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

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

#321

Post by Noos »

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.

It's not ransomware i worry about. What about targeting the lidar/radar directly? Some people still have radar/laser jammers, and only ten states ban them. What on earth will your programming do to counter that?

Or what if an actor uses something like this:

https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/29/now-you-see-me-now-you-don...

that confounds the car's sensors. Self-driving cars have a whole spectrum of attack vectors that human beings don't have.

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

#322

Post by Noos »

gfodor wrote: post #172
monkmartinez wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No you are not! HN seems to think the same way, and it is one of the worst cases of rose colored glasses I have ever witnessed. What about the cost? Who is going to be able to afford this? Also, what about people that rely on a vehicle for work? Retrofit $75K work trucks with another $75K in self driving gizmos? Find me a practical plumber, carpenter, A/C, lock smith, self-employed guy/gal that will sign up for that!…

Serious question: why is cost such a common argument made here against emerging tech? This argument seems to come up every time some new expensive technology is transitioning closer to consumers' hands, and the current price, which is obviously expected to go down at scale as it does for nearly all widely useful technology, is used as evidence nobody will be able to afford it. I've seen this argument made for technol…

But this doesn't always happen. We have yet to see any electric car reach the price of a low-end kia or hyundai.

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

#323

Post by Noos »

jliptzin wrote: post #189
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…

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

I'd bet that if anything, it costs more to own an aircraft now than it does in the 1990s though, that might be a better comparison.

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

#324

Post by Spivak »

nommm-nommm wrote: post #266
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.

You're not looking at the whole picture here. What's your odds of being killed by a drunk/inattentive/inexperienced driver vs odds of being killed by randomware? Road fatalities are already the number 1 killer of some age groups, its estimated that over a million people worldwide die on the roads every year. Around 40,000 in the US last year. If we trade 40,000 road deaths for 10,000 ransomware deaths, it's a massive…

If you're going to actually get people to change their opinion you should really give your own position the most uncharitable phrasing.

> Road fatalities are already the number 1 killer of some age groups

You're hiding a weakness in your argument by not specifying the age groups. You're hiding a weakness in your argument by restricting to cross-sections of the population that support your argument. You're misleading your listener by hiding the fact that this statement isn't because traffic accidents are unusually high, but that other causes of death are unusually low.

> Around 40,000 in the US last year.

Careful using absolute numbers, using 40,000 which is a very small number compared to other kinds of deaths like hard disease (800,000 deaths last year) can be misleading because 40,000 sounds like a big number.

> its estimated that over a million people worldwide die on the roads every year

You're hiding the fact that the US has 4% of the world's automobile deaths but 20% of the world's cars. You're using aggregate data to smooth over deaths that are caused by dangerous driving environments, roads, or ineffective traffic laws and misleading your listener into assuming that they're caused by human error.

Total deaths is not a useful statistic. The deaths that could have been prevented by L4 autonomous cars but could have not been prevented by L1-L3 or more conventional safety practices is what you should be presenting.

Give as little surface area as possible to people who would use it to push back.

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

#325

Post by monkmartinez »

ForHackernews wrote: post #281
monkmartinez wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No you are not! HN seems to think the same way, and it is one of the worst cases of rose colored glasses I have ever witnessed. What about the cost? Who is going to be able to afford this? Also, what about people that rely on a vehicle for work? Retrofit $75K work trucks with another $75K in self driving gizmos? Find me a practical plumber, carpenter, A/C, lock smith, self-employed guy/gal that will sign up for that!…

> Retrofit $75K work trucks with another $75K in self driving gizmos? Absolutely they will. That's [at least] $60K worth of driver's salary/benefits costs you've just eliminated. $75K is cheap to eliminate the cost of a human employee.

I don't know where to start with this. The whole point of the truck is to get the workers! to the site. Said vehicle is also there to support the workers during the day with storage for tools and materials. SO no, the damn truck isn't going to replace a plumber or a/c tech. wow.

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

#326

Post by ChuckMcM »

So now what do we tell our kids? "Don't get into a van even when nobody is driving it." ? :-)

I think it is great that they are getting additional exposure to nominally real world users here. However, I'm not exactly sure what they are learning in user behaviors. Is it "Can we make a less expensive livery service?" or is it "How freaked out do people get in self driving cars?" or is it something else?

I went to a conference last week where there were several talks that were pretty critical of self driving 'hype' given the HLS[1] issues and the ability to inexpensively 'spoof' the AI[2] to see something that isn't actually there (road signs being particularly vulnerable). It left me thinking I might be more optimistic about the technology than I should be.

[1] "Health, Life, Safety" the general basket of things that are super critical to minimizing injury and death.

