Despite High Hopes, Self-Driving Cars Are ‘Way in the Future’ • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by zaroth » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 4:00 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #109

mhermher wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree but I thought that they triggered some sort of transformation. Here you are agreeing with me that they didn't.

I'm not agreeing at all. BMW just lost their CEO because they've lost so many sales to Tesla. Other automakers are desperately trying to play catchup to them. I have never had people come up to any other car I've owned (Chevrolet, Mercedes, Jeep, Toyota, Lexus, Infiniti) besides our Model S and Model X with questions, tell us the car is beautiful (in an Aldi parking lot no less), or want to go for an impromptu ride a…

Kids absolutely love Teslas. Can’t tell you how many “look mom a Tesla!”, “Oh my god Joey did you see the Tesla!”, or my favorite, “Tessslaaaah!”

And they just start grinning at you as you drive by. It’s like what we used to do for the Lambos.

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

#132

Post by ionised » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 4:00 PM UTC

leesec wrote: post #94

mhermher wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will a computer ever write War and Peace or compose the 9th Symphony too? How about solve an unsolved math proof? No reason it can't be automated, right?

All these things are literally on the AI horizon.

I'd say these things are also 'way in the future'.

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

#133

Post by almost_usual » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 4:01 PM UTC

baggachipz wrote: post #125

skywhopper wrote: post #41

This has been obvious all along to anyone who has ever driven or used a computer before and thought about the reality for more than a couple of minutes. But the press and VCs bought into the hype from the likes of Uber who needed to keep generating huge new investment to stay afloat and Tesla which is run by a delusional snake oil salesman who had a single hit with the Model S. The shocking examples of crazy unexpect…

> Tesla which is run by a delusional snake oil salesman who had a single hit with the Model S Being that dismissive and willfully ignorant discredits your entire argument. A snake oil salesman produces nothing and hoodwinks people. I drive my "snake oil" every day and not only is it the best car I've ever driven, it's the coolest thing I've ever owned. I routinely watch his "snake oil" launch huge payloads to orbit a…

It's hard to judge Tesla at this point, most automotive companies really can't be judged until their vehicles are on the road heavily for over a decade. I've said this before but I can't imagine a Tesla on the road today being on the road in thirty years. Hopefully I'm wrong. Otherwise we're going to have a lot of 'good for the environment' vehicles in landfills like cellphones. While the gas guzzling 30+ year old Toyota will be chugging along.

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

#134

Post by luckydata » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 4:01 PM UTC

Having seen the evolution of AI in fits and starts from the early days to now I don't understand why the skeptical stance is still default. We have made enormous progress in the last five years and I don't see why it's not possible to get to human-like performance in the next decade. I argue it would be surprising if we don't get there relatively soon.

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

#135

Post by oblio » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 4:02 PM UTC

acollins1331 wrote: post #15

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…

You'd be surprised how well the lidar systems on these actually do see in the rain. Snow and ice is another story, and hydroplaning as well, but again it's not the sensors hampering it here. It's the logic. It's much more complicated than it first appeared, and right now the AI for detection and recognition is light years beyond where the self driving car logic is. You can watch a few YouTube videos of people trainin…

> It's the logic. It's much more complicated than it first appeared

Forget the snark: you don't say? :o

Some of that logic is literally milllenium old unsolved logical dilemmas ("I have 2 choices and both involve killing people...").

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

#136

Post by chillacy » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 4:03 PM UTC

mhermher wrote: post #85

api wrote: post #5

"Never" is kind of equally absurd. It's just a brutally hard problem.

You will never define a complete and consistent algebra. You will never exactly measure the momentum and position of a particle. They're not brutally hard problems, they're not possible. We know that there are a set of things that are impossible. Why is recreating human intelligence in silicon beyond that consideration?

Things are impossible till they aren’t. It’s not like we solved Go the board game, but we did build some killer AI which has now surpassed all human players. And that was within a matter of years: first it was a fluid game of human intelligence impossible for a machine, then it was obvious machines could be better.. but look at this other thing humans are still better at.

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

#137

Post by hi5eyes » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 4:05 PM UTC

baggachipz wrote: post #125

skywhopper wrote: post #41

This has been obvious all along to anyone who has ever driven or used a computer before and thought about the reality for more than a couple of minutes. But the press and VCs bought into the hype from the likes of Uber who needed to keep generating huge new investment to stay afloat and Tesla which is run by a delusional snake oil salesman who had a single hit with the Model S. The shocking examples of crazy unexpect…

> Tesla which is run by a delusional snake oil salesman who had a single hit with the Model S Being that dismissive and willfully ignorant discredits your entire argument. A snake oil salesman produces nothing and hoodwinks people. I drive my "snake oil" every day and not only is it the best car I've ever driven, it's the coolest thing I've ever owned. I routinely watch his "snake oil" launch huge payloads to orbit a…

if you dont think elon musk is a fraudster with this robotaxi bullshit sir you might have drank the kool aid

repeatedly pretending that full self driving was anything more than a pipe dream is dangerous. everyone knows that except people that enable his scamming

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

#138

Post by JJMcJ » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 4:05 PM UTC

mordymoop wrote: post #116

gamblor956 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Namely roaming around the meticulously mapped out streets of Mountain View and Sunnyvale at 25 miles an hour in daylight in good weather.

Meticulously mapped - the location of curbs and the like are known within an inch or so.

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

#139

Post by rimliu » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 4:05 PM UTC

acollins1331 wrote: post #21

On highway is where it's at. City corner cases are going to be Impossible for a long time, but caravans of self driving trucks could easily happen in the next couple years. It already happens with a person in the front vehicle that is followed closesly in a train by robotic vehicles.

And moose runs out on the road, what's then? No matter how fast the data will be passed down the line, following closer than the braking distance will not be safe. And there are black ice, puddles, etc.

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

#140

Post by gooseus » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 4:06 PM UTC

baggachipz wrote: post #125

skywhopper wrote: post #41

This has been obvious all along to anyone who has ever driven or used a computer before and thought about the reality for more than a couple of minutes. But the press and VCs bought into the hype from the likes of Uber who needed to keep generating huge new investment to stay afloat and Tesla which is run by a delusional snake oil salesman who had a single hit with the Model S. The shocking examples of crazy unexpect…

> Tesla which is run by a delusional snake oil salesman who had a single hit with the Model S Being that dismissive and willfully ignorant discredits your entire argument. A snake oil salesman produces nothing and hoodwinks people. I drive my "snake oil" every day and not only is it the best car I've ever driven, it's the coolest thing I've ever owned. I routinely watch his "snake oil" launch huge payloads to orbit a…

Nobody said the snake oil salesman doesn't also offer aspirin and stuff that is actually valuable... in fact they'd be a shitty caricature of a snake-oil salesperson if they didn't.

I agree it's overly strong language and I admire Teslas for what they are (fancy toys, his words) and SpaceX more than I can adequately communicate... however, his claims about Hyperloop, the Boring Company, Neuralink, and yes, even those about the future of Tesla self-driving could all be considered hyperbolic claims that fall into the "fake it till you make it" category, just adjacent to the actual frauds.

People challenging these claims and holding hyped up individuals to account are not holding back progress, it's the blind faith people put into hyped individuals and their claims that is holding back progress. Elizabeth Holmes has done far more to hinder progress than the people who were naysaying her claims and calling her a snake-oil salesperson before it was commonly known to be true.