Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Winner-take-all effects in autonomous cars

ben-evans.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 91 posts

Re: Winner-take-all effects in autonomous cars

#21

Post by joewadcan »

This is a great write up but misses how gov't regulation could actually force a winner-takes-all distribution. States (like CA and NV) have already started to draw up their own autonomous driving regulations and the DOT is planning to support this evolution with Federal standards.

It's reasonable to assume that these standards will get more stringent over time as accidents, insurance, and compatibility become forced issues (likely though lawsuits). The companies that have the data and systems to meet these standards will be able to keep up but it'd be hard (read: impossible) for a new entrant to catch up after the initial players are further down the evolutionary curve.

Re: Winner-take-all effects in autonomous cars

#22

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

6d6b73 wrote: post #13
djyaz1200 wrote: post #7

Autonomous cars are going to kill people, lots of people. They are going to kill passengers, bicyclists, pedestrians etc. It has already happened and will continue. Even though autonomous cars will be (and Tesla argues already are) safer than human drivers the fact that these deaths will be at the hands of machines rather than people will outrage the public. The industry will become even more heavily regulated, and t…

>Good drivers really distinguish themselves in the moments where the inputs and behaviors that are expected do not occur (ex: tire blow out). Autonomous cars will be much better at handling these types of situations - in your example, the machine will know what's going on few milliseconds after it happens and will be able to adjust speed and direction almost instantaneously. All you need is lots of sensors.

> All you need is lots of sensors.

Which rapidly reduces the MTBF at which point you're stuck with an overpriced manual drive vehicle.

Re: Winner-take-all effects in autonomous cars

#23

Post by rgbrenner »

6d6b73 wrote: post #13
djyaz1200 wrote: post #7

Autonomous cars are going to kill people, lots of people. They are going to kill passengers, bicyclists, pedestrians etc. It has already happened and will continue. Even though autonomous cars will be (and Tesla argues already are) safer than human drivers the fact that these deaths will be at the hands of machines rather than people will outrage the public. The industry will become even more heavily regulated, and t…

>Good drivers really distinguish themselves in the moments where the inputs and behaviors that are expected do not occur (ex: tire blow out). Autonomous cars will be much better at handling these types of situations - in your example, the machine will know what's going on few milliseconds after it happens and will be able to adjust speed and direction almost instantaneously. All you need is lots of sensors.

and when the sensors start failing?

Re: Winner-take-all effects in autonomous cars

#24

Post by 6d6b73 »

rgbrenner wrote: post #23
6d6b73 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Good drivers really distinguish themselves in the moments where the inputs and behaviors that are expected do not occur (ex: tire blow out). Autonomous cars will be much better at handling these types of situations - in your example, the machine will know what's going on few milliseconds after it happens and will be able to adjust speed and direction almost instantaneously. All you need is lots of sensors.

and when the sensors start failing?

System will know that they are failing. this is not rocket science.

Re: Winner-take-all effects in autonomous cars

#25

Post by ghaff »

6d6b73 wrote: post #20
ghaff wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The liability question will be an interesting one--far more so than trolley problems IMO. There aren't a lot of examples where we just accept things sold to consumers killing people when used according to directions and properly maintained because "hey, sometimes stuff happens." Drugs are probably the best example. But even that isn't a case of your drugs killing someone else. I do think it will figured out in some f…

>But you're right that the general public isn't going to shrug when $AUTOMAKER's car runs over a skateboarder and the company says "We are committed to safety and we'll try harder next time." Unfortunately many examples from recent years (acceleration pedals, air bags, tires) show that after few weeks everybody will forget about the issue and move on.

The general population may forget but, in the cases you cite, there were significant lawsuits in each case and settlements.

Re: Winner-take-all effects in autonomous cars

#26

Post by cperciva »

djyaz1200 wrote: post #7

Autonomous cars are going to kill people, lots of people. They are going to kill passengers, bicyclists, pedestrians etc. It has already happened and will continue. Even though autonomous cars will be (and Tesla argues already are) safer than human drivers the fact that these deaths will be at the hands of machines rather than people will outrage the public. The industry will become even more heavily regulated, and t…

I'm confident that autonomous cars will handle mechanical failures and other "black swan" events far better than human drivers do. Human drivers are unlikely to encounter any such incident more than once, and so are unable to learn from them; but autonomous cars can learn from all of the weird situations encountered by other cars.

Re: Winner-take-all effects in autonomous cars

#28

Post by ufmace »

6d6b73 wrote: post #13
djyaz1200 wrote: post #7

Autonomous cars are going to kill people, lots of people. They are going to kill passengers, bicyclists, pedestrians etc. It has already happened and will continue. Even though autonomous cars will be (and Tesla argues already are) safer than human drivers the fact that these deaths will be at the hands of machines rather than people will outrage the public. The industry will become even more heavily regulated, and t…

>Good drivers really distinguish themselves in the moments where the inputs and behaviors that are expected do not occur (ex: tire blow out). Autonomous cars will be much better at handling these types of situations - in your example, the machine will know what's going on few milliseconds after it happens and will be able to adjust speed and direction almost instantaneously. All you need is lots of sensors.

I agree that autonomous cars will be much better, but mostly not because of sensors. Experience will be the difference. Virtually no drivers actually have experience handling blowouts and know what to do during one. Even the ones who have will mostly not be very effective at handling it, because it happens so rarely, and virtually nobody actively practices it and studies and trains the best techniques.

What will make autonomous cars better is that they can take all of the input from thousands of blowouts, add "training" from actual experts, and load the resulting techniques into every car on the road, ready for execution the instant something happens.

Re: Winner-take-all effects in autonomous cars

#29

Post by mabbo »

One way to help prevent a winner-take-all situation is to have more open protocols for some of the hard problems. An example that I feel needs to be done right now: an open protocol for signaling intent.

Today we have left and right blinkers, brake lights, the horn, and some 'body' language when you use the whole vehicle to show your intent. But with fully autonomous cars, we could be giving out signals that are rich with information.

"My exit is soon, I'd like to change to the right hand lane everybody!"; "People up ahead of me seem to be stopping suddenly, watch out as I may need to do the same!"; "The right lane is blocked at 43.718045, -79.507663, pass the word back to everyone so they are prepared".

If we can build an open protocol for how cars can share this rich information, then as more and more cars are autonomous, the roads will improve continuously. Even non-autonomous cars could start listening to this data and sharing it with the drivers.

On the other hand, if we don't build an open protocol then we could start to see, for example, all the Waymo cars helping each other out- but not helping the Teslas or the GMs. There's a winner-take-all effect in action.

Post reply on HN