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Apple scientists disclose self-driving car research

reuters.com

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Re: Apple scientists disclose self-driving car research

#11

Post by zaarn »

Retric wrote: post #10
ben_w wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the sentiment, but the details will contain fractal devils. The most unusual pedestrians contain the most important learning experiences, but are also the most significant from a privacy perspective. Edit: or, to put it another way, you don’t want to find out the hard way your machine vision system just mistook a drunk furry thalidomide victim for a wild coyote, but they might not be too thrilled to be o…

Google shared some of their oddities in the past: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hsr3Fzi5clw (Including a lady in a motorized wheelchair chasing a duck with a broom?) Legally, if you can see it from a car on a public road their is minimal expectations of privacy.

Depends on your legislation. In Germany you would violate the rights of third parties by filming the road with intentions of sharing it with other third parties while not also making the former third parties unrecognizable (black bar)

Re: Apple scientists disclose self-driving car research

#12

Post by gutnor »

ajnin wrote: post #9
dogruck wrote: post #2

I wonder if companies, like Apple, will segment their tech stack to extract areas where one could argue that it’s not ethical to have an intellectual advantage. Perhaps pedestrian detection is one such area. If two autonomous car companies are competing, it makes sense to fight on many feature sets. It feels wrong to compete on “ability to detect a bike rider.”

Historically competition has been one of the best ways to foster innovation, and as a society achieving a good "ability to detect bikers" is probably something we want in an automatic car. However, it is relatively wasteful since many resources need to be allocated to do the same thing several times. Alternatives could be : 1) deals between companies to not innovate in those specific areas, 2) a workgroup formed by c…

This is actually a field where competition is working as it should: cars are reviewed based on their safety rating which are common in the industry, car insurance is also based on that. The law is also very strong, there are strict road and driving regulation, so there is little chance for externality like "oh yeah, sometimes cyclist die around our car", ...

Really looks like the ideal environment to let the private sector figure it out by itself, no need for more government.

Re: Apple scientists disclose self-driving car research

#13

Post by menacingly »

There was a time when I thought of regulations as progress killers, but I find myself shifting on that and getting nervous every time I hear about self-driving tech.

It's great stuff, but I really do not want my family to be the brave eggs we had to crack to get to the omelet of a driverless future.

I now _like_ that someone somewhere has a book listing chemicals that aren't allowed to be shipped on an airplane, and I wish there were a way to jump right to that mired, bureaucratic point in car tech.

Similarly, I used to view lawsuits as a menace to free enterprise, but I'm a tiny bit comforted by the fact that everyone working on car tech knows they're extremely exposed to litigation if they aren't diligent.

The idea of code from Apple or Google driving on my roads is switching me from classical liberalism to "help me, big government!"

Re: Apple scientists disclose self-driving car research

#15

Post by KKKKkkkk1 »

dogruck wrote: post #2

I wonder if companies, like Apple, will segment their tech stack to extract areas where one could argue that it’s not ethical to have an intellectual advantage. Perhaps pedestrian detection is one such area. If two autonomous car companies are competing, it makes sense to fight on many feature sets. It feels wrong to compete on “ability to detect a bike rider.”

If Apple cannot gain on their competition by being able to better detect bikers, what would be their incentive to put money into developing that technology?

Re: Apple scientists disclose self-driving car research

#16

Post by JoeAltmaier »

menacingly wrote: post #13

There was a time when I thought of regulations as progress killers, but I find myself shifting on that and getting nervous every time I hear about self-driving tech. It's great stuff, but I really do not want my family to be the brave eggs we had to crack to get to the omelet of a driverless future. I now _like_ that someone somewhere has a book listing chemicals that aren't allowed to be shipped on an airplane, and…

But there is so much low-hanging fruit in automated driving! People are really pretty bad at responding to road hazards, anomalies (dog runs into road) etc. Also people are terrible at attending to repetitive tasks. And people fall asleep.

Its arguable (measurable) that automated drivers would be safer than human drivers. Resisting this is simple FUD?

Re: Apple scientists disclose self-driving car research

#17

Post by johngalt »

menacingly wrote: post #13

There was a time when I thought of regulations as progress killers, but I find myself shifting on that and getting nervous every time I hear about self-driving tech. It's great stuff, but I really do not want my family to be the brave eggs we had to crack to get to the omelet of a driverless future. I now _like_ that someone somewhere has a book listing chemicals that aren't allowed to be shipped on an airplane, and…

I understand the reluctance to trust new technology. If we are talking about the risk/cost of new developments, we should not forget the baseline costs we pay today.

Self driving car tech will be the only method that can provide a hundred fold decrease in driving fatalities. Slowing down progress has a cost too.

Re: Apple scientists disclose self-driving car research

#18

Post by s_kilk »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #15
dogruck wrote: post #2

I wonder if companies, like Apple, will segment their tech stack to extract areas where one could argue that it’s not ethical to have an intellectual advantage. Perhaps pedestrian detection is one such area. If two autonomous car companies are competing, it makes sense to fight on many feature sets. It feels wrong to compete on “ability to detect a bike rider.”

If Apple cannot gain on their competition by being able to better detect bikers, what would be their incentive to put money into developing that technology?

Having their technology not kill people?

Re: Apple scientists disclose self-driving car research

#19

Post by hanbura »

Retric wrote: post #10
ben_w wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the sentiment, but the details will contain fractal devils. The most unusual pedestrians contain the most important learning experiences, but are also the most significant from a privacy perspective. Edit: or, to put it another way, you don’t want to find out the hard way your machine vision system just mistook a drunk furry thalidomide victim for a wild coyote, but they might not be too thrilled to be o…

Google shared some of their oddities in the past: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hsr3Fzi5clw (Including a lady in a motorized wheelchair chasing a duck with a broom?) Legally, if you can see it from a car on a public road their is minimal expectations of privacy.

These questions will get very interesting when self-driving car manufacturers try to enter markets outside the US. It is highly desirable to have local training data, but any large enough effort to collect that data looks indistinguishable from mass surveillance. In Western Continental Europe this is bound to conflict with their expectation of privacy in public spaces. Meanwhile Russia and China might not be so thrilled about the USA having LIDAR scans of their entire country

Re: Apple scientists disclose self-driving car research

#20

Post by mcphage »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #15
dogruck wrote: post #2

I wonder if companies, like Apple, will segment their tech stack to extract areas where one could argue that it’s not ethical to have an intellectual advantage. Perhaps pedestrian detection is one such area. If two autonomous car companies are competing, it makes sense to fight on many feature sets. It feels wrong to compete on “ability to detect a bike rider.”

If Apple cannot gain on their competition by being able to better detect bikers, what would be their incentive to put money into developing that technology?

Not getting sued for millions or billions of dollars? Not watching their reputation end up in the gutter due to negligence on their part?
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