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

#251

Post by joshuamorton » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 6:19 PM UTC

chiliap2 wrote: post #116

Spare_account wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible to extrapolate from the recorded reduction in accidents after the introduction of autopilot and work out if fewer people have died as a result of introducing when they did? Here's an article which describes a 40% drop in the accident rate: https://electrek.co/2017/01/19/tesla-crash-rate-autopilot-nh... The NHTSA's figures show a drop from 1.3 crashes per million miles before Autosteer to 0.8 crashes af…

The utilitarian approach is such an interesting way to frame problems like this. It's obviously wrong for me to murder to my neighbor for their organs, even if those organs could save five other lives. But is it okay for a car company to roll out an AI program if it saves more lives than it costs? When viewed from afar the utilitarian mindset is always so alluring.

A Kantian approach also works here though.

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

#252

Post by ocdtrekkie » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 6:24 PM UTC

cromwellian wrote: post #246

maxerickson wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google was detecting bicyclists making hand signals 4 years ago. I don't think they are as map dependent as you are arguing. There is also the possibility that having a detailed map accelerates progress (better automatic scoring of sensor based modeling systems).

The waymo cars have more sensor data and do more local computation than anything out there. Instead of saying Waymo relies on map data, I'd say they have a defense-in-depth solution that integrates a multitude of different sensors and databases. Do you want a system that only works on forward facing vision? Or only lidar? Or only gps and road databases? Or only machine learning? We know all of these have holes and bl…

Surely your employer would state or demonstrate their cars as being capable of a long-distance trip if they were technically capable of doing so.

Bear in mind, with this announcement, they aren't even committing to "it works in the Phoenix metro area". There's that "parts of" statement, that indicates that only parts of the area is mapped and hence the cars are only capable of operating in parts of the Phoenix metro area.

If you have evidence to the contrary, please, by all means, feel free to share.

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

#253

Post by magicalist » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 6:24 PM UTC

treehau5_ wrote: post #185

zeven7 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Options that Americans would choose to use?

if you take out alcohol and cell phones, you've reduced 70-80% of driving related fatalities with those two alone.

> if you take out alcohol and cell phones, you've reduced 70-80% of driving related fatalities with those two alone

I don't believe that's supported by data. A quick search finds alcohol involved in ~30% of all fatal crashes and cell phones involved in ~20% of all crashes (though probably significantly underreported). Even boosting the cell phone rate by quite a bit, there will still be considerable overlap between the two groups, so likely nowhere near 70% in total.

The root cause is that we're letting a bunch of primates steer fast moving, heavy metal objects around a highway (and really the fact that we easily distract ourselves and make bad decisions about drinking and driving is a great example of why the whole thing is generally a bad idea).

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

#254

Post by svachalek » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 6:24 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.

That's not accounting for inflation - $5000 then was more like $10000 now. And a bare-bones minimum machine for running business software (i.e. no color graphics or floating point hardware) was still close to $2000 (more like $4000 in today's dollars). So, roughly speaking a maxed-out gaming rig today is about as affordable as a bare-minimum box in 1990, without even accounting for the massive difference in absolute power.

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

#255

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

Ajedi32 wrote: post #199

Asooka wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting that they only let you borrow for now. Will car ownership be killed with self-driving cars? Will Waymo let you actually buy and own a car that isn't network connected and fully yours? Seeing how value extraction works in today's enterprise, i.e. via rent-seeking, I'm guessing we're headed to not owning cars any more.

> Will car ownership be killed with self-driving cars? Probably. It seems way more convenient and efficient to be able to summon a car to any location on demand than to have just one car that you use for everything. No more parking, no more refueling, no more vehicle maintenance; just push a button and a car shows up within minutes (or in some cases, seconds) to pick you up, and step out of the vehicle when you reach…

How do you solve the issue of extreme demand M-F at 8am and 5pm and low demand any other time?

