George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’ • Hacker News Board

Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

#321

Post by mikeash » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 7:34 PM UTC

zodPod wrote: post #275

mikeash wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Is your family an acceptable casualty?" is a pointless question. It can be applied equally well to the opposite argument: what is the acceptable casualty rate for not advancing safety in this way? Is your family an acceptable casualty? Continuing on with the status quo is just as much of an action and a choice as pushing forward with automation. Both choices are going to get people killed. We can either evaluate the…

I don't necessarily disagree with you but one thing that I think a lot of people are seeing is you are relinquishing control of your car to a computer. When I think of computers I often think of things that I CAN MAKE WORK but that aren't inherently trustworthy. Sure they're great for things like math and stuff but when I try to run a new piece of software I expect crashes and they generally happen. NOT ALL SOFTWARE.…

I totally agree on this. Putting my life in the hands of software makes me nervous. I've seen how software is made. But I do it anyway....

I'm not sure if it's entirely relevant here, since the comment above presumes that these systems are safer than humans, and the reply doesn't seem to be questioning that.

I think it's very likely that these systems will rapidly become far better than human drivers, and probably already are in the domains where they're meant to be used. But we definitely can't just take that on faith and hope it's being done properly.

Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

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Post by SapphireSun » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 7:36 PM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #272

taco_emoji wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain? You seem to be implying that you believe that the NHTSA is capriciously making demands of Comma but not to other similar companies in a similar stage of market-readiness.

They certainly could, which is part of my point. Whether they do or not depends on the honesty, bias, and personal ambitions of the people running the agency. The empirical experience is that regulatory agencies over time gravitate towards favoring the big established players in the industry they're regulating. The economist term is "Regulatory Capture".

You seem to be critiquing the idea of a government run by people and the idea that congress can defer rule making authority to people more educated in the particulars of an industry than the congress at large.

Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

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Post by tedmiston » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 7:40 PM UTC

fiatpandas wrote: post #288

Analemma_ wrote: post #16

He's currently throwing a temper tantrum on Twitter, and all because the NHTSA wanted to ask him a few questions about the product (you can see it here: https://www.scribd.com/document/329218929/2016-10-27-Special... ). Like, how dare the government try to have basic standards for multi-ton hunks of metal hurtling down the highway without human input. I've been trying to convince people lately that Silicon Valley isn…

That letter was an easy out for him. When you boast about your tech and it doesn't deliver on the promise (and don't forget the Musk challenge), it looks much better if your exit is caused by government interference than if you were to quit on your own. It's kind of less of a failure. Granted, it's a huge stretch for him based on the language of the letter, but that's how I read the situation.

I think you've nailed it. In his demo video, Hotz said he aims to do 99% of driving. Musk said, "99% is easy, 99.9999% is hard."

Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

#324

Post by tedmiston » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 7:41 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #283

Analemma_ wrote: post #16

He's currently throwing a temper tantrum on Twitter, and all because the NHTSA wanted to ask him a few questions about the product (you can see it here: https://www.scribd.com/document/329218929/2016-10-27-Special... ). Like, how dare the government try to have basic standards for multi-ton hunks of metal hurtling down the highway without human input. I've been trying to convince people lately that Silicon Valley isn…

Holtz's Twitter rant is at [1]. Cruise Automation was very lucky to be acquired by GM before they got a similar letter. Similarly, Otto being acquired by Uber. They were both proposing to sell similar add-on systems. Their valuations would have been much lower after receiving such letters. NHTSA has it right. "It is insufficient to assert, as you do, that 'your product does not remove any of the driver responsibiliti…

> Did Tesla got a similar letter? They have exactly that problem and exactly the same excuse.

Is it the same problem? One is an aftermarket kit vs being built-in to the car.

Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

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Post by stale2002 » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 7:42 PM UTC

throwaway729 wrote: post #242

stale2002 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell that to the millions of people who have already died because self driving car technology isn't here yet, because the government is stopping it.

