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’

#311

Post by WhompingWindows » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 7:45 PM UTC

hateful wrote: post #25

I think it would happen this way: firstly you would automate things that go on a track - like trains - which I think we already have. Then secondly you could have certain lanes or roads that are designed for specific self-driving vehicles. This could help buses and trucks (in certain areas) get around. Then you would keep adding more of those, until many roads have those and very few manual lanes. It wouldn't immedia…

Your vision is idealistic, but I doubt it's going to work like that in advanced capitalism America. We don't even really have automated trains in the USA, though admittedly the business-case for those is much lower given the high worker:rider ratio. It stands to reason, in our very greedy and polarized nation, anything that requires infrastructure and policy changes is going to be VERY slowly rolled out. The most likely scenario is tech companies bust out advancing features in regulation-light states/municipalities in the USA.

Look at Uber, Lyft, Bird, AirBnB, and many other companies who just implement whatever they feel like and dare cities to challenge them. The path of corporate-profit-seeking SDC's seems far more likely than your vision of limitation and safety.

In fact, if we actually look what's happening on the ground, Waymo is advanced in Arizona, a regulation-light state. Tesla is pushing advancing features, hardware, and software across markets, though there are some exceptions made. Still, these companies are going to push for autonomy-everywhere faster than most would deem comfortable.

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

#312

Post by pedrocr » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 7:47 PM UTC

jakeogh wrote: post #269

pedrocr wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally don't think enforcing rules around roundabouts so I don't have the near-death experience I had the other day "a road to China". I actually love driving myself and don't particularly care about self-driving technology. But as far as I can tell it's not even possible for me, a reasonably fit human, to drive in way that prevents those risks. If we are not willing to tackle that and at the same time expect a…

Consider your half example, how do you propose to do that?

The rule already exists but is not enforced. If tickets were issued for not following it in the cases where the rule is ignored at low speed routinely it would be less likely to happen at high speed with risk of life. All the infrastructure and manpower as well as most of the rules are already in place. We just choose to ignore it routinely and then it's no surprise AGI is required to do self-driving within that mess.

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

#313

Post by dms105 » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 7:48 PM UTC

runarberg wrote: post #270

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously, please automate highway driving first. You get all the benefits for shipping and efficiency and logistics, so the money is there. The problem is so much more simple, and there can be convergent infrastructure (embedded sensors, mesh network updates, higher standards of road quality). On long trips on highways it just kills me that I have to stare at the same image for hours basically, and that a program co…

It seems there is a solution for your problem already: Busses. Although not strictly automated, they are externalized. That is you are not the one doing the driving, and therefor you are free to sleep, read, work, etc, while you wait to get to your destination. The beauty about busses is that they exists. There is no unsolved technology problems with busses. And they can be (and most likely already are) implemented w…

Many people want privacy and control over the vehicle they're in, and will pay a premium for it. When you take a bus you're sharing it with random people, can't stop to take a break whenever you want, and can't go directly door to door.

Trains can be a superior alternative depending on what country you're in. In the U.S. we're far behind some other countries in high speed rail infrastructure, so over long distances trains are usually slower than driving.

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

#314

Post by bluedino » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 7:50 PM UTC

pedrocr wrote: post #258

jakeogh wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "humans are the bugs" fallacy. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18447674 What's next? Walls on sidewalks? Computers are not smart or dumb. They are machines. Anthropomorphizing them ("self") is foolish.

My point is humans are already behaving extremely poorly as drivers and that already causes accidents. There are ways to help that be less of an issue that also helps self-driving become possible. But instead we accept those ridiculous risks when driving ourselves and yet expect to hold self-driving to a much higher standard while also complaining if it's not aggressive enough in traffic. That may very well turn self…

>> My point is humans are already behaving extremely poorly as drivers

I haven't been in an accident in over 15 years

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

#315

Post by gvb » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 7:53 PM UTC

xamuel wrote: post #73

mirceal wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hmm. i have to disagree. driving a car is a walk in the park compared to AGI. they’re not even in the same ballpark. for driving we at least have an idea how to make it happen and we need better tech, more training data and maybe alter the infrastructure to solve some edge cases. AGI? we’re guessing at this point (at least what’s public)

>driving a car is a walk in the park In the average situation, not the edge-case. The way you should think about it is, "If I had a black-box oracle that can drive a car exactly like a human, could I use that to simulate an artificial general intelligence?" The answer is probably yes. For example, in order to "ask" the AGI a yes-or-no question X, you could contrive that the car find itself at a fork in the road with…

Ahhh, a Turing car; if you can make a Turing car, you generalize it to make a AGI. I like it!

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

#316

Post by rubicon33 » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 7:55 PM UTC

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…

It is shocking to me how, we (people) CONSISTENTLY fail to understand where the bar is for accepting autonomous vehicles.

They do NOT need to be perfect. They need to be BETTER than humans. That means less accidents, and by extension, less deaths and injuries as a result of automobile errors.

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

#317

Post by mirceal » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 7:55 PM UTC

xamuel wrote: post #73

mirceal wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hmm. i have to disagree. driving a car is a walk in the park compared to AGI. they’re not even in the same ballpark. for driving we at least have an idea how to make it happen and we need better tech, more training data and maybe alter the infrastructure to solve some edge cases. AGI? we’re guessing at this point (at least what’s public)

>driving a car is a walk in the park In the average situation, not the edge-case. The way you should think about it is, "If I had a black-box oracle that can drive a car exactly like a human, could I use that to simulate an artificial general intelligence?" The answer is probably yes. For example, in order to "ask" the AGI a yes-or-no question X, you could contrive that the car find itself at a fork in the road with…

what does drive a car exactly like a human mean? i am going to assert that you don't need AGI for self-driving cars. in your example: that's not how driving works. the driver - even a human one - is not expected to answer random questions as they are driving.

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

#318

Post by yifanl » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 7:57 PM UTC

tlarkworthy wrote: post #113

im_down_w_otp wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Computer integration in poker works because we simultaneously upgraded the infrastructure to support computer players while upgrading the computer players.

I don't think we will ever change road infrastructure in the same manner on any appreciable scale. (Hell, there's a pothole in front of my street that's been there for 5 years).

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

#319

Post by jakeogh » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 7:58 PM UTC

pedrocr wrote: post #312

jakeogh wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider your half example, how do you propose to do that?

The rule already exists but is not enforced. If tickets were issued for not following it in the cases where the rule is ignored at low speed routinely it would be less likely to happen at high speed with risk of life. All the infrastructure and manpower as well as most of the rules are already in place. We just choose to ignore it routinely and then it's no surprise AGI is required to do self-driving within that mess…

I wasn't asking if the (unmentioned) rule existed, I'm asking how do you propose to enforce it?

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

#320

Post by bluGill » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 8:05 PM UTC

Majromax wrote: post #303

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By "fail" you mean crash, or it detects that it's uncertainty gets too large and it pulls over safely, forcing you to wait or take over yourself? Insurance companies will force the adoption once they become proven safe. The added insurance costs for luddites will price them out of the market.

> The added insurance costs for luddites will price them out of the market. What added insurance costs? It's not like adding self-driving cars to the road will make manual driving more dangerous. No safety technology could make insuring self-driving cars any cheaper than free. Would free car insurance act as enough inducement to drive the fearful away from their steering wheels?

When people realize the self driving cars are better the damage claims from human accidents can go up. Right now if you kill a kid with your car you get 7 months in jail and your insurance company pays a $150,000 (these are real numbers from a 3 year old that I was really close to). If self driving cars are really that much better courts will start handing out much larger judgments.