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

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

#151

Post by vntok » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 8:08 PM UTC

jtbayly wrote: post #90

vntok wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean? Neurons work exactly like if/then statements. If (input > level) {transmit information}

Ummm.... no. You might be able to make the case that a neuron can be simulated with a very complex set of if-then statements, but that assumes that we can know everything about the state of a dozen inputs, which we can't. At any rate, the brain is not a computer: https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-informati...

output = if (input > locally_stored_threshold) input * locally_stored_weight else 0

This is not very complex and accurately models neurotransmission. What's missing here is the vastness of connections from a particular neuron towards thousands or more other neurons, but the inherent function is definitely not complex.

* weight being either 1 if you adopt a continous modelization (multiple serial input provide multiple serial output) or a float if you prefer the discrete modelization (sum of input to sum of output)

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

#152

Post by IanCal » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 8:10 PM UTC

CPLX wrote: post #40

rbranson wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this scenario there's no moat for Lyft/Uber either. If Waymo can meet demand, they'll be able to undercut ride sharing prices so deeply that most consumers will switch overnight. Banks will be falling over themselves to provide the massive credit they'll need to bankroll the expansion.

> 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…

People are expensive. Very expensive. Covering 24h/day requires 4.7 regular week workers, which in the UK will cost (for workers over 25) a minimum of £80k. That's just raw salary and basic taxes, other things push it up (as well as the fact that you can't get people to work exact hours consistently so well and people are I'll, etc). So per "baseload" taxi, that's likely £100k/year minimum in human costs in the UK. If the tech has only a few year lifespan you've still got north of a quarter of a million to spend on the self driving things alone.

The number of hours per day the car needs cleaning will be drastically lower than the hours it needs driving.

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

#153

Post by ScottBurson » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 8:14 PM UTC

Fricken wrote: post #19

rbranson wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Waymo has also ordered 20k Jaguar I-paces. Rumour is they have invested about 11 billion in R&d so far, and I'm crudely estimating the cost of their 80k upcoming robotaxis to be around 12 billion. Alphabet is committed. Waymo estimates about 50 trips per day will be served per vehicle. At that rate, 80k robotaxis is enough to displace most of the taxi/rideshare services in the southwestern United States, though I'm n…

> Every city they hope to deploy in has differing signage, differing driving habits, and many funky intersections and road anomalies that need specific attention.

The very fact that those things do need specific attention tells me they don't have true autonomy yet; they just have a way to fake it using detailed maps of known areas.

I don't see how an autonomous vehicle can handle all the corner cases of real-world driving (construction zones, etc.) until it can also work reliably using only available sensor data, so that detailed mapping is no longer necessary.

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

#154

Post by IanCal » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 8:14 PM UTC

zwieback wrote: post #32

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'm sure Waymo will make a lot of progress with their massive investment but using SV money as an indicator for a project's ultimate success seems unwise at this point. I think the real question is whether the big investors in self-driving cars will make progress creating virtual rails for their vehicles, e.g. roads where we can keep pedestrians out.

> roads where we can keep pedestrians out.

Aren't major roads pedestrian free in the US? Motorways and major roads are in the UK.

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

#155

Post by vamin » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 8:19 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #143

vamin wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They will pull over.

Have any of the major vendors documented this? Otherwise, citation needed.

"By working with the police department in Chandler, AZ, for example, Waymo has been able to train its cars to yield, pull over, or stop when it hears or sees sirens." [1]

[1] https://www.recode.net/2017/10/15/16472896/alphabet-waymo-se...

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

#156

Post by gwbas1c » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 8:21 PM UTC

When will we have self-driving cars?

When we can get rid of recycle bins, because we've finally figured out how to get our robots to sort our trash for us!

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

#157

Post by carapace » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 8:24 PM UTC

chronic821 wrote: post #18

samirparikh wrote: post #14

I work on self-driving cars. Imho, companies need to collaborate on certain aspects like perception instead of competing. The vehicle is basically blind beyond the range of the sensors or if you miss a detection. Collaboration on these issues will lead to faster progress instead of competing.

> Imho, companies need to collaborate on certain aspects like perception instead of competing. I also work on self-driving cars. Why would I share technological innovations with another company?

I would support laws that said, in effect, you can't compete on safety. Meaning, if one self-driving car[1] company comes up with the software equivalent of the seatbelt or the airbag I think they should not get exclusive right to implement it. They should have to share that with the other companies. I don't see how doing otherwise wouldn't put safety above profit.

So how do you compete? I don't know. Along other dimensions, I guess.

There is another aspect of this that I want to bring up: auto-autos should share data with each other and with the surrounding traffic infrastructure in real-time, for safety and for dynamic traffic-shaping. They should be able to cooperatively track pedestrians and non-automated vehicles. The cars and the roads and the signals and something like Waze should all be integrated and cooperating for maximum safety and efficient throughput with low latency. And they should all share experience (training data) of normal and exceptional events across the whole fleet (regardless of manufacturer.) Optimizing across the whole thing will be, uh, optimal. From this POV, non-cooperative behavior (due to the profit motive or just people being people) by any single actor will be seen as a bad-faith move and the network can be expected to route around it one way or another.

[1] Please, let's call them "auto-autos".

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

#158

Post by CPLX » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 8:24 PM UTC

Fricken wrote: post #54

CPLX wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true at all. There are a lot more use cases for self driving technology than taxi services. In fact I'm continuously perplexed as to why this specific use case, which is obviously the most challenging and likely to be the last to reach the market, is always first in these discussions.

There are very good reasons as to why Waymo and all the other major players are focused on robotaxis. A truck still needs to be able to drive in cities, and if you figure out how to automate all the other thing a trucker does you can replace 3 million of them. Big whoop. Robotaxis stand to challenge the economics of personal vehicle ownership, the potential market is many orders of magnitude larger.

Why can't they just have normal cars for sale that also drive themselves to start with? Like I have a car and recline and read a book on a commute most of the time. If snow gets crazy or there's very strange construction or a flooded road or a flat tire we go back to manual driving.

That's plausible and incremental. No cleaning problems, no homeless people living in them, no need for remote monitoring, a far simpler liability and insurance situation, and so on.

My assumption is we'll start talking seriously about robotaxis on the day this scenario is practical and battle tested. The idea of starting with taxis seems ludicrous in comparison.

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

#159

Post by the8472 » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 8:24 PM UTC

rifung wrote: post #149

sandworm101 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> “When will cars drive themselves? Experts say nobody knows” articles. Nobody knows because it has yet to happen. We have all seen demos and studies but that doesn't convince anyone not involved in the tech. Cars will be capable of driving themselves when I see one, sans humans, ask to merge in front of me on the highway. It will happen when I see one navigate the lineup to the ferry I take every week. It will happ…

> So put them on the road. Let's give it a try. Maybe it works. Maybe it doesn't and people die and they sue. That's been part of driving since day one. Roll the dice. I'm sick of the endless debates. Well I'd certainly hope that there is a high level of confidence that they don't kill people BEFORE they're put on the road with other people.

All we need is that they don't kill more people than average human drivers do per passenger-mile. Assuming ride-sharing we could even let them be a little more deadly than human drivers and still save lives.

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

#160

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 8:24 PM UTC

CPLX wrote: post #40

rbranson wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this scenario there's no moat for Lyft/Uber either. If Waymo can meet demand, they'll be able to undercut ride sharing prices so deeply that most consumers will switch overnight. Banks will be falling over themselves to provide the massive credit they'll need to bankroll the expansion.

> 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…

[deleted]