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Unreasonable Ineffectiveness of Machine Learning in Computer Systems Research

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Re: Unreasonable Ineffectiveness of Machine Learning in Computer Systems Research

#91

Post by nl »

xfs wrote: post #25
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but we are still decades (or more) away from full level-5 autonomy that would make drivers behind the wheel unnecessary. Do you have a citation for that? I often see this asserted, and I see many assertions the other way. Whenever I personally see self-driving cars in the wild, I'm astounded at their effectiveness on uncontrolled access roads. What makes you think controlled access roads will be much more difficult…

> none of us in the automobile or IT industries are close to achieving true Level 5 autonomy - Gill Pratt, Toyota Research Institute http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self... > It will be 25 years before self-driving cars take off in America - Bill Gurley, Uber investor http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/06/bill-gurley-uber-investor-sel...

> It will be 25 years before self-driving cars take off in America

The actual quote is:

Venture capitalist Bill Gurley thinks it will be more than 25 years before the majority of rides in any major American city are performed by autonomous vehicles with no steering wheel.

Note that this is actually an argument against us being "still decades (or more) away from full level-5 autonomy that would make drivers behind the wheel unnecessary." (to quote the OP).

If in 25 years time more than 50% of trips are in autonomous vehicles with no steering wheel, and assuming the average age of the car remains roughly the same (11 years)[1], then completely autonomous cars will have to be available much earlier than 25 years.

However, I'd note that he said "more than" (so who knows exactly what he meant) and also self-driving long-haul trucks are a different subset of the problem. It may be easier to make long-haul trucks which just drive between cities and drop off items at depots than cars which drive though city streets.

[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2015/07/29/new-car-sale...

Re: Unreasonable Ineffectiveness of Machine Learning in Computer Systems Research

#93

Post by codinghorror »

snackai wrote: post #10
60654 wrote: post #3

> Driverless long-haul trucks are apparently just a few years away, and the main worry now is not so much the safety of these trucks but the specter of unemployment facing millions of people currently employed as truck drivers. No, no they're not. We have some lane tracking in good weather etc., but we are still decades (or more) away from full level-5 autonomy that would make drivers behind the wheel unnecessary. Bu…

> but we are still decades (or more) away from full level-5 autonomy Decades? Are you really sure? This assumption seems quite uninformed to me. The Grand Challenge was 12 years ago, from then we evolved from Level 1 to Level 3. Back then there was no data, computing power wasn't available as today, chips (&sensors) can be designed an built within a few months or even less these days for far less money. Machine Learn…

I disagree. I think the higher levels are many orders of magnitude more difficult.

Re: Unreasonable Ineffectiveness of Machine Learning in Computer Systems Research

#94

Post by flamedoge »

peteretep wrote: post #89
abalone wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> trucks self-driving on the regulated toll roads during time that drivers have their mandated rest How would this be possible at anything less than level 4-5 autonomy? If they can take a nap, the truck's got to be fully autonomous.

Level 4 includes autonomy in the "operational design domain (ODD)" of a vehicle. I'd have thought that on a tollway that's being maintained specifically to support some self-driving trucks that the difficulty of Level 4 is a few orders of magnitude easier than cars in a residential district.

Maintaining tollway for self-driving is still going to add to "manually helping" cost. The operational domain of a vehicle includes roads of varying conditions that a human driver can navigate with relative ease.

Re: Unreasonable Ineffectiveness of Machine Learning in Computer Systems Research

#95

Post by flamedoge »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #76
dkarapetyan wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Misunderstanding? Given that my day job is to literally build tools and infrastructure for "modern software systems" I don't think I'm misunderstanding things at all. But whatever I can say on "modern software" has already been said much better by Alan Kay so I'm going to defer to him for the rest of this conversation. I'll buy Toyota stock. You buy Google stock. We'll compare notes in a decade and see who managed to…

I guess you'll find Toyota stock to be incredibly undervalued with a P/E of just 9.5 vs. GOOG's 30.26. The market isn't treating Toyota like a tech company. The market has already spoken, they've placed their bet on Google, which means that boat has already sailed. If you believe TM will make a tremendous comeback, then you could make bank, but that is a risky bet vs. a safe one (given today's information).

I'll just twiddle my thumb and look bullish on Tesla

Re: Unreasonable Ineffectiveness of Machine Learning in Computer Systems Research

#96

Post by emurray »

csours wrote: post #92

OT: How and why is this page overriding my control key, and how can I stop it from doing that? I use ctrl+scroll wheel to zoom and it is very annoying when that behavior is overridden.

