Its a trillion dollar industry it'll happen sooner or later.
by the same token ... it will put a lot of people out of work... expect civil unrest...
Hey, no worries, the president-elect will negotiate the best deals with the robots.
Why self-driving cars are not going to happen
21–30 of 39 posts
Re: Why self-driving cars are not going to happen
#22Human drivers can feel safe around other cars because of mutually assured destruction. You are both afraid of dying if you make a significant mistake. Self-driving cars will never have this fear holding them back from making mistakes. You could argue there is actually an incentive to let them crash once in awhile, because the valuable real world data will be phoned home and used to improve the product for the small p…
I am a human driver. I do not feel safe around other cars.
Here's the reality: people don't want self-driving cars. People want safer cars.
Therefore, companies that want to sell self-driving cars are pitching them as safer. The fact of the matter, though, is that it remains to be seen whether self-driving cars are in fact safer.
While a self-driving car will not suffer from some of the shortcomings of a human, like getting drunk or sleepy, it will suffer from other shortcomings that humans don't, like bugs and getting hacked.
Ultimately the one thing we can trust about fellow humans in cars is that they want to survive their trip too. This is true with very few exceptions. The scary thing about self-driving cars is that they don't care if they survive.
Re: Why self-driving cars are not going to happen
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Firstly, I'm glad you and your family were not harmed. I do not in any way mean for this to be offensive or disrespectful, but would you still welcome self-driving cars had this incident been caused by a malfunctioning self-driving car as apposed to a reckless driver? My point is that self-driving cars lack the common sense that humans have. A human would immediately halt if they hear a child scream near their car, a…
> A human would immediately halt if they hear a child scream near their car, a car would continue moving along as if nothing is happening if it isn't designed or trained to detect screams. I don't know to what extent they use sound as an input (makes sense that they'd do, given horns). But for what I've seen, self-driving cars are much better than humans at detecting pedestrians in their vicinity, including cases in…
Machines are much better than humans at detecting pedestrians, but only in situations they are specifically designed or trained for. If a machine finds itself in an unfamiliar or unknown settings (or if its sensors fail in a way not accounted for in the design), it will fail catastrophically. A human will not.
Hell, machines tend to fail even if the setting varies slightly from what they are designed for; just see the numerous ways self-driven machines failed recently for examples.
Machines must gain sensory and cognitive capabilities that exceed ours and a working comprehension of human values for me to trust them.
Re: Why self-driving cars are not going to happen
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am also human driver and I feel safer around "dumb" cars. I don't ever intend to ride a self driving car, and will do my best to avoid being near one. Aside from being vulnerable to malicious actors, self-driving cars make "cold-hearted" mistakes that don't make sense; mistakes that humans would never make. Sure, the total number of mistakes they make will be lower than the equivalent number of accidents caused by…
Do you take flights or go near where a plane might crash? Because they're autopiloted. They are safer than manually-driven cars too.
A self-driven plane doesn't share the same challenges a self-driven car does. Furthermore, planes usually have at least one rigorously trained pilot to handle it should the computer fail or make incorrect discussions, and a relatively large response time window.
Apples and oranges.
Re: Why self-driving cars are not going to happen
#25I would agree that the ability of computers to identify novel problems and hazards (such as a falling mattress) will continue to be inferior to that of humans for a long time. However identification of a novel problem and the anticipation that it will be a harzard in the near future is a trait that is only needed if your reaction time is too slow. A self driving cars reaction time will be fast enough that it doesn't…
In addition even assuming that computers will not be as good at novel situations than humans (I don't agree with this, but I'll assume it for the purpose of this argument), we also need to assume that (damage prevented by himan's reactions to novel situations) > (damage caused by humans failing in non-novel situations), for the authors argument to work. I don't think this is evident st all, and if asked to pick, I would overwhelmingly favor the opposite.
Further, for self driving cars, the moment something novel happens to them, it won't be novel to pretty much every self driving car running on the same software anymore (and assuming some basic data sharing between manufacturers, probably to all self driving cars). So a mattress falling is a novel situation for every driver the first time it happens to each individual driver. It's a novel situation for self driving cars only the first time it happens to any one of the self driving cars sharing the same model.
The liability issue is not very useful. We would have to change laws slightly, but the insurance for self driving cars will be far more predictable, and the likes of Geico will probably give the owners of self driving cars better insurance than they would owners of human driven cars, because their safety record would be better.
In fact, I bet if self driven cars come with the ability to also be driven by a human, once they're a little established, the ones that do have this feature will be far more expensive dive to insure than the ones that are purely self driven.
