The dream of driverless cars is dying • Hacker News Board

Re: The dream of driverless cars is dying

#11

Post by taneq » Sun, Jul 15, 2018, 2:22 PM UTC

CPLX wrote: post #9

agronick wrote: post #8

My 2016 23k Honda Civic can drive itself down the highway. Gas, break, stear - it can do it all on a clearly marked highway. As can Subarus and probably many others. I just know what my friends and coworkers have. Saying no car maker has shipped anything is a blatent lie.

For that to happen does that 2016 Honda Civic have to have a driver in it? That's how you can tell if it's driverless.

You don't have to have ubiquitous Turing-test-passing level 5+ robot vehicles. Lane Keep Assist style things are a good start.

Re: The dream of driverless cars is dying

#12

Post by 3pt14159 » Sun, Jul 15, 2018, 2:24 PM UTC

We're going to get driverless cars one way or another. Even if the problems are much more intractable than we first gave them credit for people are too clever.

Take driving in the snow, for instance. It might be completely impossible to do it safely for the next twenty years by having a computer manage the drive path, but designs might create the ability for cars to form mini-trains where the lead car is driven by a human and the cars fall in line together. Then you could still get in a self-driving car, it could still get you from Toronto to Ottawa. It could even get you right to your front door! They'd just have to pay some train drivers (conductors?) when the weather is too harsh for to put it in full auto mode.

We're going to get there. The benefits are too obvious and we can work around the persistent problems.

Re: The dream of driverless cars is dying

#13

Post by taneq » Sun, Jul 15, 2018, 2:28 PM UTC

This seems fixated on driverless vehicles' availability for purchase by the general public. I thought it was becoming pretty clear that, early on at least, the common approach is fleets operated by manufacturers, a la Waymo?

Re: The dream of driverless cars is dying

#14

Post by chubot » Sun, Jul 15, 2018, 2:29 PM UTC

CPLX wrote: post #7

The part that I can't figure out is why everyone seems to act like driverless cars will be some kind of all-at-once phase change transition instead of being incremental. It seems almost a certainty that we will gradually ease into the concept. Some cars will be able to do some things autonomously, a little, for some people, some of the time. Eventually the cost/benefit levels will improve, more features will roll out…

Yup, I cited a few knowledgeable people saying the same thing here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16353541

Here's my negative scenario: self-driving is "AI-complete"; you can't really hit all the edge cases without solving AI in general, which is more than 30 years away (Kurzweil is the wild optimist and predicts 2045).

edit: Although since writing that I have become aware that Kurzweil thinks the Turing test will be passed in 2029; the "singularity" is the 2045 date.

https://futurism.com/kurzweil-claims-that-the-singularity-wi...

In any case, I think it's realistic that level 4 self-driving cars won't be widely deployed for end-to-end trips until 2029-2045. This doesn't seem to be what many people think right now. They think it's going to be an "instant roll-out" like the iPhone -- either it works or it doesn't.

Re: The dream of driverless cars is dying

#15

Post by paganel » Sun, Jul 15, 2018, 2:31 PM UTC

3pt14159 wrote: post #12

We're going to get driverless cars one way or another. Even if the problems are much more intractable than we first gave them credit for people are too clever. Take driving in the snow, for instance. It might be completely impossible to do it safely for the next twenty years by having a computer manage the drive path, but designs might create the ability for cars to form mini-trains where the lead car is driven by a…

Obvious question: why just not take the train? In your example I’d have to depend on other strangers for my private travel, one of the most important things that made me purchase my first car in my 30s, I don’t want that.

Re: The dream of driverless cars is dying

#16

Post by jaclaz » Sun, Jul 15, 2018, 2:32 PM UTC

3pt14159 wrote: post #12

We're going to get driverless cars one way or another. Even if the problems are much more intractable than we first gave them credit for people are too clever. Take driving in the snow, for instance. It might be completely impossible to do it safely for the next twenty years by having a computer manage the drive path, but designs might create the ability for cars to form mini-trains where the lead car is driven by a…

>We're going to get driverless cars one way or another.