[2] https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/3/13507542/facial-recogniti... -- on Facial Recognition but sign recognition has the same problem.

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

#327

Post by blhack »

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.

Just want to say it feels pretty cool that Phoenix gets to be the testbed for this!

Self driving waymo/uber cars around Tempe (the suburb where Arizona State University is) have become part of the landscape.

Uber has also done a really good job of using their self-driving cars for marketing. My partner and I have taken quite a few uber trips that we wouldn't have otherwise, just because we've wanted to try and get a ride in one of the self-drivers.

So far, no luck though.

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

#328

Post by monkmartinez »

thereisnospork wrote: post #298
monkmartinez wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in the suburbs. I have a family with two grade school kids that participate in seasonal team sports and year-round gymnastics. They attend a charter school with no school bus system. Let's say each ride cost $10... that is $20 to $40 per day just for the kids on most weekdays. Add in birthday parties, saturday games, doctor/dentist, trip to grandma/grandpa that live 7 miles away... and we are talking $1000 per…

Who says you need to be the rider, and not the car owner? You could be making that $10 a ride renting your Toyota Highlander to other suburbanites when your kid's sports aren't in season? Or when you're on vacation, or at work for an 8 hour chunk? To say nothing of the convenience of a car that can drop off/pick up the little one from soccer practice on its own if you have a scheduling conflict.

Just tons of drone cars picking up kids and delivering them to their parents. Owners of said cars collecting monthly AirBnB style rent from the people that can suddenly no longer afford a $3000 beater to get them around, but will happily pay $10 a ride in a self driving car. Oh yeah, don't forget about the vomit and drinks spilled all over the place in your ride share. Also sick people touching all the things. Where do I sign up?

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

#329

Post by Noos »

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…

No, it won't be efficient. People here simply are not thinking realistically.

I want to go out to shop. Right now, I get out in my car, drive for twenty minutes to the mall, and leave when I want to do so. My kid is with me, but on the way back he gets sick, so I have to cut short my drive and head back home. he throws up in the car. I clean it when I get home, and go back out to the store five minutes away by car to pick up some medicine for him as my wife watches him.

HN "solution."

I page a car. It takes maybe ten to fifteen minutes to drive to me from the last passenger, since it only is designed to head back to dispatch every so often. The car reeks of weed, because why not light up a bud? It's not like they can arrest you or anything. I punch in a complaint on the app.

We get to the mall. I shop, and summon a car. This time it takes a little less, maybe five to ten minutes, because the mall is closer to dispatch or a place where a lot of cars get dumped off. I program my next shopping route. My kid gets sick mid-ride though.

I have to hit the emergency button, and reroute back to my house. My kid gets sick in the car. When we get home, I have to hit another button to "rent" the car another period so I can clean it, but it still gets sent back due to the emergency button being hit, and I can hit with a nice big fee due to cleanliness issues. I now need to go back out to get medicine, but five minutes by car is 30-45 min by walking. So it's another 15 minutes to get a car.

Even if all goes well, I could be looking at an additional 45 minutes just getting stuff done, as well as cost and loss of passenger quality because I don't own the vehicle. Hell, it could show up at my door full of shit, semen, and vomit, because some homeless guy is using it as his own personal hangout to sleep in. Or it could take even longer because I need to rent a driverless suv so I can bring furniture home to me, and those are relatively rare and command a premium to rent.

No one here is thinking of day to day use by all kinds of people, or what benefits ownership provides. I own my car, that means I dont have to worry about it showing up in a horrid state, I don't have to worry about paying large amounts for minor cosmetic damage, I don't have to budget extra time summoning the vehicle on site (which escalates the farther out from a city hub you are...you're doubling your travel time, and this would heavily penalize rural people), and there are a host of issues eliminated as well. Just the fact that I don't need to put a destination in is one thing. I can change my mind en route, I can wander, and if my wife calls me and tells me to come home, I can do so near instantly.

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

#330

Post by loup-vaillant »

Noos wrote: post #321
loup-vaillant wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not ransomware i worry about. What about targeting the lidar/radar directly? Some people still have radar/laser jammers, and only ten states ban them. What on earth will your programming do to counter that? Or what if an actor uses something like this: https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/29/now-you-see-me-now-you-don... that confounds the car's sensors. Self-driving cars have a whole spectrum of attack vectors that h…

It is likewise quite easy to throw a rock on the highway from a bridge. What you are really worrying about is new creative ways to kill and destroy.

Yes, hostile input will have to be taken into account. Fortunately, this is easily detectable (just look at the logs). And if people die as the result, it will count as murder. Finally, one does not simply jam sensors from across the planet. You need a physical presence on site, and that's riskier than a remote hack.

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