Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders • Hacker News Board

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#221

Post by Neliquat » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 5:55 PM UTC

space_fountain wrote: post #35

brianwawok wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My fear is MORE urban sprawl, which is even MORE miles of highways to pave and care for, and MORE pollution in the short term until we get very eco friendly powered electric cars. Commutes are one of the only things that seem to limit urban sprawl.

There is an advantage to electric cars here though. If you don't need to wait while the vehicle charges electric vehicles are a lot more attractive even with relatively small batteries.

Electric cars just pollute upstream, and even with solar, that does not seem like a solved problem just yet.

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#222

Post by monkmartinez » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 5:56 PM UTC

stdgy wrote: post #188

monkmartinez wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious counter question; Why is nobody talking about cost? Cars are very expensive... is self-driving tech going to increase or decrease the cost of a vehicle? Do people generally want more freedom or less freedom choice? Why does everyone assume the cost will decrease with scale? How many people can afford a Tesla right now? Let alone a fully autonomous car? If flying were more affordable and less strict more peopl…

We've already seen price drops for the most expensive self-driving components. LIDARs, GPUs and storage have already fallen in cost, and the products aren't even on the market yet. There is every reason to believe these price drops will continue as more resources are put into scaling production and more companies enter the game of component design and production.

> There is every reason to believe these price drops will continue as more resources are put into scaling production and more companies enter the game of component design and production.

Why? We literally never see that with top shelf products. This isn't an arduino solder job. This is going to be an integrated software and hardware package that will rival an aircraft autopilot/navigation. Please check you facts on the cost of these things.

I don't want walmart brand, everday low price components on my self-driving vehicle. I want top of the line if my life is in the balance.

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#223

Post by Neliquat » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 5:58 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #112

scarmig wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If driverless cars work at all, they'll be substantially safer than human-driven ones. There's a strong moral case for banning human-driven cars on public roads if it'll save tens of thousands of lives. There's also a strong possibility of media-driven moral panics. Think of poor little Billy, hit by one of those irresponsible human drivers! Insurance companies will charge steep premiums to the risk takers who want t…

>Insurance companies will charge steep premiums to the risk takers who want to drive their own car. People make this claim. Why would there be a premium over what is paid today? Maybe there's a big premium relative to much lower premiums associated with new types of vehicles although there will still be insurance needed. But that's relative to a future state, not relative to today.

And as less and lass cater to your now fringe activity, you will be herded into a specialty insurance, and it will go up. It will be a 180 from 100years ago. The rich will pay to drive themselves.

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#224

Post by ghaff » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 5:58 PM UTC

monkmartinez wrote: post #217

jliptzin wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll bet you would have said the same thing about a $5,000 personal computer in the early 90s.

We still have $5000 personal computers in the '10s! Hell a new MacBook Pro with everything and some upgrades is $3499 to $4299... very few people can truly afford that.

The late Bill Machrone coined Machrone's Law which stated that "the computer you want always costs $5,000." This hasn't really been true for 5-10 years. You can build a $5K computer but you have to really push it. But saying that the figure is still at least $2,500-$3,000 is probably fair.

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#225

Post by aquadrop » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 6:01 PM UTC

euyyn wrote: post #167

aquadrop wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If downvoters don't believe autopilot is safer, here's article about NHTSA report: http://bgr.com/2017/01/19/tesla-autopilot-crash-safety-stati...

I'd guess the downvotes are more for this part: > I don't think there was a single death directly because of autopilot (not 100% sure though). There was a death, and it was very prominent.

Yes, I know about that white truck death. By 'directly' I meant situation when autopilot 'went crazy' because of some bug and sent your car in a spin on a highway etc. Probably should have used different wording.

