A Tragic Loss • Hacker News Board

Re: A Tragic Loss

#481

Post by ars » Fri, Jul 01, 2016, 1:57 PM UTC

ec109685 wrote: post #461

ars wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the first fatality collision after 130 million miles of tesla's autopilot, so it's already above that bar. It most definitely is not above that bar! The autopilot is combined with a human operating the car. How many accidents were avoided by the human rather than the autopilot? I suspect a ton of accidents (i.e. the autopilot has a high error rate). How many did the autopilot avoid that the human would not…

"How many did the autopilot avoid that the human would not have? Probably not that many, if any." Or probably it avoided 100,000 accidents! Unfortunately, we are both just guessing. So please keep your math out of this.

> Unfortunately, we are both just guessing.

Except I am not guessing. That's the point of math.

The autopilot plus a human, only did slightly better than a human alone. That means the autopilot did nothing, since slightly better is well within the range of normal for a human alone.

> So please keep your math out of this.

What a strange reply. Why keep math out of this?

Are you hoping that this will be real if you ignore all evidence to the contrary?

Right now the evidence is in: Computer assisted cars don't do anything helpful to the accident rate. This bodes poorly for self driving cars, and since the error rate they have to hit is so low, it's really not looking good.

I personally don't expect self driving cars to ever be used on regular streets. Only on computer-exclusive roads, specially marked for them.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#482

Post by macintux » Fri, Jul 01, 2016, 3:48 PM UTC

alkonaut wrote: post #458

macintux wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem to me seems to be: at highway speeds, you have to decide very quickly whether or not it's something that the system can't handle. If you're constantly responding to every change in conditions, what's the point of the autopilot? So you don't respond every time, and then something comes up that the autopilot doesn't recognize, and you don't know that until it's too late.

> If you're constantly responding to every change in conditions, what's the point of the autopilot? The same as a cruise control - you are supervising rather than micromanaging because micromanagement is more work than supervision. A distance-keeping cruisecontrol may be changing the throttle level dozens of times per minute. A driver supervising that system can keep an eye out for stalled cars on the side of the roa…

I think we're in agreement. My point is that you can't supervise something you don't understand so I don't know how a driver can reasonably be expected to switch from supervision to reaction quickly enough every time that is needed.

I know what my cruise control will do (effectively nothing). I don't know how to anticipate what Tesla's sensors and "AI" can't handle.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#483

Post by fucking_tragedy » Fri, Jul 01, 2016, 3:50 PM UTC

manicdee wrote: post #457

fucking_tragedy wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called Autopilot™.

The autopilot in planes works the same way: pilot is strongly recommended to keep hands on the controls, autopilot will release control if any conditions fall outside the autopilot's functional envelope.

Pilots are trained professionals in the field where autopilot is relevant, consumers are not.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#484

Post by rasz_pl » Fri, Jul 01, 2016, 4:15 PM UTC

daveguy wrote: post #472

rasz_pl wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont think so. Walk before you run. There is no difference between a human, bale of hay or a deer when it comes to objects entering your trajectory. Braking in front of all 3d elements obstructing the way is preferable over Tesla decapitation(TM). Real time is not difficult, we got there 10 years ago for primitive 3d reconstruction at 30Hz on ordinary laptop, today its doable on a phone. It would definitely be bett…

Well, the fact that no one has a product despite billions of dollars in research and at least 5 years directed serious effort (in the latest generation) across every major tech and auto company would indicate that it is a more difficult problem than you think.

There are plenty of commercial products, just look up ICCV ECCV (there is even a dedicated track for autonomous driving http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~CVRSUAD/). But nobody is crazy enough to accept all liability of selling packaged 'autonomous driving system', even MobilEye doesnt do that. Tesla made a big mistake branding their young flawed tech as something it is not.

edit: This is from last years conference, running on a laptop in real time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJt3Ln8H03s

Re: A Tragic Loss

#485

Post by Kalium » Fri, Jul 01, 2016, 6:15 PM UTC

tlrobinson wrote: post #454

Kalium wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That introduces an imminent death that wasn't there before. Doing so with a deliberate decision changes the whole thing. This is more like vaccines. They protect a great many lives from events not deliberately introduced at the cost of a small number of bad reactions. Is that number more than zero? Yes. Does it feel small if it's someone you love? No. Is humanity as a whole better off for polio vaccines? Yes, absolut…

It's kind of like a reverse firing squad: we won't choose to kill 1 person with 100% certainty, but we will choose to kill 1,000,000 people with a probability of 0.000001 each.

When your choice is 1,000,000 people with 0.0001 each or those same 1,000,000 people with 0.00000001 each, it starts to seem like a really silly question.

