Self-driving cars are headed toward an AI roadblock • Hacker News Board

Re: Self-driving cars are headed toward an AI roadblock

#91

Post by ltdanimal » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 6:37 PM UTC

brookhaven_dude wrote: post #13

adrianN wrote: post #4

The crashes that the article claims came from edge-cases that the engineers didn't account for weren't, in fact, edge-cases. The Tesla crashes are due to the way Tesla's system works, it doesn't recognize stationary hazards. Similarly Uber's system failed to brake for a hazard that it could clearly see. That's not an edge-case, it doesn't have to know that the object is a woman pushing a bicycle. It's a solid object…

Edges cases are what really matters in this case! Isn't there a saying that 80% of the code is written to handle 20% of the cases?

I think you have that flipped. 20% of code covers 80%. As you try to get to 100% coverage of all possible scenarios the complexity gets in some cases exponentially harder as all the low hanging fruit is picked

Re: Self-driving cars are headed toward an AI roadblock

#92

Post by czr » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 6:37 PM UTC

jtbayly wrote: post #2

Waymo seems to be the only question mark in my mind making me doubt my bet that we're a decade or more away from usable self-driving cars. If Waymo has truly solved the problem while everybody else is just trying to catch up and/or bluffing, I guess I wouldn't be that surprised. Edited to add: The reason is that they've apparently ordered 10's of thousands of these cars. Can they really use that many only in good-wea…

>Can they really use that many only in good-weather places with perfect roads?

Waymo supposedly processes their lidar signals to detect other cars with reasonable accuracy even in snow/rain(https://youtu.be/UrJ4-AUL4U0?t=9m41s). They only operate in pre-mapped areas so they should be able to follow lanes just fine even if the actual markings are obscured (by weather or by poor maintenance).

This kind of approach (mapping everything beforehand and using lidar for perception) is used by other players as well, and seems the most likely to work for short term level 4. Trying to do everything without the benefits of lidar and high-res maps (what e.g. Tesla are doing) is a more general solution, and cheaper hardware-wise, but will take longer to get right.

Re: Self-driving cars are headed toward an AI roadblock

#93

Post by bryanlarsen » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 6:37 PM UTC

dsnuh wrote: post #62

bryanlarsen wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, if you're willing to risk going to jail for impersonating a law enforcement officer.

Fair enough. I'm sure some would be willing to do that, but likely not many. I do think it is going to be very interesting to work out some of the scenarios if we do get to Johnny Cab style self driving cars.

If you're willing to risk jail, disrupting traffic is ridiculously easy, self-driving cars or not.

Re: Self-driving cars are headed toward an AI roadblock

#94

Post by abathur » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 6:40 PM UTC

abathur wrote: post #73

CPLX wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they'll be able to undercut ride sharing prices Why? I see comments like this constantly. But does anyone ever do even a basic spreadsheet to explain the unit economics of this argument? Low skilled people who can drive are pretty cheap and plentiful. Even if self-driving tech is flawless (spoiler: it's not and won't be soon) it still only replaces part of their responsibilities. Someone will still have to clean th…

I don't disagree that some may be over-estimating how much cost can pragmatically be cut, but I also think you may be glossing over some of the costs and inefficiencies that come with operating a large heterogenous operation comprised of individuals and personal or rented vehicles. A company deploying large mostly-homogenous autonomous fleets may be able to benefit from: - we probably don't need to tip AVs - economie…

I haven't looked for work on the price/demand relationship here, but it's also worth noting that price reductions may not just purely be a matter of cutting costs and passing those on at a static ridership and profit level. There are likely to be some price points that profoundly change user behavior

To give an example, my favorite coffee shop is about 7 minutes (+wait) from my apartment by car either way, and around 18-26 minutes (+wait) by bus (shorter there, longer back). Without a ride pass and with tip, it's probably around $7-8 to Uber this one way, vs. $1.25 for the bus.

At this price, I'll usually only Uber if heat or rain make getting to and from the bus miserable. I have a ride pass atm that knocks this down to around $6-7 with tip, which makes me marginally more likely to take Uber, but it isn't my default. I took the bus this past Sunday morning, planning to get some open source work done, but I'd forgotten my laptop wasn't in my bag. The time/sweat cost of the bus round trip and the money cost of the Uber round trip were high enough that I just sat and read a book instead.

I'm not sure exactly where, but somewhere between ~$2-5 total, I'd probably default to taking Uber both ways. Down at the low end of that range, I even would've gone back for the forgotten laptop.

Re: Self-driving cars are headed toward an AI roadblock

#95

Post by phyzome » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 6:45 PM UTC

comesee wrote: post #60

> “Rather than building AI to solve the pogo stick problem, we should partner with the government to ask people to be lawful and considerate,” he said. “Safety isn’t just about the quality of the AI technology.” Wow. What a goal post move. I don't think this is how successful technology spreads. Governments usually accomodate tech because it proves itself in the market, not vice versa.

