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Despite High Hopes, Self-Driving Cars Are ‘Way in the Future’

nytimes.com

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Re: Despite High Hopes, Self-Driving Cars Are ‘Way in the Future’

#111

Post by magashna »

crispyambulance wrote: post #93
kpU8efre7r wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just Waymo was driving over 1 million miles a month in 2018. How many people have they killed? The fact that an autonomous vehicle or Tesla "autopilot" fatality makes national news is telling. It's not commonplace.

It's not sufficient for these systems to just be "better" than humans in terms of accidents/mile/vehicle, they have to be FAR BETTER than humans. Today, when accidents occur, blame and liability goes to the responsible parties. We're talking about millions of accidents and millions of drivers. If you suddenly have a car that drives, the blame and liability for all accidents then gets focused like a giant magnifying g…

Why can't we accept a little better now and keep striving for far better? Seems stupid to have an all or nothing approach, especially when plenty of luxury vehicles have pieces of automated driving in them already. Liability is for insurance leeches to figure out

Re: Despite High Hopes, Self-Driving Cars Are ‘Way in the Future’

#112

Post by magashna »

gamblor956 wrote: post #104
saiya-jin wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tesla which is run by a delusional snake oil salesman Dude, you may not like Musk personally (which is glaringly obvious), but at least stick to the facts - he triggered much needed car industry transformation more than anybody else in recent times. industry itself wouldn't change itself so rapidly even if planet would be burning, that's obvious. And mankind gravely needs it now. Plus small detail about revolutioni…

Ah yes, because it's not like the Prius demonstrated that there was a market for green car, or the CA or federal green car credits and HOV access provided incentives to people to buy said green cars, or federal regulations regarding fleet emissions standards created the market for trading emissions credits that has singlehandedly kept Tesla afloat everytime it's come closer to running out of money. No, apparently Tes…

Tesla made it cool. Prius was never primarily known for being eco-friendly, it was known as the car that dorks and hippies drove. Ignoring the cultural impact of Tesla is why plenty of green vehicles failed in the past.

Re: Despite High Hopes, Self-Driving Cars Are ‘Way in the Future’

#113

Post by tlarkworthy »

im_down_w_otp wrote: post #102
60654 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well said. Autonomous navigation is still a huge open research problem, in the sense that we don't even know how it _could_ work, there is no AI work capable of integrating all of the necessary pieces. Heck, we don't even know how simple bird or lizard intelligence works, much less be able to replicate human cognition that goes into operating heavy machinery in a busy multi-agent social context. So promising that it…

Indeed, it's unclear if anyone has yet to develop a path planner that can overcome "the freezing robot problem". Even with perfect perception performance, which doesn't exist, the path planning to deal with congested environments is an unsolved problem, and the path planning to deal with ambiguous multi-modal intent might be an unsolvable problem. To add insult to injury, the manner in-use today of modeling humans as…

We have multi player poker breakthrough so it seems possible. I don't think planning is the core issue, I think that's solvable in time, it's the hardware and reliable general perception that is the blocker

Re: Despite High Hopes, Self-Driving Cars Are ‘Way in the Future’

#114

Post by [deleted] »

casefields wrote: post #2

Nothing makes a huge group of us cringe more, than people saying it's just around the corner. The worst part is it also comes from people who should know better. >Waymo’s CEO, John Krafcik, has admitted that a self-driving car that can drive in any condition, on any road, without ever needing a human to take control—usually called a “level five” autonomous vehicle—will basically never exist. At the Wall Street Journa…

[deleted]

Re: Despite High Hopes, Self-Driving Cars Are ‘Way in the Future’

#115

Post by freediver »

suprfnk wrote: post #26
casefields wrote: post #2

Nothing makes a huge group of us cringe more, than people saying it's just around the corner. The worst part is it also comes from people who should know better. >Waymo’s CEO, John Krafcik, has admitted that a self-driving car that can drive in any condition, on any road, without ever needing a human to take control—usually called a “level five” autonomous vehicle—will basically never exist. At the Wall Street Journa…

If a human can do it, I see no reason why an autonomous system can't, eventually, do it. It might take a very long time, but "never" seems short-sighted.

