I've always had a hunch (and mind you, I have no proof of this, I'm just talking here) that the software required for a level 5 self driving car is, on some mathematical level, equivalent to the software needed to pass the Turing Test (w/out hacking the rules). In other words, if we have the capacity to do one of those things, we will have the capacity to do the other (in much the same way that seemingly unrelated problems in theoretical CS are actually restatements of the same problem). It's probably BS, but it's an interesting idea that I can't quite seem to shake.
Toyota Research Institute head says full autonomous driving is “not even close”
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Re: Toyota Research Institute head says full autonomous driving is “not even close”
#112Completely agree with this. It will be ridiculously difficult to get to Level 5 automation in cars. It's decades away, not years. Ironically though, part of the reason it's so difficult is that during the transition the roads will still be populated with human-driven cars. If we passed laws to the effect that "as of date X, no human-driven vehicles or pedestrians will be allowed on roads in the set {Y}", we could get…
True, but that's a "boil the oceans" type of problem.
Re: Toyota Research Institute head says full autonomous driving is “not even close”
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
> a car misread a stop sign with a small amount of marking as a 45MPH speed limit sign That's what happens when the sign were made for humans. They should start putting QR codes under traffic signs, with the human sign as a fall back or as a second point of reference.
How can you verify at a glance that the QR Code associated with a human-readable sign is correct?
Not that I think QR codes are a good idea, but why does this property matter?
People can be dicks to each other in myriad ways, I don't find these arguments that you could trick self-driving cars super compelling.
Re: Toyota Research Institute head says full autonomous driving is “not even close”
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
If we had autonomous planes it wouldn't significantly reduce cost or increase usage. But there is a lot of investment in autonomous drones. Planes also have a very high safety bar to begin with, which cars do not. Same thing about trains, there's very little value in doing so, and resistance in the form of unions in some locations. Some trains are fully automated though, here's an article with some more info: https:/…
With software, it's always easy to make something appear to work. All the corner cases make something take 10-100x longer than the functional prototype. This became painfully obvious with the article floating around where a car misread a stop sign with a small amount of marking as a 45MPH speed limit sign. It's pretty clear that if a car is mistaking a red sign for a white sign, we have a very long time to go before…
The other day, I came within two feet of a crash because the other driver completely disregarded a red light.
It's pretty clear that if a human can't even pay attention to a light directly pointed at them, we have a very long time to go before humans can safely drive cars without a computer to intervene when needed.
Re: Toyota Research Institute head says full autonomous driving is “not even close”
#115Does anyone have concrete evidence on an over-under date for something commercial, e.g., availability of self-driving (or at least a self-delivering) taxi? The most specific hint at a number I've seen recently was in the neighborhood of 2022, which comes from a recent Morgan Stanley report on Waymo: "The analysts believe Waymo can get to an operating profit by 2022 and reach 8% margins by 2030."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmarkman/2017/06/12/self-driv...
Re: Toyota Research Institute head says full autonomous driving is “not even close”
#116This will probably have a chilling effect on VCs investing in this space. Maybe not White Walker chilling but it can't be seen as enthusiasm coming from the world's largest car manufacturer. I worked for a router company and our likely exit scenario Cisco leaned ever so slightly in the other direction and the VCs pulled our funding. Poof.
Re: Toyota Research Institute head says full autonomous driving is “not even close”
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you imagine writing a computer program than can drive a car in a video game, but not provide relationship advice to two freshly married people, or think of a fair and just and enforceable law to reduce discrimination at the workplace? Driving is quite a bit short of "same intelligence as humans"
what if there are 2 obstacles that the car can't brake fast enough to avoid so it has to decide which to hit. one is a person pushing a baby in a baby carriage, the other is a person pushing someone a wheelchair
Do you think we will tolerate autonomous cars operating at speeds that create those situations?
Re: Toyota Research Institute head says full autonomous driving is “not even close”
#118This is a migration problem. A network of only self driving cars is effectively a more complex train without tracks. This does not require an AI, just a very reliable and coordinated state machine. A mixed set of AI and human drivers is much more complex. There is a possible future where towns, countries , certain highways, etc adapt to the needs/demands of humans such that the vehicles and rules of the road combined create the desired environment for autonomous vehicles to thrive. Everyone assumes technology will adapt to us, but history shows that humans do just as much if not more adapting (see: suburbs/highways, industrial revolution, tech addiction, tinder, uber, etc). In many cases this is powerful humans leveraging tech to bend the will and change lives of the masses. Not saying this or good or bad. Just saying... Futurists are generally wrong and overly optimistic (and/or just really good marketers).
Re: Toyota Research Institute head says full autonomous driving is “not even close”
#119I've been saying this for a while. The problem is that people are mostly familiar with the rate of overcoming traditional technical challenges (e.g., making your current computer/phone more compact, improving graphics quality, making cameras and screens with more pixels, etc.). What people don't realize is that full autonomous driving will require more than just faster/smaller/cheaper technical innovation - it will r…
I use Google voice dictation to transcribe emails and text messages on my phone constantly. Not like "I tried it for a week and then went back". I have been using it daily for months. It's now vastly faster than typing it in by hand on a phone, and even the per-word error rate is actually better than mobile typing.
Google voice isn't perfect, but it hears better than I do.
Re: Toyota Research Institute head says full autonomous driving is “not even close”
#120I've been saying this for a while. The problem is that people are mostly familiar with the rate of overcoming traditional technical challenges (e.g., making your current computer/phone more compact, improving graphics quality, making cameras and screens with more pixels, etc.). What people don't realize is that full autonomous driving will require more than just faster/smaller/cheaper technical innovation - it will r…
Even better than speech recognition, handwriting recognition. Hello, Apple Newton, may you rest in peace. I'm not convinced we'll have handwriting recognition within my lifetime, and if we do I imagine that shortly after I'll go looking for Sarah Connor :)
Go to your closest Apple store, choose an iPad Pro and try an app called 'Nebo'. Let us know when you find Sarah :)