Seriously, fuck that guy.

> Drive.AI founder Andrew Ng, a former Baidu executive and one of the industry’s most prominent boosters, argues the problem is less about building a perfect driving system than training bystanders to anticipate self-driving behavior. In other words, we can make roads safe for the cars instead of the other way around.

I'm not going to give up on crosswalks just so you can make money on your shmancy new cars.

Re: Self-driving cars are headed toward an AI roadblock

#96

Post by freerobby » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 6:45 PM UTC

Zhenya wrote: post #33

I'm continually astounded by the Tesla hasbara: "Tesla and a host of other imitators already sell a limited form of Autopilot" Imitators? You mean GM, Mercedes and VAG that have had these systems for longer than Tesla are just bad copies of the glorious Tesla autopilot? Unreal.

All due respect, have you used any of the Autopilot clones? There are endless debates about what's better on paper, but everybody I know who's actually used them says Autopilot is much more mature. Comma.ai seems to be right on their tail, but it's an aftermarket system requiring a fair bit of DIY (so it's not very accessible yet for most end users). Tesla was first to market with auto steering, and seems to have the most mature offering, so framing them as the market leader seems pretty accurate to me.

Re: Self-driving cars are headed toward an AI roadblock

#97

Post by the-dude » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 6:49 PM UTC

brookhaven_dude wrote: post #13

adrianN wrote: post #4

The crashes that the article claims came from edge-cases that the engineers didn't account for weren't, in fact, edge-cases. The Tesla crashes are due to the way Tesla's system works, it doesn't recognize stationary hazards. Similarly Uber's system failed to brake for a hazard that it could clearly see. That's not an edge-case, it doesn't have to know that the object is a woman pushing a bicycle. It's a solid object…

Edges cases are what really matters in this case! Isn't there a saying that 80% of the code is written to handle 20% of the cases?

Not specific to code : that is the Pareto principle.

Re: Self-driving cars are headed toward an AI roadblock

#98

Post by brudgers » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 6:50 PM UTC

rbranson wrote: post #9

jtbayly wrote: post #2

Waymo seems to be the only question mark in my mind making me doubt my bet that we're a decade or more away from usable self-driving cars. If Waymo has truly solved the problem while everybody else is just trying to catch up and/or bluffing, I guess I wouldn't be that surprised. Edited to add: The reason is that they've apparently ordered 10's of thousands of these cars. Can they really use that many only in good-wea…

I tend to agree. Waymo ordered 62,000 Chrysler Pacificas with delivery slated for late 2018. Base retail on the hybrid model is $40,000USD. Even if they got an unbelievably generous 50% discount, that means they're $1.24B USD serious, excluding the cost of the additional autonomous driving equipment. So this will either be one of the biggest debacles in Google/Alphabet's history, or they really are ready to go.

At the scale of Alphabet, $1.25B about 1% of of 2017 revenue and about 5% of operating income. [1] Alphabet isn't betting the future on it. Relative to the automotive industry sixty thousand vehicles in 2018 compares to about 100,000,000 vehicles worldwide per year. [2] Compared to the number of cars in my driveway and the balance of my checking account, the numbers are big. At industrial scale, they are small. If all 60k vehicles were registered in California, it would look like rounding error on the 36,000,000 vehicles registered there. [3]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabet_Inc.

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_industry#By_year

[3] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/5aa16cd3-39a5-402f...

Re: Self-driving cars are headed toward an AI roadblock

#99

Post by georgeecollins » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 6:52 PM UTC

totaldick wrote: post #57

georgeecollins wrote: post #7

Rodney Brooks gave an interview that was recently reposted on ArsTechnica. He has so much real world experience productizing AI and robotics that no one else really compares. He is not pessimistic just realistic about self driving cars. And he has great reasons why true autonomy is going to take a long time.

Rodney Brooks has a history of skepticism about AI (said in 2009 that he doesn't think AI is even possible), as does Gary Marcus (who's been anti-deep learning since 2011). "AI is hype" hit pieces always quote them.

I assume you are trolling, but in case someone misses your user name: To say that the director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence lab for ten years and the founder of the a successful AI workstation company and the most successful robotics company in the world "has a history of skepticism about AI" is idiotic.

Re: Self-driving cars are headed toward an AI roadblock

#100

Post by Zigurd » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 6:52 PM UTC

jtbayly wrote: post #2

Waymo seems to be the only question mark in my mind making me doubt my bet that we're a decade or more away from usable self-driving cars. If Waymo has truly solved the problem while everybody else is just trying to catch up and/or bluffing, I guess I wouldn't be that surprised. Edited to add: The reason is that they've apparently ordered 10's of thousands of these cars. Can they really use that many only in good-wea…

Re "It seems unlikely that they are just that stupid to spend that much money without being confident that their plan will work."

Motorola?