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Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

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Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#421

Post by QML »

outside1234 wrote: post #75
djsumdog wrote: post #15

I think a lot of people in this field did see this coming. I knew a few people in this space about a year ago and I pretty much hear: "realistically, 15 years out at the earliest." I really really hate the concept of a driverless car. It's an incredibly difficult problem space; and for the same cost, America could build up municipal rail and bus infrastructure to where they were in the 1940s/1950s. We need more citie…

Why does it have to be either/or? I think driverless has the potential to be both - we can have a bus system that runs dynamic routes based on the users that are going to ride it and runs closer to ideally efficient vs. a fixed route that is likely inefficient.

we can have a bus system that runs dynamic routes based on the users that are going to ride it and runs closer to ideally efficient vs. a fixed route that is likely inefficient

This doesn't seem to require driverless busses. I can see an argument of why self driving taxis would be helpful -- cost of labor is near zero -- but with busses, the cost of labor is amortized across passengers.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#422

Post by rad_gruchalski »

lotu wrote: post #338
fouc wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do humans handle edge cases anyways? I think it comes down to being able to model the world around us, having a model for human behavior, animal behavior, etc. If we see a baby deer, we look for the mother deer. It feels like we're also really good at creating multiple open-ended stimulations in the back of our mind about how things might play out, where they can easily be paused or fleshed out depending on which…

> How do humans handle edge cases anyways? 30,000 deaths per year suggest that humans fail at these edge cases all the time. Maybe ate their best a human outperforms a machine but as any person who drives if other drivers are at their best.

No, quite a lot of them die because of stupid stuff like: texting while driving, drink driving, huge ego.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#423

Post by QML »

djsumdog wrote: post #15

I think a lot of people in this field did see this coming. I knew a few people in this space about a year ago and I pretty much hear: "realistically, 15 years out at the earliest." I really really hate the concept of a driverless car. It's an incredibly difficult problem space; and for the same cost, America could build up municipal rail and bus infrastructure to where they were in the 1940s/1950s. We need more citie…

From an economic standpoint, investing in fast mass-transit (e.g. high speed rail) would probably result in a larger net positive than self driving cars. Why?

1. I would theorize that the economic benefits of transportation are directly proportional to how fast the service is, and how much people it can move. As an estimation, I'd say cars are limited to 60 mph while high speed rail would be limited to 200 mph.

2. With fixed-path mass transit, the problem of traffic is greatly simplified. Self driving cars may solve a labor issue but they won't solve the traffic problem: cars routing themselves selfishly will not result in the lowest travel time possible. You can argue that a central coordinator can exist to coordinate routes, but if there's an incentive for a person (not necessarily a driver) to deviate from their set path, why wouldn't they take it?

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#424

Post by Consultant32452 »

DATACOMMANDER wrote: post #407
Consultant32452 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangential to your point, do you think it's fair to compare AI driven cars to "average" drivers? I think it's more reasonable to compare them to "average [worst_category_of_driver]." For example, how does the Tesla car compare to teen drivers? If it's better than a meaningfully sized category of human drivers, it's probably ready for the road. Being on the real road is where the best data will be collected.

This seems backwards to me. Shouldn’t we be comparing the performance self-driving cars to the performance of competent human drivers? The variance in human driving ability is quite high, which suggests (to me) that self-driving cars will become better than a significant fraction of human drivers well before they become (what I would consider) safe. I personally don’t want to see any more below-average drivers on the…

I think you're confusing the end goal with the path towards that goal. Ultimately, yes, we will want to compare AI driven cars against the best human drivers. But right nwo we're trying to determine if AI driven cars should even be allowed on the road.

The underlying assumption I'm making is that AI driving improvement is accelerated by being on the real road. If that's true, then we want the cars on the road as soon as reasonable possible. Because I would gladly trade hundreds or even thousands of AI driver caused deaths in the short run if I am reasonably convinced that it will prevent the tens of thousands of human driver caused deaths every year. And I am convinced of that. I also acknowledge I'm in the pool of people who might be killed by the AI driver. Just as we let teen drivers on the road with the expectation they will improve over several years, so should we accept a similar risk from AI drivers. The return is far better for the "inexperienced" AI driver because the AIs will continually improve forever, but as you noted we get a new batch of bad human drivers every day.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#425

Post by SlowRobotAhead »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #317
SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The English button does work great... But doesn't tell you a DAMN THING about which line to transfer to get to some location just how much it costs. And when you need to transfer green to blue, good luck, because you better know that this one blue arrow pointing left means you need to go upstairs, cross the street, go into an entirely different station and then go down two flights of stairs with basically no more dir…

Have you tried using google maps? In my experience, it works great for Tokyo transit options.

Next time I'm in Japan I'll definitely try that!