Sure we will, no doubt about that.

The question is when?

In 10 to 20 years from now level 4 sounds reasonable, in 2 to 5 years from now it sounds not, notwithstanding the (daily) announces about this or that new autonomous driving system or related "breakthrough".

Re: The dream of driverless cars is dying

#17

Post by paganel » Sun, Jul 15, 2018, 2:36 PM UTC

maxharris wrote: post #3

Reminds me of this famously wrong column dismissing the Internet back in 1995: https://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirv... > How about electronic publishing? Try reading a book on disc. At best, it's an unpleasant chore: the myopic glow of a clunky computer replaces the friendly pages of a book. And you can't tote that laptop to the beach. Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, pr…

We still don’t have flying cars nor self-conscious robots, things that have been prophetized 100 to 50 years ago. Going back more in time we still don’t have a philosophical stone. The idea is that some technological prophecies are indeed wrong.

Re: The dream of driverless cars is dying

#18

Post by kd0amg » Sun, Jul 15, 2018, 2:36 PM UTC

paganel wrote: post #15

3pt14159 wrote: post #12

We're going to get driverless cars one way or another. Even if the problems are much more intractable than we first gave them credit for people are too clever. Take driving in the snow, for instance. It might be completely impossible to do it safely for the next twenty years by having a computer manage the drive path, but designs might create the ability for cars to form mini-trains where the lead car is driven by a…

Obvious question: why just not take the train? In your example I’d have to depend on other strangers for my private travel, one of the most important things that made me purchase my first car in my 30s, I don’t want that.

I'd rather depend just on there being a handful of other people who want to go where I want to go than on there being an active railroad as well.

Re: The dream of driverless cars is dying

#19

Post by api » Sun, Jul 15, 2018, 2:37 PM UTC

maxharris wrote: post #3

Reminds me of this famously wrong column dismissing the Internet back in 1995: https://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirv... > How about electronic publishing? Try reading a book on disc. At best, it's an unpleasant chore: the myopic glow of a clunky computer replaces the friendly pages of a book. And you can't tote that laptop to the beach. Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, pr…

I think the quote is along the lines of people tending to overestimate progress in the next 5 years but underestimate it in the next 25.

However they also get it wrong. It's hard to predict. Others in the thread have pointed out Asimov's stories that featured FTL warp drives and computers that fit in only one room.

One thing I've noted from observing 20th century progress is that progress is much, much faster for things that are less capital intensive per iteration. It's one reason I've been predicting that solar power will eat the world. Nuclear power is capital intensive per iteration (per power plant or research reactor), so even if it's superior in some ways it has a longer iteration time and so it will lose the race. I think this neatly explains why space tech stagnated and computer tech zoomed way ahead. So today we still have chemical rockets and still get most of our electricity globally from burning coal and gas (100+ year old tech), but we have supercomputers in our pockets.

Re: The dream of driverless cars is dying

#20

Post by StavrosK » Sun, Jul 15, 2018, 2:37 PM UTC

CPLX wrote: post #7

The part that I can't figure out is why everyone seems to act like driverless cars will be some kind of all-at-once phase change transition instead of being incremental. It seems almost a certainty that we will gradually ease into the concept. Some cars will be able to do some things autonomously, a little, for some people, some of the time. Eventually the cost/benefit levels will improve, more features will roll out…

This is how everything happens, and it's why we're living in the future even though we never realized it. We have a small square in our pockets that can do real-time translation, you talk into it and it'll say the same thing in another language.

I remember reading about this exact thing in the 90s and thinking that it was completely incredible, but I didn't even notice it when it happened. We first got computers that could sort-of translate, but not impressively so, then computers that could sort-of speak, but not impressively so, then computers that could sort-of listen, but not impressively so. All these technologies improved, little by little, until they got to a point where they are pretty impressive, but we're used to them.

Cars are already going the same way, my 5-year-old car can already follow/match speed with the car in front of it and warn me about signs on the road. Little by little, it'll do more things on its own, until I won't be needed any more.