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#226

Post by sebleon » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 6:01 PM UTC

stevenh wrote: post #205

jonmc12 wrote: post #146

Am I the only one feeling the press + big tech narrative of "driverless vehicles = safety" is way ahead of itself? OK, "driver error is blamed for 94% of crashes", but what is the validation strategy to show where driverless cars can quantifiably improve? In 2016, Philip Koopman of CMU discusses that there are non-trivial engineering challenges of achieving safety in NHTSA Level 4 vehicle automation: https://users.ec…

Imagine ransomware infecting your car that gives you 30 minutes to pay or you'll be rammed into a tree at 90mph. I don't care about any contrived and well-funded narratives about how unthinking, unfeeling, driverless cars will somehow save lives. No thanks, I'd rather take my chances continuing to share roads with human drivers who are careful because they fear their own death just as much as I do.

It can actually be a lot worse - entire countries will be held ransom when car networks gets compromised. Beyond disabling a countries transportation ability, a remote hacker could weaponize every car to attack passengers and pedestrians.

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#227

Post by grzm » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 6:02 PM UTC

Neliquat wrote: post #221

space_fountain wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an advantage to electric cars here though. If you don't need to wait while the vehicle charges electric vehicles are a lot more attractive even with relatively small batteries.

Electric cars just pollute upstream, and even with solar, that does not seem like a solved problem just yet.

Yes, there are still issues with electricity generation. Expressing this as just pollute upstream ignores or dismisses the efficiency improvements of large scale power generation over per-vehicle internal combustion engines.

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#228

Post by MarkMc » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 6:03 PM UTC

jonmc12 wrote: post #146

Am I the only one feeling the press + big tech narrative of "driverless vehicles = safety" is way ahead of itself? OK, "driver error is blamed for 94% of crashes", but what is the validation strategy to show where driverless cars can quantifiably improve? In 2016, Philip Koopman of CMU discusses that there are non-trivial engineering challenges of achieving safety in NHTSA Level 4 vehicle automation: https://users.ec…

Imagine it's April 2018 and Waymo releases this statement:

"In the past year our autonomous cars have driven a total of 50 million miles in real-world conditions. Over that period there were 4 collisions, plus an estimated 12 which would have occurred if our trained staff in the drivers seat had not intervened. Insurance analysts estimate that if human drivers had driven under similar conditions there would have been 51 collisions."

Would that be sufficient for you to support the introduction of Level 4 automation?

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#229

Post by kbenson » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 6:04 PM UTC

loup-vaillant wrote: post #215

stevenh wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine ransomware infecting your car that gives you 30 minutes to pay or you'll be rammed into a tree at 90mph. I don't care about any contrived and well-funded narratives about how unthinking, unfeeling, driverless cars will somehow save lives. No thanks, I'd rather take my chances continuing to share roads with human drivers who are careful because they fear their own death just as much as I do.

The correct answer to that is very simple, and very expensive: just make correct software. Such malware are only possible because the targeted system has vulnerabilities to begin with. One just has to ensure the absence of such vulnerabilities, possibly using machine checked proofs. One obvious approach is to properly isolate the driving software and sensors from external input.

> The correct answer to that is very simple, and very expensive: just make correct software.

I used to think that was unlikely. Then I had a few discussions with people about the state of C, and things that could be done to make it default to a slightly more deterministic case by changing how undefined behavior is dealt with in regards to optimization. Now I think it's impossible, because nobody is willing to give up even theoretical unknown performance increases for more security. At least for C. You would have to use something that's much more strict about behavior, like Ada with SPARK, or possibly Rust.

I'm willing to bet most the code already written for these projects is C or C++. Good luck getting that changed if so.

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#230

Post by narrowrail » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 6:05 PM UTC

monkmartinez wrote: post #186

mattpavelle wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious - where did you come up with your $75k cost for retrofitting existing vehicles?

Out of thin air. Why would it be cheaper? If you made the product, would you try to maximize profit or do it for SAFETY and the good of society?

You seem to be arguing against technological progress in order to protect people. Most of us 'self-driving car' skeptics are just pointing out that the timelines presented in much of the press are wildly optimistic.