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

#256

Post by Qwertious » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 6:26 PM UTC

brilliantcode wrote: post #159

aianus wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Killing a few extra people today to bring self driving cars to market faster could actually save more lives in total. I have much more respect for Tesla for shipping something.

> Killing a few extra people today to bring self driving cars to market faster could actually save more lives in total. I have much more respect for Tesla for shipping something. There's no evidence to suggest that is the case. If anything, Tesla has made it more dangerous to assume that it's safe and falsely autonomous. When you create new drugs, the FDA definitely doesn't look to kindly on people who think like Sil…

IIRC, 30-40k people die every year in car crashes in the US. Based on the real-world testing Waymo has done over the last few years (where they tested the cars, but had a (not-driving) driver in the driver's seat at all times and weren't doing any commercial service), that figure would drop to essentially zero.

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

#257

Post by magicalist » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 6:27 PM UTC

Qwertious wrote: post #239

TremendousJudge wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>take out alcohol that one worked out beautifully last time around

The problem was caused by the underlying political problems - namely, people didn't necessarily want to ban it, there was just a very ruthless political organisation that essentially destroyed any politicians who opposed the bans, regardless of what the constituents wanted. Politicians were forced to pass it. If the alcohol ban had arisen organically - namely, as a genuine result of democratic support, the prohibitio…

> If the alcohol ban had arisen organically - namely, as a genuine result of democratic support, the prohibition wouldn't have been such a spectacular failure.

isn't that begging the question? If everyone had supported it then everyone would have supported it? If you want to ban alcohol to save lives, what needs to be done is still the same...getting everyone to support it.

And we still have trouble with people using drugs today with popularly supported bans. War on Drugs, etc.

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

#258

Post by Qwertious » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 6:29 PM UTC

Asooka wrote: post #65

kyrra wrote: post #2

TLDR: * People can apply to use/borrow a Waymo vehicle (RX450 or Pacifica) for some period of time. * "as part of this early trial, there will be a test driver in each vehicle monitoring the rides at all times." * Limited to Phoenix metro area for the time being. * You apply here: https://waymo.com/apply/ * Waymo will be adding 500 more of the Pacifica minivans for this program.

Interesting that they only let you borrow for now. Will car ownership be killed with self-driving cars? Will Waymo let you actually buy and own a car that isn't network connected and fully yours? Seeing how value extraction works in today's enterprise, i.e. via rent-seeking, I'm guessing we're headed to not owning cars any more.

"Will car ownership be killed with self-driving cars?"

Presumably. It's pooling for cost-saving reasons, much like cloud computing. If people want to be frugal, they won't buy a car.

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

#259

Post by ghaff » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 6:30 PM UTC

fdej wrote: post #49

monkmartinez wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, because computers never crash right? I think way too many people are viewing self driving vehicles with rose colored glasses. They underestimate the cost and overestimate the utility to the public.

If a computer crashes, you can identify the software or hardware flaw that caused the crash and fix it once and for all. Improving human driving skills collectively is much more difficult. Even if one driver learns from their own mistake, other drivers and the next generation of drivers will still be just as prone as before to make that mistake. Better education can only do so much anyway, since people often don't th…

There's a flip side to that though. You may have a systematic vulnerability or bug that puts thousands of vehicles at risk. Bruce Schneier has spoken about this issue. An expert lockpick can still only pick one lock at a time. A super-skilled hacker or team can penetrate many devices in one shot.

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

#260

Post by jsymolon » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 6:30 PM UTC

doczoidberg wrote: post #249

yellow_viper wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People won't buy self-driving cars (well some will, but not the majority). These cars will be running 24/7 in a ride-sharing service.

Sure people will buy self-driving cars. People want to own things for themself. If a car has a higher value with this feature even more people want to have a car. Consumers don't think economically.

People want the convenience of having access to transportation 24/7 no matter where they are and when.

Ever call a taxi (not in city) ? 30+ minutes.

Also, tragedy of the commons ... who was the last one to use the car has to pay for clean up.

How to accomplish that ? ... "No the other guy did it ..."