Google's car clearly isn't going to work in the real world (can it follow detour signs? Get out of the way of emergency vehicles? Understand a cop directing traffic?). Why is Google pretending otherwise? Why are they doing this?
Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders
121–130 of 411 posts
Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
By all accounts, autonomous vehicles will be much safer than human drivers. Companies will be sued up the ass if they program their vehicles to take risks and end up killing people.
Only if it can be proven. That's why vehicle firmware should be open source, so the public can know exactly what kind of risks they take.
I'm curious, under this train of thought, vehicle hardware should also be open source, right?
Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you slept through an ethics class
Maybe they just subscribe to an extreme utilitarian ethical philosophy?
If that is the context their analysis is bad.
There's little evidence that anything Tesla has deployed is an important step towards viable self driving vehicles.
They are apparently mapping the locations of odd situations, but that is pretty meh (and doesn't require the mapping system to be in control of the vehicle).
Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders
#124Glad to see Phoenix getting some love.
Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If a computer crashes, you can identify the software or hardware flaw that caused the crash and fix it once and for all. Right. Except that 40 years later computers still crash. The more complex a system the harder it becomes to debug and there is no complex software system without bugs. It's like rocks in a field, you'll never get the last one out even if you think you did.
Regular software, yes, they crash all the time. But I would think these systems would be more safely handled. For example, nuclear energy, air traffic control, bank systems and automated train lines don't crash nearly as often, for example. Being such an important feature (not crashing) it shouldn't be ignored. I am also skeptical but we have examples of reliable systems so I believe they can work.
> nuclear energy, air traffic control, bank systems and automated train lines don't crash nearly as often, for example.
Bank systems crash with great regularity. Source: worked for a bank, customer of a bank.
Industrial systems and anything related to flight is typically much better from a design point of view than your average bit of firmware. Redundancy is built in from the first day and all failure modes are tested in so much as feasible.
Also, and this is very important, such software is kept as simple as possible to reduce the surface area bugs can hide in.
Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder this about autonomous cars in general from any company. They're cool tech and in Europe, they can really help solve several last leg problems and cut down on car ownership (I really don't think people should be able to own self driving cars. They really need airplane style maintenance for sensors and companies need to work together so all fleets have the latest safety and security updates). However I don't r…
> I don't really like hearing about tax money going into these projects It might be better to think of it as an investment in public health rather than public transportation. Preventing the huge number of deaths caused by human drivers is more important than speeding up traffic.
There are lots of simpler ways to reduce traffic deaths that we could be funding.
Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders
#127After seeing the movie Logan, I was curious if the movie was taking a jab at the autonomous vehicle trend by portraying them as a danger to ma & pa drivers on the highway. It showed a crowded highway full of shipping containers pushing a truck hauling horses off the road. It seems the message was not that the technology can't be courteous, but that once it's accepted, corporations will abuse the roads to help their b…
By all accounts, autonomous vehicles will be much safer than human drivers. Companies will be sued up the ass if they program their vehicles to take risks and end up killing people.
Define "taking a risk." Every time we get in a car, we're taking calculated risks based on our evaluation of the physical environment, how we expect other drivers to behave, and expected behaviors of pedestrians/bikes/etc. At least up to the point where you create a traffic hazard, there's always the option to take things slower and more conservatively.
Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders
#128Is Waymo clear about what the end goal is? I can't tell if they plan to launch an Uber like service, or a direct-to-consumer lease type service, or just to be suppliers (whole vehicles, components like lidar, software) to companies like Uber. Or maybe they are leaving all of that undecided for now? I'm not sure this rider trial thing strongly signals any of them. You would want real world end-customer experiences reg…
I wonder this about autonomous cars in general from any company. They're cool tech and in Europe, they can really help solve several last leg problems and cut down on car ownership (I really don't think people should be able to own self driving cars. They really need airplane style maintenance for sensors and companies need to work together so all fleets have the latest safety and security updates). However I don't r…
Haven't really thought about the safety and maintenance part of this before. If people own their self-driving cars I suppose there's also a chance they can opt-out of software updates, which would potentially be very dangerous. I do believe that the autonomous car future will have room for owned vehicles, but at this stage I don't think any of us really know how it will shake out.
Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders
#129Wish they deployed this in Mountain View. I see like 20 of these a day going around aimlessly. I'd sign up as a customer!
Too easy for a competitor to hop on and get casual intel, maybe?
GM, Apple, and Uber are all testing in the Phoenix metro area, so I don't think that's valid - more likely good wide roads, weather, and regulatory environment.
Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders
#130Is there really a race to build self-driving cars? It seems that Waymo is eons ahead of everyone else.
Definetely, Waymo is ahead of everybody, but the race is closer than one would think. In addition to Google and Uber, there exist about a dozen smaller players but with competitive technology.
For example, nuTonomy, the start-up at which I work, has deployed a similar trial in Singapore in August 2016. (btw, we are hiring in everything!).
It's not a "race", it's more like a "marathon": there is a big difference in making something that works 99% of the times (sufficient for a trial like the above), and something that works 99.9999...% of the times (a product that can be actually deployed).