Every human life is unique, special, and sacred. Yet, we cannot ethically permit ourselves to be paralyzed by this to the point where we refuse to reduce the amount of avoidable death because our options are not perfect.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#486

Post by a3n » Fri, Jul 01, 2016, 6:20 PM UTC

> It is important to note that Tesla disables Autopilot by default and requires explicit acknowledgement that the system is new technology and still in a public beta phase before it can be enabled.

The driver of the truck wasn't asked to sign that.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#487

Post by emitstop » Fri, Jul 01, 2016, 6:25 PM UTC

ars wrote: post #320

emitstop wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the first fatality collision after 130 million miles of tesla's autopilot, so it's already above that bar. Additionally, 92 people are killed in fatal car accidents in the US every day. So it's not as though this is some uncommon occurrence that autonomous vehicles would be unlikely to improve.

> This is the first fatality collision after 130 million miles of tesla's autopilot, so it's already above that bar. It most definitely is not above that bar! The autopilot is combined with a human operating the car. How many accidents were avoided by the human rather than the autopilot? I suspect a ton of accidents (i.e. the autopilot has a high error rate). How many did the autopilot avoid that the human would not…

92 people per day isn't "uncommon". It might be statistically improbable, but that's not what uncommon means. It's a regular, daily occurrence for 92 real human lives every day.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#488

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jul 01, 2016, 6:30 PM UTC

ars wrote: post #320

emitstop wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the first fatality collision after 130 million miles of tesla's autopilot, so it's already above that bar. Additionally, 92 people are killed in fatal car accidents in the US every day. So it's not as though this is some uncommon occurrence that autonomous vehicles would be unlikely to improve.

> This is the first fatality collision after 130 million miles of tesla's autopilot, so it's already above that bar. It most definitely is not above that bar! The autopilot is combined with a human operating the car. How many accidents were avoided by the human rather than the autopilot? I suspect a ton of accidents (i.e. the autopilot has a high error rate). How many did the autopilot avoid that the human would not…

[deleted]

Re: A Tragic Loss

#489

Post by smilingtom » Fri, Jul 01, 2016, 6:45 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #194

jacquesm wrote: post #94

This is why driving AI is 'all or nothing' for me. Assisted systems will lead to drivers paying less attention as the systems get better. The figures quoted by Tesla seem impressive but you have to assume the majority of the drivers is still paying attention all the time . As auto-pilots get better you'll see them paying attention less and then the accident rate will go up, not down for a while at least until the bug…

It's pretty well established that humans (e.g. [1]) that humans have a lot of trouble paying when they don't need to be actively engaged most of the time and also have trouble taking back control. In a consumer driving context, I have zero doubt that, as systems like these develop, people will start watching videos and reading absent draconian monitoring systems to ensure they keep their eyes on the road. I'm not sur…

I'm not sure you understand what some of the words you wrote mean.

Re: A Tragic Loss

#490

Post by ars » Fri, Jul 01, 2016, 6:59 PM UTC

emitstop wrote: post #487

ars wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the first fatality collision after 130 million miles of tesla's autopilot, so it's already above that bar. It most definitely is not above that bar! The autopilot is combined with a human operating the car. How many accidents were avoided by the human rather than the autopilot? I suspect a ton of accidents (i.e. the autopilot has a high error rate). How many did the autopilot avoid that the human would not…

92 people per day isn't "uncommon". It might be statistically improbable, but that's not what uncommon means. It's a regular, daily occurrence for 92 real human lives every day.

Uncommon for the computer (or human) driving the car.

You have to understand the magnitude of the perfection needed to have any hope of implementing it.

Tell me: Before you read my message, would you have assumed at a computer that is 99% perfect, or 99.9% perfect, would be better than a human?

I can tell you, that until I did the math, I thought so myself.

But 99.99999% is 10,000 better! If the computer was 99.9% perfect you would have almost 1 million fatalities per year (assuming things scale linearly, which I'm sure they wouldn't, probably most of the time driving is easy and 99.9% would still not get into an accident).

> It's a regular, daily occurrence for 92 real human lives every day.

I know. (Although you said that badly: it's not a daily occurrence for those people. But I get your emotion.)

But a computer will not solve this problem, not for a long time. We simply are not able to make a computer that is that good.

Let's see if we can make a web browser that is that good before we try to make a driving computer that good.

It also puts human drivers in a new light. I was of the camp that people are terrible, horrible drivers that kill all the time.

But actually humans are nearly perfect at driving, it's just there are so very very many people driving, so even a tiny cumulative error shows up.