I think rather than overriding your control key, it's overriding scrolling. It loads up some smoothscroll javascript, and there's likely a bug someplace that's interfering with the ability to zoom. Holding control and pressing +/- to zoom in/out should still work.

Re: Unreasonable Ineffectiveness of Machine Learning in Computer Systems Research

#97

Post by tim333 »

codinghorror wrote: post #93
snackai wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but we are still decades (or more) away from full level-5 autonomy Decades? Are you really sure? This assumption seems quite uninformed to me. The Grand Challenge was 12 years ago, from then we evolved from Level 1 to Level 3. Back then there was no data, computing power wasn't available as today, chips (&sensors) can be designed an built within a few months or even less these days for far less money. Machine Learn…

I disagree. I think the higher levels are many orders of magnitude more difficult.

Volvo is supposed to be rolling out a few level 4 cars to the public this year. (Level 4 being no human attention required on certain roads that the car knows, if there are problems it drives to a safe place to park and pulls over). http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/27/11518826/volvo-tesla-autop...

Re: Unreasonable Ineffectiveness of Machine Learning in Computer Systems Research

#98

Post by PeterisP »

flamedoge wrote: post #94
peteretep wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Level 4 includes autonomy in the "operational design domain (ODD)" of a vehicle. I'd have thought that on a tollway that's being maintained specifically to support some self-driving trucks that the difficulty of Level 4 is a few orders of magnitude easier than cars in a residential district.

Maintaining tollway for self-driving is still going to add to "manually helping" cost. The operational domain of a vehicle includes roads of varying conditions that a human driver can navigate with relative ease.

The operation domain of general purpose consumer vehicles includes all roads of varying conditions that a human driver can navigate with relative ease, but the operation domain of e.g. an EU long-haul truck company can be easily limited to a set of pre-mapped highways.

Manual handling of problem cases that can be done from a central dispatch center would still require far less people to deliver the same cargo than now.

Re: Unreasonable Ineffectiveness of Machine Learning in Computer Systems Research

#99

Post by PeterisP »

abalone wrote: post #85
PeterisP wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Noone is entirely sure exactly when we'll reach level-5 autonomy, however, that doesn't matter for the specter of unemployment - the currently demonstrated level of availability seems clearly enough to put half of truck drivers out of work by all kinds of automation e.g. trucks self-driving on the regulated toll roads during time that drivers have their mandated rest; one driver supervising multiple trucks or driving…

> trucks self-driving on the regulated toll roads during time that drivers have their mandated rest How would this be possible at anything less than level 4-5 autonomy? If they can take a nap, the truck's got to be fully autonomous.

It doesn't need level 5 autonomy, and level 4 autonomy in managed conditions seems quite reachable. Also, in this situation, it's okay if the car decides that a problem is unsolvable as long as it stops safely - if it encounters weather or road conditions that it can't safely handle, the driver will handle it; if it needs interaction with cargo, police or refueling - the driver will handle it, etc.

Level 5 is so distant because it requires solving many problems that we haven't fully acknowledged yet; but Level 4 is different, major car companies (e.g. I recall a quote from Ford, probably Volvo as well) have stated that they don't ever intend to produce a level 3 autonomous car, that they want to go straight from level 2 driving assistance to level 4 cars since expecting a driver to monitor the situation all the time and be able to quickly take over (as level 3 requires) isn't realistic from a safety perspective, many drivers simply won't/can't do it.

Re: Unreasonable Ineffectiveness of Machine Learning in Computer Systems Research

#100

Post by ghaff »

est wrote: post #86
60654 wrote: post #3

> Driverless long-haul trucks are apparently just a few years away, and the main worry now is not so much the safety of these trucks but the specter of unemployment facing millions of people currently employed as truck drivers. No, no they're not. We have some lane tracking in good weather etc., but we are still decades (or more) away from full level-5 autonomy that would make drivers behind the wheel unnecessary. Bu…

> No, no they're not. We have some lane tracking in good weather etc., but we are still decades (or more) away from full level-5 autonomy that would make drivers behind the wheel unnecessary. How about a mixed adoption, on 99% of pure-highway the truck is driver-less, but there are dedicated service stations for a human driver to take over into the urban area.

And maybe we'll call those autonomous trucks trains or something like that.

(In many/most cases, the long haul overland transportation today is already handled by freight railways. It's unclear how big a win there is to having what amounts to an additional form of intermodal transportation as opposed to just keeping a person around who can also handle breakdowns, etc.)

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