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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

#391

Post by linkregister »

unclesaamm wrote: post #331
MarkMc wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Is there a standard for "real-world conditions"? I could easily see Waymo driving their cars up and down the highway near their headquarters for 50 million miles and calling that "real world".

Given the incredibly risky maneuvers that drivers take on 101 in the Bay Area, I'd say that Waymo cars are experiencing the "real world."

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

#392

Post by Qwertious »

monkmartinez wrote: post #139
rhino369 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The additional hardware and software will be expensive as hell to develop, but once it's invented, the marginal cost should be fairly cheap compared to the price of a car. processing power = cheap software (marginal cost) = just gotta pay for updates and fixes sensor package = expensive now because nobody is making 6 million of them a month. Once they do, it'll be a lot more affordable. That doesn't mean it'll pay of…

> The additional hardware and software will be expensive as hell to develop, but once it's invented, the marginal cost should be fairly cheap compared to the price of a car. Go talk to a pilot and ask them about Garmin products and the autopilot of their plane. Also ask them about update the software on these devices. Ask how much money they are asked to fork over for software... Have a look at the self-driving tech…

How many 747s et al are there, in total, in the world though?

According to http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/584144.html

AIUI, about 300,000. For the entire world. There's more than that number of cars in just about any city in the world. I'd expect tens or hundreds of millions of cars.

Aeroplanes aren't even close to the scale we're talking about.

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

#393

Post by blazers »

mythbuster2001 wrote: post #335
JDulin wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51qqzFE0rsw

This is not rain. This is a drizzle on a very well maintained, center divided freeway, where the radar and ultrasonic sensor has a very nice reference (divider). Also with cars tracked in front. Example of (non-autonomous) driving in a real rain here for reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3xKT98a3og

you mean this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAxoo6JLmgg

or this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoGgE55qNBA

and this is just a L2 system...come on brah come harder

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

#394

Post by Qwertious »

jacquesm wrote: post #89
fdej wrote: post #49

Earlier 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. 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…

> 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.

When was the last time 40-year-old banking or safety-critical software crashed?

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

#395

Post by sebleon »

maverick_iceman wrote: post #358
sebleon wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why wouldn't the same argument apply to electric grid or internet infrastructure?

The US electric grid is widely considered to be at risk: http://wapo.st/2qd2gFQ

Internet infrastructure is decentralized in nature, making it hard to control. Though rogue individuals can have outsized effects: https://www.wired.com/2008/02/pakistans-accid/

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

#396

Post by Merovius »

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…

> In 2016, Philip Koopman of CMU discusses that there are non-trivial engineering challenges of achieving safety in NHTSA Level 4 vehicle automation:

That seems like the most obvious statement I've read in the last year or so at least. I think the fact that Alphabet spent more than 10 years developing these self-driving cars already is a pretty strong indicator that there are non-trivial engineering challenges involved.

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

#397

Post by foota »

jdietrich wrote: post #344
Noos wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem though is that humans can adapt, and the AI in general can't. A go AI can play Go perfectly, but if a player overturns a board, it can do nothing to right this situation and resume playing. It's just following a list made for it, albeit a fairly substantial list. The worry is this, the cars will not fail like a human will. It may even be dangerous The car may not even be able to move in certain situations…

>It's just following a list made for it, albeit a fairly substantial list. You're operating on a completely archaic understanding of AI. Modern systems can and do adapt to situations on-the-fly. What's more, they can adapt on aggregate - the experiences gathered by a single car can be shared to all cars. Very quickly, every car in the fleet will have billions of hours of cumulative driving experience. The overwhelmin…

One potential flaw here is that our current driving experience is based on humans. Perhaps humans are relatively good at handling unexpected situations, meaning they don't cause many accidents. Isn't it possible that by switching to AI we shift from mundane accidents to unexpected situation accidents?

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

#398

Post by aquadrop »

euyyn wrote: post #385
aquadrop wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I imagined as much. Even so, "autopilot sent your car in a spin" vs "autopilot ran into a truck" is a distinction without a difference for the people inside the car.

Tesla warned that driver still should be alert, they implemented warning so driver would keep hands on the wheel etc. NHTSA reported that driver had 7 seconds to react on the truck. In a spin situation because of some bug autopilot would create the problematic situation itself, even if driver will be paying attention to the road.

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

#399

Post by ForHackernews »

monkmartinez wrote: post #325
ForHackernews wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You said: "Also, what about people that rely on a vehicle for work?"

Most people who rely on a vehicle for work are local or long-haul trucking drivers, not local trade workers. The important work a plumber or a/c tech performs is separate from the driving. You're right, those people probably won't move to automated vehicles immediately.

But theoretically, in the future where they could have an automated van meet them at the job site with their tools? And return the tools to a secure storage facility afterwards? I don't see why they wouldn't go for that.

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

#400

Post by swiley »

joshuamorton wrote: post #122
swiley wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's a lot harder to hide weirdness in mechanical things. Because of that I don't think hardware needs to be open source.
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