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[1] http://a16z.com/2017/01/06/selfdriving-cars-frank-chen/
How is this anything more than blogspam?
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Not really. If something goes wrong, 99.9% of the time, the solution is to slam on the brakes, and maybe swerve a little to avoid an immediate obstacle. If a self driving car only does this, it will be a way better driver than a human. Talking about weird edge cases misses the point. Edge case = slam on the brakes.
Really? So easy to think of scenarios where there _is_ no safe answer. For example, what if it's dense fast traffic (say, one car space between each car, 50mph) in random black ice conditions and sensors suddenly begin failing so the software no longer trusts is inputs? Based on recent good inputs, accelerating, swerving, or breaking are all dangerous, and based on the loss of "vision" continuing at current speed is…
Still, no driverless car should ever let itself be in dense fast traffic to begin with. Only a human driver would ever be dumb enough to do something so stupid and dangerous.
I would expect all high speed roads to be continuously validated by the car network, mapped in detail and kept up to date by the sensors of each car as it drives it. Your car should be streaming a model of the upcoming road from the cloud and be able to fall back onto it in the event of sensor failure.
Handing over control to a human driver only works when one is actually in the car. And paying attention. And competent.
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>This is a flawed comparison because failing to update your software or keep your tires inflated or clean off your sensors would also be human decisions that could lead to adverse outcomes with self-driving cars. It's incredibly simple to remove humans from those decisions. Just have the self-driving code refuse to engage until the issue is resolved.
And then Grandma dies of her heart attack because you can't rush her to the hospital because one tire is 3psi underinflated? Most of these issues aren't binary.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not really. If something goes wrong, 99.9% of the time, the solution is to slam on the brakes, and maybe swerve a little to avoid an immediate obstacle. If a self driving car only does this, it will be a way better driver than a human. Talking about weird edge cases misses the point. Edge case = slam on the brakes.
Most of my driving (as in 90% by mileage) is on highways, and most of that is 70-mph rural highways. The first edge case I'd think of, totally not a weird edge case at all, is sudden 0-visibility fog banks at 70mph. If you think it is a good idea to slam on the brakes in such conditions, someone is likely to lose a life.
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Okay, I've designed a new pill. 1 out of 4 people have adverse reactions to its contents and die instantly, but people who don't live long virile lives until, on average, the age of 100! Your expected gain would be nearly 5 additional years of life! Should I sign you up?
This is a pretty attractive proposition. The long, slow decline during your last decade of life is miserable , on both you and on loved ones. There are certain strategic times in life where you'd want to take this, though. Ideally after the kids are grown up and don't need you anymore (so you either drop dead painlessly & predictably, or get a nice long life in great health so you can see the grandchildren grow up),…
Not taking the pill already of course risks dying in your sleep.
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While I understand this intellectually (that is, I know that this is an American-centric thing, and that other societies in the world have a different view), I am curious how this view would be justified? One could "reducto-ad-absurdum" the statement, and say "To be bedridden and unable to walk is to be free!" - which would obviously be a very absurd statement to make. In America, part of the reason we feel this way…
>So I guess I'm trying to understand the statement "it is freedom not to have a car"? It's the freedom to be able to get around without having to babysit a tonne of metal, and then find somewhere to put it when you get near where you're going, and then have to go back for it later. >How is it freedom not to have faster, longer distance personal transport? Decent public transport is faster and much more comfortable ov…
In America, there isn't much "babysitting" of a vehicle - every place you want to go generally has decent parking near where you're going. Which ultimately is probably due to our mainly car-centric culture - our cities and "places of interest" are designed around the car, so you have plenty of parking and what-not geared toward cars. Also due to having a lot of land to "spread out" for car stuff...
Which then makes things terrible for public transportation! Everything spread out makes it difficult (and in some cases dangerous - if on foot or bike) to get around without a car, and public transportation has to conform to the cars (in some cases to absurd lengths - for instance, here in Phoenix, AZ we have a small light-rail system at ground level in the median of some streets. On these streets, the line has to respect traffic signals for cars, so in essence light rail becomes "large bus on rails". To me, this is stupid).
There's also the case here in America that using public transportation can be - interesting. In the times I have used it (even with the bad design of our light rail here, I still like taking it when I can), I have encountered crazy and hostile people who get violently aggressive at almost nothing. I've also encountered plain regular folk. It just all depends on the day, but the randomness can be off-putting to many. At times I mainly find it annoying, but many times I find it interesting.
> Disclaimer, most the content in the article comes from this video[1], I’m writing it out along with my thoughts and extra information on the topic. Feel free to signup to my newsletter below to get curate content each week. [1] http://a16z.com/2017/01/06/selfdriving-cars-frank-chen/ How is this anything more than blogspam?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>So I guess I'm trying to understand the statement "it is freedom not to have a car"? It's the freedom to be able to get around without having to babysit a tonne of metal, and then find somewhere to put it when you get near where you're going, and then have to go back for it later. >How is it freedom not to have faster, longer distance personal transport? Decent public transport is faster and much more comfortable ov…
> Decent public transport is faster and much more comfortable over long distances. Significantly! You can stand up and walk the whole length of a train if you desire without having to stop. There's food and drink brought right to your seat, and hot food if you walk to the buffet car or are in first class. In the UK, if you book a non-Advance ticket, you can get out of the train, leave the station, go wherever you lik…
That's debatable. It can be comfortable and convenient, though I've never experienced it since we don't have much in the way of a train system for passenger rail here anymore. But I can see the allure.
However, with a car, you can go anywhere you want on a whim. Want to get off the highway and take a random route up through the mountains to visit a random lake? No problem. Want to pop thru a small town via a connector road to a different freeway? Again not a problem.
With public transportation or rail, you are limited to where the system runs, and if you want to get off somewhere along the way that doesn't have a station (for instance - just to randomly take in a scene) - well, you can't.
Then again, one can't walk the length of a car, or get food and drink brought to your seat, or sleep in a comfortable bed overnight, etc.
Also - most people don't travel super-long distances here by car (some do, many don't) - instead, if they can afford it, they take a plane. Airlines have effectively become our train system, for the good and bad it has to offer.
Let's talk about how we can't make nearly anything "smart" in the world of "IoT" and "smart things". We don't even have a decent robotic lawnmower in 2017 but we want driverless taxis within 10 years? I'm sceptical.
In your opinion, how many orders of magnitude more difficult is driving than mowing the lawn? I honestly don't have a strong sense of the scale of ability here.
They're just not very popular.
They're (all?) electric which you sort of want in this application. But that means that they typically only mow up to 1/4 acre or so--which isn't a lot of work to do with just a standard mower. And they're expensive ($1K+).
So you have an expensive and not very good lawnmower that can only cut lawns that are generally easy to do anyway. And, besides, if you're not very price-sensitive and don't want to cut your lawn, there's no absence of people who will do it for you and do other trimming etc. at the same time. So there's just not a lot of market for the product.