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

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

#411

Post by abduhl » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 9:23 PM UTC

komali2 wrote: post #220

abduhl wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"As you are undoubtedly aware, there is a high likelihood that some drivers will use your product in a manner that exceeds its intended purpose." The government appears well aware of this hand waving garbage that companies are trying with "it isn't really autopilot, keep your hands on the wheel wink ." This is exactly government's job and is a fabulous example of a government reacting to ongoing events that have prov…

>inherently a danger Can you expand on how they are an inherent danger, rather than a possible danger? I only challenge you because Tesla has published several occasions where Autopilot has possibly saved lives by auto-braking.

My statement was that "ongoing events that have proven that so-called autopilot systems are inherently a danger to the public at this stage". The important part to note is "at this stage" where at this stage refers to this stage of development and implementation.

Contrary to Tesla's publishing several occasions where Autopilot has possibly saved lives, there have been concrete incidents where people have died while Autopilot is being used. Tesla has backed away from these incidents with the same hand waving that NHTSA has specifically touched on here: that the user is exceeding the system's design purpose.

In this context ("at this stage"), where consumers have historically and will most likely continue to exceed these systems' design purposes and operate them outside of their intended scope, it seems very clear to me that these systems are inherently dangerous to the public. That is, there is no way to make these systems not a danger to the public in their current form.

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

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Post by mannykannot » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 9:23 PM UTC

stale2002 wrote: post #329

saosebastiao wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The frequency with which an autonomous driving system relinquishes control is one important metric for estimating the actual risk. Measures like this are better and faster than using the actual tally of catastrophic events, because there is more, and more frequent, information. Engineers working in high-risk fields have been doing this sort of analysis for decades, and there is no reason to make an exception for autonomous road vehicles.

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

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Post by optionalparens » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 9:24 PM UTC

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #265

ryanmarsh wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. There are a number of federal agencies that are a shit-show at best but I can't remember a time in my adult life when I was disappointed in NHTSA.

The NTSB also does amazing work, though it's the smallest Federal agency (~400 people), which I think probably helps greatly.

NTSB has awesome investigators. Some of the smartest people I've met and worked with in my life. They are very serious and dedicated, while having to put up with a lot of roadblocks, nonsense, and other issues from both corporate America and other government agencies.

Can confirm at least though many years ago, the internal NTSB IT staff/programmers/DB were a joke. I guess that's just government though and like much of government, they relied a lot on outside contractors. For years they were a ColdFusion shop, so I'll let your mind start there.

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

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Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 9:25 PM UTC

strathmeyer wrote: post #382

thfuran wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and humans require certification before they are permitted to drive vehicles on public roadways.

To get that certification, do they test you first, or do they wait for you to screw up and then take it away from you??

They test you first, but if despite passing the test you screw up sufficiently badly later they decertify you.

It's a belt-and-suspenders system.

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

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Post by eridius » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 9:26 PM UTC

david-given wrote: post #407

DanBC wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inert_gas_asphyxiation It can displace air, causing death. Here's one example of a death, although here they deliberately put the argon in there: http://maritimeaccident.org/2014/08/safespace-argoninert-gas...

True, but so can nitrogen, propane, neon, carbon dioxide, hydrogen and flourine (although you'd need to be pretty unlucky to survive long enough breathing flourine to asphyxiate). I know argon is denser than air at STP, and so tends to accumulate in enclosed spaces --- but propane is even denser. (Leading cause of catastrophic accident in yachts: gas explosion. It's not like you can have a hole in the bottom to let t…

Propane has a very strong odor added to it (by the propane manufacturers), which means it'll be pretty damn obvious the moment you enter a propane-rich environment.

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

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Post by ceterum_censeo » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 9:26 PM UTC

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #398

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> while Tesla's vehicles had no video input. This is factually incorrect. Tesla vehicles rely on Mobileye [1] cameras to do its environmental analysis. These cameras come with the processing hardware to analyze the sensor data they're getting, and spits out environmental information that the driver assistance [2] can use to navigate the car. Whether Tesla had access to the sensor data directly rather than just the an…

I should add, by the way, that while Teslas have onboard radar, it is not a primary sensor, but a secondary discriminating sensor. This was admitted by Musk on Twitter following the fatal crash in Florida: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/748625979271045121

It was a secondary discriminating sensor, but the latest Autopilot 8 upgrade retasks radar to be "a primary control sensor without requiring the camera to confirm visual image recognition": https://www.tesla.com/blog/upgrading-autopilot-seeing-world-...

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

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Post by macspoofing » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 9:27 PM UTC

nibs wrote: post #5

Classic government. Self-driving technology should benchmarked against how good people are at driving (and how often they kill and injure people), as opposed to being proven intrinsically safe like a car part.

Sure. In the US there are ~8 fatalities per 1 billion vehicle miles. Let's see some documentation from him that show he can beat that rate.

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

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Post by syntheticnature » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 9:27 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #370

stale2002 wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congratulations, by waiting a year to implement self driving cars, through overly burdening government regulations, you just killed ten thousand people. What about those people? The people who WILL die in car accidents next year unless we do something about it. Screw them, right?

This isn't a self-driving car. It's a driver assist. It depends on an alert driver behind the wheel. What we're learning is that these systems can, in some circumstances, be the worst of both worlds --- a human driver lulled into complacency by technology that was not designed to handle complicated road conditions autonomously --- a system that itself generates both human and machine error.

There's an interesting similarity with Air France 447 in your description -- a crash caused by information overload and the normal assist system going into an alternate mode.

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

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Post by abduhl » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 9:27 PM UTC

zeveb wrote: post #376

gavman wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The NHTSA memo seems extremely reasonable to me. If you're going to put to market a product where the smallest malfunction could easily kill many people (both those using your product and those around them), answering a couple regulation questions seems like a small hurdle to pass. Nothing here is saying "we want to shut you down", it's saying "we want to make sure you pass the most basic safety standards".…

> That's an obvious part of a government's duty to keep it's citizens safe. Which article of the Constitution is that? I don't seem to recall it.

I believe it's in the Preamble:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

Keeping its citizens safe would likely fall under general welfare.

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

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Post by jahewson » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 9:28 PM UTC

wyager wrote: post #300

robotresearcher wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He chose the launch date without making sure he was legal first.

Do I have to check with every relevant government agency for permission every time I do something? If an endeavor not specifically outlawed, it should be presumed legal.

His particular endeavour is specifically outlawed (e.g. blocking the rear view mirror). The NHTSA is simply trying to establish whether or not he complies with the existing regulations - clearly, he doesn't.