immediate "not our fault!" blog posts every time a Tesla is involved in any kind of accident. I could see the necessity the first few times back when it was new technology to a lot of people (and Top Gear had it in for them), but with it happening over and over it seems whiny and a bit callous. How long to they plan to keep doing this?

Yeah the thing that rubbed me the wrong way was how they responded to the NYT review about cold weather performance. I've been highly skeptical about Elon and Tesla ever since.

Didn't they respond by pointing out that the claims made in the review were false? Was there more follow-up to that story that I missed?

Re: A Tragic Loss

#440

Post by NamTaf »

jacquesm wrote: post #429
NamTaf wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I've now said 3 or so times in various autopilot threads. It has to be an all or nothing thing. Part of responsible engineering is engineering out the many and varied ways that humans can fuck it all up. Look at how UX works in software. Good engineering eliminates users being able to do the wrong thing as much as possible. You don't design a feature that invites misuse and then use instructions to try t…

> I could write novels on the battles we've gone through just to keep drivers paying attention. Please do, and link them here. I'd be very interested in reading about your battles and I figure many others would too. This is where the cutting edge is today and likely will be for years to come so your experience is extremely valuable and has wide applicability.

Here's a comment from 5 months ago about one example - not me personally but it's one of the major case studies in the AU rail industry - that covers exactly this topic. It also sort of morphs into general discussion about alertness tools in physical design.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11017034

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