A huge proportion of commercial self-driving car projects have senior technical staff who were involved in the DARPA challenges and the surrounding research projects. It's hard to over-state the role of federal R&D funding in the development of self-driving tech.

Right now, as of this moment, self driving cars are much safer than human drivers.

Every accident that happens and person who dies is a death that could have been easily prevented if companies had been allowed to go to market last year.

Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

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Post by tedunangst » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 7:42 PM UTC

WhitneyLand wrote: post #197

jacquesm wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tweeted a joke yesterday that the Engineering Society had changed it's slogan to 'Move fast and kill people', I'm pretty happy that NHTSA has its feet solidly planted on terra firma and requires a bit of process around releasing something as important as self driving vehicles. The more software becomes mission critical the more we will need level headedness and quality rather than tantrums.

Have you considered your desire for process in context of the Trolly problem? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem In other words, is it acceptable to move fast, knowing it will cause deaths, if we could be certain the net lives saved would be greater?

I think it's fair for a regulatory agency to ask a company to at least count how many people are on either track before releasing their product.

Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

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Post by henrikschroder » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 7:42 PM UTC

web007 wrote: post #135

msane wrote: post #101

I'm just amazed at what a bad name that is. "Comma One" ... Did they never think that it would be called the The Coma One after even the slightest inevitable incident? Or that a segment of people will be innocently misspelling it as "Coma" everywhere? and how quickly it could catch on? It's so obvious it seems almost Freudian ...

It's not a great name, but I'd give him the benefit of the doubt and assume it's "all things AI". Think classification language, like "Car, Self-Driving". They could be "Car, AI" and "Assistant, AI". Less charitably, it's step one toward Tres Commas.

Given that he referenced the HBO show in his Techcrunch presentation, I'd say the reference to the three comma club is probably the most likely.

Also, one comma would be $1000, which is what the thing was supposed to cost.

Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

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Post by photogrammetry » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 7:45 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #73

pnathan wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is not the rap but the ride that you can't beat. I think that's the reason he's bailing - he doesn't have the lawyer crew, he doesn't want to play the law game - he just wants to create things.

Creating things that sit on the shelf unused?

precisely.

Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

#329

Post by stale2002 » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 7:46 PM UTC

saosebastiao wrote: post #258

erikpukinskis wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proof that so-called autopilot systems are a danger to the public would be evidence that they perform worse than the average driver. I haven't seen such evidence, what are you referencing?

When you measure the safety of autonomous cars by counting the miles they travel, and not counting the miles that they intentionally avoid or defer to a human, you have succeeded in creating a metric that looks like it's useful for comparison, but is actually completely meaningless. It's like measuring typing speed while ignoring typos. Until autonomous vehicles are subject to the full spectrum of conditions that hum…

Not true. Lots of accidents happen in "good" conditions because humans suck at driving.

The way you compare, is you give a self driving car to a person, and compare actually usage for that person, and see if owning a self driving car increases or reduces accidents for that person.

Being perfect only half the time is still revolutionary.

Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

#330

Post by dreamcompiler » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 7:46 PM UTC

mikeryan wrote: post #126

patcheudor wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not mission critical, rather life critical. I've worked on several life critical systems as a security researcher, helping to develop controls in tightly controlled environments to keep people safe. Work on software controlled switches in industrial machines mostly. As I've followed these developments and those of Google and Tesla I've been wondering at times if I live in some alternate universe. The level of diligen…

Google I'm totally cool with. They've been at this a long time and still don't seem very close to actually releasing a product. I like Tesla's and what Elon's accomplished has been impressive but he seems hellbent on "winning the race" to release a self driving car and that worries me.

I wish it were possible to buy a Tesla without any autopilot features except basic cruise control, because I know how damnably difficult the edge cases are for a self-driving car, and I'm perfectly capable of driving a car manually, thank you very much. Tesla's cars are so good I'd almost be willing to pay more for one without autopilot.

Almost.