Serious question, do you think Self-Driving vehicles would be as heavily invested in if cellphones did not exist?
Despite High Hopes, Self-Driving Cars Are ‘Way in the Future’
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Re: Despite High Hopes, Self-Driving Cars Are ‘Way in the Future’
#142Earlier 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.
So, self-driving is safer for those specific circumstances where self-driving is safer? Well, sure. Not much surprise there. That's not very persuasive about self-driving being (or ever being) safer than humans at real world driving in general conditions.
One could even argue that adding FSD to the mix for those ideal conditions will "condition", as it were, humans to suck even more at driving exactly when human input will be required.
Re: Despite High Hopes, Self-Driving Cars Are ‘Way in the Future’
#143I have been saying this for years. Even if self driving cars handle 99% of situations correctly, they don’t become feasible until they can do that last 1%, which is 100x more difficult then previous 99. The reality is, if the car drives itself, people will be doing other things in the car and will be unable to respond to emergencies.
If they get in a situation they cannot handle, the car can stop and pull over to the side of the road before asking the human to take over. And it can refuse to navigate to areas where it wouldn't be able to do that. (And if you're in an area where an emergency stop is unsafe, it's unsafe for human drivers too. Getting rear-ended for an emergency stop is that fault of the following car for that reason.)
Re: Despite High Hopes, Self-Driving Cars Are ‘Way in the Future’
#144>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 Journal’s D.Live conference, Krafcik said that “autonomy will always have constraints.” It will take decades for self-driving cars to become common on roads. Even then,…
> In short, sensors on autonomous vehicles don’t work well in snow or rain
This is a curious line of reasoning for me. Why are humans allowed to drive in snow or rain though? Your sensors work considerably worse in snow or rain, and there is abundant evidence over the entire history of cars that humans butcher each other with motor vehicles in snow or rain constantly.
The bar is simply that an autonomous car has to be significantly less likely to cause an injury in snow or rain than a human is.
Re: Despite High Hopes, Self-Driving Cars Are ‘Way in the Future’
#145Earlier 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.
People were saying this in the seventies before the long AI winter.
It's always just around the corner, and has been since the dawn of AI. Maybe we will get there some day (I never say never), but cautious realism has never been the AI field's strong suit.
Re: Despite High Hopes, Self-Driving Cars Are ‘Way in the Future’
#146We don't need all-or-nothing.
A good many people stay off the road anyhow during poor weather, and those who do go out usually stay on familiar routes, such as to work or their favorite grocery store.
If self-driving cars/buses stick to a subset of streets and don't go out in big storms, they can still be widely useful. Set up (require) a universal network/database of road conditions on the main streets that all self-driving vehicles can tap into. If a problem arises, it then only directly affects the first bot-vehicle that encounters it instead of all of them that use the road. It's internet-like packet switching.
Thus, bots may get "confused" easier than humans, but they can also take advantage of automation to work around confusing areas. The upsides of automation thus counter the down-sides.
The biggest cost of taxis and buses is the driver. If you remove that, then "hitching a ride" is a lot more affordable to those who can't or don't drive.
Re: Despite High Hopes, Self-Driving Cars Are ‘Way in the Future’
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Except that "dorks and hippies" drove it very much because it was the eco-friendliest thing out there.
Re: Despite High Hopes, Self-Driving Cars Are ‘Way in the Future’
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
It's silly to shun emissions credits that are desperately needed to electrify transportation considering the trillions of dollars of subsides petroleum has received and the severity of climate change. The market for an underpowered hybrid like the Prius is not the same as a market for an EV with no compromises (how does one compare a Model 3 to a Prius?). Any automaker gets ZEV credits and federal tax credits for the…
Saying that Tesla has "no compromises" is very much definition of selling snake oil.
Re: Despite High Hopes, Self-Driving Cars Are ‘Way in the Future’
#149We don't need all-or-nothing. A good many people stay off the road anyhow during poor weather, and those who do go out usually stay on familiar routes, such as to work or their favorite grocery store. If self-driving cars/buses stick to a subset of streets and don't go out in big storms, they can still be widely useful. Set up (require) a universal network/database of road conditions on the main streets that all self…
By admitting this fact you dramatically reduce the value of self driving cars and thus the inflated valuations of companies trying to create them. It is an uncomfortable truth.
Re: Despite High Hopes, Self-Driving Cars Are ‘Way in the Future’
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
In poker, the computer knows, that none of the players will suddenly start playing chess instead of poker. On the road, the number of possible situations is way way way bigger.
Not just bigger. Bigger can be fixed with more cpu time. It is a fundimentally different problem. Nobody has a good theoretical answer even with infinite cpu time.
I say this while on a car ferry. Getting on this boat required me to navigate several strange road markings and obey a half-dozen hand gestures from staff, including several that were contrary to the painted lines. No AI is even contemplating car ferries.