Re: Why self-driving cars are not going to happen
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A human would immediately halt if they hear a child scream near their car, a car would continue moving along as if nothing is happening if it isn't designed or trained to detect screams. I don't know to what extent they use sound as an input (makes sense that they'd do, given horns). But for what I've seen, self-driving cars are much better than humans at detecting pedestrians in their vicinity, including cases in…
Machines are much better than humans at detecting pedestrians, but only in situations they are specifically designed or trained for. If a machine finds itself in an unfamiliar or unknown settings (or if its sensors fail in a way not accounted for in the design), it will fail catastrophically. A human will not. Hell, machines tend to fail even if the setting varies slightly from what they are designed for; just see th…
> but only in situations they are specifically designed or trained for
Where are you getting this from? An obstacle in the LIDAR is an obstacle, there's no common-sense or training needed for the car to know that.
> the numerous ways self-driven machines failed recently
I can only think of the Tesla crash, Tesla cars being notorious for trying to work around the need of LIDAR or similar (being deemed too expensive). What are the other, numerous examples?
> If a machine finds itself in an unfamiliar or unknown settings (or if its sensors fail in a way not accounted for in the design), it will fail catastrophically. A human will not.
Fail catastrophically how? Worst-case scenario for a well-designed car in a situation it can't understand is to park itself and refuse to go on unassisted. There's no neeed for general AI to implement such a behavior.
Re: Why self-driving cars are not going to happen
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Machines are much better than humans at detecting pedestrians, but only in situations they are specifically designed or trained for. If a machine finds itself in an unfamiliar or unknown settings (or if its sensors fail in a way not accounted for in the design), it will fail catastrophically. A human will not. Hell, machines tend to fail even if the setting varies slightly from what they are designed for; just see th…
> but only in situations they are specifically designed or trained for Where are you getting this from? An obstacle in the LIDAR is an obstacle, there's no common-sense or training needed for the car to know that. > the numerous ways self-driven machines failed recently I can only think of the Tesla crash, Tesla cars being notorious for trying to work around the need of LIDAR or similar (being deemed too expensive).…
>An obstacle in the LIDAR is an obstacle, there's no common-sense or training needed for the car to know that.
>Worst-case scenario for a well-designed car in a situation it can't understand is to park itself and refuse to go on unassisted.
All these are false positives. What I object to are the costs of false negatives; A situation where the car mis-recognizes an abnormal situation as normal, and then proceeds to act on it's failed understanding.
The Tesla is a good example of this; the car failed to recognize the obstacle in front of it and acted accordingly (namely, crashing full speed into the object). Regardless of the underlying reason, a machine did not recognize it was in an unknown setting, and thus failed to react correctly. A human, on the other hand, notices, and will generally use what capabilities they possess to at least attempt to handle the situation safely.
I do acknowledge that self-driving cars will likely be statistically safer, but until these cars completely exceed the all the capabilities of human drivers, I refuse to trust them. Regardless of statistics.
Re: Why self-driving cars are not going to happen
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but only in situations they are specifically designed or trained for Where are you getting this from? An obstacle in the LIDAR is an obstacle, there's no common-sense or training needed for the car to know that. > the numerous ways self-driven machines failed recently I can only think of the Tesla crash, Tesla cars being notorious for trying to work around the need of LIDAR or similar (being deemed too expensive).…
>An obstacle in the LIDAR is an obstacle, there's no common-sense or training needed for the car to know that. >Worst-case scenario for a well-designed car in a situation it can't understand is to park itself and refuse to go on unassisted. All these are false positives. What I object to are the costs of false negatives; A situation where the car mis-recognizes an abnormal situation as normal, and then proceeds to ac…
>The Tesla is a good example of this
A car without LIDAR, only relying on camera.
>A human, on the other hand, notices
The camera didn't even doubt that there wasn't an obstacle in its path due to how it camouflaged against the background. I doubt the human would've seen it.
And you're speaking of a prototype hacked on a car barely prepared for self-driving situations (again, no LIDAR and early iteration) and being used improperly.
You're not making a good argument here.
Re: Why self-driving cars are not going to happen
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am a human driver. I do not feel safe around other cars.
Here's the reality: people don't want self-driving cars. People want safer cars. Therefore, companies that want to sell self-driving cars are pitching them as safer. The fact of the matter, though, is that it remains to be seen whether self-driving cars are in fact safer. While a self-driving car will not suffer from some of the shortcomings of a human, like getting drunk or sleepy, it will suffer from other shortcom…
For the record, I want a self-driving car and 9 out of 10 captchas confirm I am a human.
Re: Why self-driving cars are not going to happen
#30Strong opinions and weak arguments.