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#426

Post by ehsankia »

pauljurczak wrote: post #387
ehsankia wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waymo is available right now, and has been for almost a year, to normal non-employee citizens, in Phoenix, albeit behind a private invite system. And as mentioned above, it'll become an open beta by 2019. Also, most of the limitation at this point has to do with regulation, they'd be in many more places if not for that. That is much much closer than 2035.

The question is, does it qualify as 100% driverless? I don't think so. Waymo service is partially teleoperated.

Do you have a proof for that? Waymo is actually the only car that explicitly does not allow teleoperating. They specifically made this decision to bypass the risk of being hacked and taken over.

The best a teleoperator can do is suggest a path to a car that is confused, and the car decides if the path is a good idea. We also don't know how often that's used. If it's rare enough, does it even matter? Does it not make it driverless if once in a while they need a little nudge?

That's like saying your car isn't a real car because 1% of the time you need to take it to the mechanic.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#427

Post by glenra »

waterhouse wrote: post #346
stevep98 wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Driverless cars have advantages over humans too. Faster reaction speed, constant 360 degree surveillance, lack of distraction, (theoretically) better control of brakes and steering to handle skids. Waymo has demonstrated solutions for many of the edge cases you mention. This video is from 3 years ago: https://youtu.be/tiwVMrTLUWg?t=530 Regarding snow, it maybe a difficult problem, but if cars can't see road markings,…

Weather and trips being not completely predictable, the car would have to be able to pull over and stop if there was weather the car wasn't certified to handle, and if the human was asleep in the back seat or whatever and took a long time to get ready to take over. I think I've seen at least a prototype Waymo car (it was exhibited in the Computer History Museum) that was designed without the steering wheel and pedals…

> I think I've seen at least a prototype Waymo car (it was exhibited in the Computer History Museum) that was designed without the steering wheel and pedals for a human to use. That wouldn't work so well given that the car might pull over and be unable/unwilling to drive anymore.

It'd be fine - you just need to have some backup option. A small joystick or two behind some panel, or screen control, or perhaps you control the car with a phone app. It's like having an emergency spare tire - you just need a minimal driving UI that can be used in case of emergencies but users otherwise don't need to see or deal with. It can be inconvenient and speed-limited, since you don't expect to use it much.

Though if there's decent connectivity an obvious intermediate option is remote operation. Some human who is really good at driving might take over for a bit, driving your car from the comfort of their own home or office if you're not comfortable doing so yourself using the backup control pad.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#428

Post by wpietri »

ehsankia wrote: post #426
pauljurczak wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is, does it qualify as 100% driverless? I don't think so. Waymo service is partially teleoperated.

Do you have a proof for that? Waymo is actually the only car that explicitly does not allow teleoperating. They specifically made this decision to bypass the risk of being hacked and taken over. The best a teleoperator can do is suggest a path to a car that is confused, and the car decides if the path is a good idea. We also don't know how often that's used. If it's rare enough, does it even matter? Does it not make…

I think you're correct on the first part; "It does have humans in remote operations centers who can communicate with passengers and guide the car in complicated situations—like a cop sending cars the wrong way down a one-way street—but they never take actual control of the driving; it’s the car’s job to stay safe." https://www.wired.com/story/waymo-self-driving-car-service-p...

But yes, if a human has to get involved, I think it's correct to say it's not self-driving. In particular, what Wired describes is either SAE Level 3 or Level 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-driving_car#Levels_of_dri...

Until it's Level 5, it's not really driverless.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#429

Post by wpietri »

joesb wrote: post #370
wpietri wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. "Immaturity" includes a big lack of detailed domain knowledge and domain-specific judgment, which is one of the things I think is going to be very hard to teach to computers.

I think domain specific judgement is what computers excel than human. What human has advantage of is utilizing knowledge in unrelated domain to another domain.

Depends on what you mean by "domain", I suppose. But driving is a very broad domain. One has to understand human custom, human psychology, and human ethics, for example. As well as the behavior of wildlife, some applied meteorology, and a fair bit of understanding of both law and police practice. To a computer, these might be unrelated domains, but they aren't if you put a computer behind the wheel.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#430

Post by wpietri »

ehsankia wrote: post #354
wpietri wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think his note clarifies it pretty well: "This is what Uber, Lyft, and conventional taxi services can do today." What I've seen about Waymo (and maybe I've missed something) is very hazy. And it's not out yet. I'll be very surprised if they go from "operating in secret" to "completely competitive with Lyft" in one jump. My guess is that there will be significant limitations for whatever their first release is.

Waymo is available right now, and has been for almost a year, to normal non-employee citizens, in Phoenix, albeit behind a private invite system. And as mentioned above, it'll become an open beta by 2019. Also, most of the limitation at this point has to do with regulation, they'd be in many more places if not for that. That is much much closer than 2035.

Yes, they are operating in secret right now, and are extremely hazy about what "operating" means. And they have said they'll be in open beta by 2019. But it wouldn't be the first time that a software project is late.
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