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

nytimes.com

411–420 of 445 posts

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

#411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> solve an unsolved math proof Yes actually, although there are some philosophical objections to computer assisted proofs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_color_theorem#Proof_by_co...

That's just grunt work that still had to be stitched together by a human.

But it was previously unsolved, which is your exact objection to the other example I gave.

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

#412
post #254
post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It needs slightly more than that: when it fails, it needs to be able to demonstrate that no human would’ve succeeded in its place. This isn’t a moral or a technical issue, just public relations. If a system reduces road deaths from ~30,000 per year to 365 per year, but one of those deaths was it mistaking a grey skirt for an open road [1], there will still be calls for its use to be outlawed — basically what’s happen…

And if there are no examples of machine-only failure? Then they will be invented, good ol' fake news. Because our anxiety about AI driving isn't about whether or not the tech will work. edit: Our fear of autonomous driving is akin to fear of flying. Flying is, by any measure, far safer than driving, but people are terrified of flying in a way far different than how they feel about driving.

Sure, people are scared of lots of things that they shouldn’t be scared of — I’m more worried about politicians being given a high visibility reason to outlaw something which is strictly an improvement, with emphasis on “high visibility“, and thanks to the availability heuristic one per day is all you need.

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

#413
post #16

Self-driving tech muggle here. Could someone explain to me why any average Joe with minimal intellect can drive a car using only a pair of eyes but it's difficult to build a fully self-driving car even with 8+ cameras, GPS, LIDAR and other sensors us humans don't have?

Because it's not just the sensors, there's a lot of purely human interaction going on on the road. Looking at the other driver at the intersection and trying to understand what to expect from them; same for someone crossing the road in front of you - is the guy drunk? Eye contact - nope, he looks fine, he will give way. Etc. etc Come try to drive in Paris or Rome at peak hours. No way on Earth AI can handle this kind…

Haha. Very true. I was in Scilly last year and I said to my sister there is no way AI can drive on these roads.

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

#414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My whole point is that if you make the environment more predictable you make the problem easier, not that the only thing you need to do is that. You seem to be attacking a strawman where somehow the whole environment is tailored towards self-driving cars by creating a police state and then the software is very simple. What I'm describing is using all the resources we already have to design and maintain roads to also…

Nope. As I just said, even going the police state route _wont work_. Your premise, that we can make the environment more predicable to make pre-programmed cars easier to program is wrong. That would be attacking the tiny minority of the real world problem. I'm entirely comfortable with that prediction. You disagree, that's fine. I suspect we will both be around to see. If you want to instead talk about making it safe…

It's not just making the programming easier, it's making the problem actually possible. We have a much higher tolerance for fatal accidents with human drivers than we ever will with automated ones. So if you have an environment where many thousands of people are killed today and then expect self-driving to work in the exact same context with airliner level reliability you've defined the problem as practically impossible. If someone builds a great self-driving technology that applied to the total US fleet only kills 20 thousand people a year I doubt it will ever be accepted. And yet that would be half the fatalities that currently exist.

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

#415
post #190

Every time I read about autonomous cars, I wonder if these points have ever been discussed: - Yielding to an emergency vehicle with sirens on. - Moving backwards to a safe and large enough spot when the route is too narrow to fit self-driving car and oncoming huge lorry (and there is no line marking the limit between road and ravine). - Upon instructions from authority, recognizing that the highway is closed due to a…

- a broadcast radio signal and microphones can detect sirens. That seems easy. - that's just flow analysis and basic perceptions of the environment. At a minimum, just tell the driver to take over. - highways will benefit from convergent infrastructure, and alerts like this will be part and parcel of highway driving automation. Flying does this already, basically. - sensors have 360 degree vision, and mesh networking…

> a broadcast radio signal...

> ...just tell the driver...

> ...alerts like this will be part and parcel of highway driving automation...

> ...mesh networking between cars...

You are not talking about autonomous cars.

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

#416
post #139

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.

If the vehicles apply their brakes at the same time they could be bumper to bumper. That's how things work.

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

#417
post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until you need to carry something with you - like luggage, or a baby.

But this is where HN is blind; a non insignificant portion of America doesn't have access to a reliable automobile. So, there are already 10s of millions of Americans (and Europeans) that transport luggage and a baby just fine.

Actually, no. I know people who are too poor for a car. I've been people too poor for a car.

Kiss an extra two hours of your day goodbye just to get to and from work (assuming you have a job). Going to the doctor is a nightmare (assuming you have medical insurance). It sucks a lot, unless you're living in a city so dense that cars are impractical.

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

#418
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

>the driver - even a human one - is not expected to answer random questions as they are driving.

In the same way, the C++ compiler was not expected to be able to emulate arbitrary programs (i.e. to be Turing complete), but some ingenious people found a way to use it to do just that. The way they did it was by writing some extremely unusual and edge-casey code, but you can't just wave that aside and say "C++ isn't really Turing complete, because the proof that it's Turing complete involves C++ code that nobody would really write!"

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

#419
post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Drove my Model 3 on autopilot today. Entered a roadway that had recently been repaved, and lacking lane markers. The Model 3 couldn’t handle it and wouldn’t let me engage autopilot. There aren’t robotaxis until that trivial problem is solved.

by autopilot you mean teslas dangerous rebrand of lane assist? yeah stupid

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

#420
post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don't think he's a fraudster. I think he's a visionary who sometimes sees things more the way he imagines them than the way they really are. Things aren't as black and white as a bunch of people on here make them out to be. It's possible to deliver great products while dreaming too big and failing on others. The quality of being able to take risks and fail repeatedly until finally succeeding is one that most entrep…

>I don't know why everyone gives this guy such a hard time

I literally wrote that hes advertising the dangerous idea of any kid of self driving

the other reply to me even used "autopilot" in their comment. if you dont think branding lane assist as "autopilot" is dangerous and still defend elon then alright. have fun writing walls of text worshipping techbro jesus?

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

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