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

Self-driving cars are headed toward an AI roadblock

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 256 posts

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

#161

Post by notheguyouthink »

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.

And people will die anyways. It would be the biggest miracle on earth I think if those things ended up being perfect (at least, the ones that work.. not Uber, obviously).

So it's all a numbers game. What's acceptable, and what we can improve on.

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

#162

Post by tsycho »

gwbas1c wrote: post #156

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!

I know that the actual system is currently terrible in many places, wherein the recycle and trash are mixed together and re-sorted by humans. Ignoring that for the moment...

There are some practical reasons for recycle bins, or at least for separating out paper. Paper can get damaged if mixed with liquids or other foods/compostable material, and harder or not worth recycling. Keeping it separate from the very beginning increases the ability and efficiency of recycling => less dead trees.

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

#163

Post by Analemma_ »

zawerf wrote: post #140
Animats wrote: post #124

Another bad article. As I keep pointing out, the way you start to do automatic driving is by first profiling the terrain to see where you can go. If it's not flat road, you don't go there. Doesn't matter why it's not flat. Then try to classify other road objects and predict their behavior. This only matters for moving objects. Waymo gets this, as we know from Urmson's talk at SXSW a few years back. Most of the DARPA…

> The most common problem, especially with Waymo, is being rear-ended while cautiously entering an intersection with limited visibility. Their system will start forward to get a better view, then detect cross traffic and stop This actually highlights a really hard problem that (perfect) self driving will need to solve: theory of mind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind Not only does the AI need to empathize…

Yeah, this is a good point. Most of the HN crowd understands that ML-powered autonomous vehicles will have crazy failure modes that no human would ever do. Proponents of self-driving cars claim that the reverse is also true and that, on average, self-driving cars will be safer on average than humans – and that might be true! But it still matters that the humans remaining on the road can't predict what these things will do and our theory of mind won't work: even bad drivers are usually bad in predictable ways, but a software system that makes unexpected mistakes humans can't understand has second-order dangers on the road besides the ones it creates itself.

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

#164

Post by notheguyouthink »

ScottBurson wrote: post #153
Fricken wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dr…

The escalation of data collection will be immense though, once they deploy the fleet. Even if they have to have more human involvement than desired currently, I think the first few years will show growth they could have have dreamed of in the beginning.

Which must be worrisome for competition.

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

#165

Post by schneidmaster »

Animats wrote: post #124

Another bad article. As I keep pointing out, the way you start to do automatic driving is by first profiling the terrain to see where you can go. If it's not flat road, you don't go there. Doesn't matter why it's not flat. Then try to classify other road objects and predict their behavior. This only matters for moving objects. Waymo gets this, as we know from Urmson's talk at SXSW a few years back. Most of the DARPA…

> 25 minor accidents so far this year. Mostly Cruise.

First link I clicked (Cruise "accident" on June 22, 2018) is pretty fantastic.

https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/81d8865f-4c99-4342...

> A Cruise autonomous vehicle ("Cruise AV"), operating in autonomous mode, was traveling westbound on El Camino Del Mar between 32nd Ave and Legion of Honor Drive. The Cruise AV was struck by a golf ball from a nearby golf course causing damage to the Cruise AV's front driver windshield. There were no injuries and police were not called.

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

#166

Post by carapace »

gwbas1c wrote: post #156

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!

You make light, but, uh...

> ...sophisticated trash-sorting robots are now turning up at recycling plants across the nation.

> The robots — most of which have come online only within the past year — are just as accurate as human workers and up to twice as fast.

https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/how-robots-are-reshapin...

The future is coming on strong.

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

#167

Post by comesee »

phyzome wrote: post #139
dang wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't post like this to HN. It degrades discussion and encourages worse. Downward-spiraling is the internet default, so effort is needed to avoid it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Can you tell me more about downward-spiraling, and how this relates to the guidelines? The guy in the article seems to be implying that pedestrians don't have the right to be in the road. I think it's pretty OK to be dismissive of that.

I agree with you but it was probably your language. HN isn't a free speech zone.

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

#168

Post by notahacker »

vntok wrote: post #145
jellicle wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many different police uniforms do you think there are in the world?

Have a look[1]. Observe how they all kind of look like each other regardless of the country: shoulder pads, head cover, belt, uniform colour, formal attire, etc. Once the model knows the baseline, that is "a uniformed individual waving characteristically in front of the car", don't you think it would be quite easy to teach it with a mere few hundred pictures how local police officers look like in the current region?…

They don't look remotely similar to me, especially considering that black, blue, navy, grey and khaki (and reflective yellow for people on roads) are not unpopular colours for clothes worn by people who are not police officers or otherwise involved in traffic direction, many of whom may have cause to move their arms in ways comparable to signals. Humans are just a lot better at gauging intention and even simple stuff like parsing the word "police" at an oblique angle

Frankly even with local training, you'd still think giving law enforcement devices to stop, restart and redirect vehicles was a minimum requirement.

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

#169

Post by notheguyouthink »

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.

Yup. I'd sell my car almost instantly if I could take a robotaxi to work/etc with zero hassle and near instant availability.

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

#170

Post by saas_co_de »

jcfrei wrote: post #68
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 might also tell a different story: They've realized that a fundamental breakthrough in self-driving cars is unlikely to happen in the next decade and therefore there's no point in waiting any longer to perfect the technology - and instead rely on remote controlling of the cars for difficult situations. They can still gradually improve the self-driving systems but from a business perspective it might make sense…

This is right on. Waymo is not an autonomous car in the way people typically imagine them. More like a remote control street car on a digital track.
Post reply on HN