It will, when it has all capabilities of a human which may be never.

Re: Despite High Hopes, Self-Driving Cars Are ‘Way in the Future’

#116

Post by mordymoop »

gamblor956 wrote: post #99
kpU8efre7r wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just Waymo was driving over 1 million miles a month in 2018. How many people have they killed? The fact that an autonomous vehicle or Tesla "autopilot" fatality makes national news is telling. It's not commonplace.

A million miles is not a lot. For comparison, the people of LA drove a million miles by 5a this morning. The drivers in SoCal will drive over 100 million miles just today. The fact that many accidents involving human drivers still make the news is telling. It's not commonplace.

This is a weird hill to want to die on. Self-driving is currently statistically safer than human driving. Yes, caveats, for only the domains on which self-driving has been well-trained.

Re: Despite High Hopes, Self-Driving Cars Are ‘Way in the Future’

#117

Post by mc_blue »

marcosdumay wrote: post #52
rwmj wrote: post #8

We don't need self-driving cars that can go anywhere (ie. level 5) for them to be widely useful. A car that only worked in bright sunshine on a preprogrammed set of roads would be immediately useful to me.

> ie. level 5 No, we need level 4. The problem is that the other 3 levels are worse than useless, so there's no point on deploying something that isn't mature.

I agree with you on level 3, but why do you consider levels 1 and 2 to be worse than useless?

Re: Despite High Hopes, Self-Driving Cars Are ‘Way in the Future’

#118

Post by sixplusone »

casefields wrote: post #2

Nothing makes a huge group of us cringe more, than people saying it's just around the corner. The worst part is it also comes from people who should know better. >Waymo’s CEO, John Krafcik, has admitted that a self-driving car that can drive in any condition, on any road, without ever needing a human to take control—usually called a “level five” autonomous vehicle—will basically never exist. At the Wall Street Journa…

Agreed. Navigating the world is basically an AI-complete problem; we don't let 12-year-old kids drive and these current enhanced cruise control systems are nowhere near the AGI of that.

Re: Despite High Hopes, Self-Driving Cars Are ‘Way in the Future’

#119

Post by nabla9 »

gwbas1c wrote: post #19

The following will happen before self-driving cars: - Robotic trash cans that perfectly sort recyclables and compostables without any contamination - Drones that fly around and kill invasive plants - Landscapers that show up with robotic lawnmowers - A dishwasher that can load and unload itself automatically - My Tesla can keep in its lane when it passes an on ramp (ect) The problem, IMO, with self-driving cars is th…

Good points. Sorting waste and other stuff in a controlled environment is a problem domain that will provide huge increase in productivity and material efficiency when it becomes common. There are companies working on it.

https://zenrobotics.com/

Re: Despite High Hopes, Self-Driving Cars Are ‘Way in the Future’

#120

Post by pedrocr »

60654 wrote: post #75
casefields wrote: post #2

Nothing makes a huge group of us cringe more, than people saying it's just around the corner. The worst part is it also comes from people who should know better. >Waymo’s CEO, John Krafcik, has admitted that a self-driving car that can drive in any condition, on any road, without ever needing a human to take control—usually called a “level five” autonomous vehicle—will basically never exist. At the Wall Street Journa…

Well said. Autonomous navigation is still a huge open research problem, in the sense that we don't even know how it _could_ work, there is no AI work capable of integrating all of the necessary pieces. Heck, we don't even know how simple bird or lizard intelligence works, much less be able to replicate human cognition that goes into operating heavy machinery in a busy multi-agent social context. So promising that it…

> much less be able to replicate human cognition that goes into operating heavy machinery in a busy multi-agent social context

This holds if you expect self-driving cars to be able to work like humans in picking up "body-language" cues around other drivers. But we can also approach the problem the other way around and set better fixed rules for how driving needs to be done and adjust the road and car infrastructure to make the problem simpler. Human drivers get away with breaking so many rules that the problem becomes much harder than it needs to be.

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