This is why I’m perplexed by the concerns around AI. what is more likely to happen is that we’ll start evolving the infrastructure to support driverless cars in the same way paved roads enabled the automobile.
Steve Wozniak says he does not expect fully autonomous cars 'in my lifetime'
11–20 of 47 posts
Re: Steve Wozniak says he does not expect fully autonomous cars 'in my lifetime'
#12I'm a little younger than Woz, and I am skeptical we'll have truly autonomous self-driving cars in my lifetime. Three thoughts: 1. Any of us who work in software development know that "getting to 90% done is easy... it's the second 90% that gets you". And I believe that to the extent that we may seem to be 90% of the way to self-driving cars, it's definitely the "first 90%" not the second. The devil truly is in the d…
I think we're at least one CS breakthrough away, and how do you put a timeline on that? Kinda like how speech recognition was just almost there for decades until modern ML made it actually as good as a human being.
> ML made it actually as good as a human being
How ML made it usable in some cases, would be more accurate. I still can't ask Alexa to play specific albums or tracks most of the time.
I don't want that level of accuracy driving cars on the road.
Re: Steve Wozniak says he does not expect fully autonomous cars 'in my lifetime'
#13I'm a little younger than Woz, and I am skeptical we'll have truly autonomous self-driving cars in my lifetime. Three thoughts: 1. Any of us who work in software development know that "getting to 90% done is easy... it's the second 90% that gets you". And I believe that to the extent that we may seem to be 90% of the way to self-driving cars, it's definitely the "first 90%" not the second. The devil truly is in the d…
I think we're at least one CS breakthrough away, and how do you put a timeline on that? Kinda like how speech recognition was just almost there for decades until modern ML made it actually as good as a human being.
Better GPUs is what enabled modern ML, it wasn't a CS breakthrough.
Re: Steve Wozniak says he does not expect fully autonomous cars 'in my lifetime'
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think we're at least one CS breakthrough away, and how do you put a timeline on that? Kinda like how speech recognition was just almost there for decades until modern ML made it actually as good as a human being.
> ML made it actually as good as a human being How ML made it usable in some cases, would be more accurate. I still can't ask Alexa to play specific albums or tracks most of the time. I don't want that level of accuracy driving cars on the road.
Google seems to have no trouble playing music from Spotify for me. It can even manage it while I yell my song requests from the shower.
Re: Steve Wozniak says he does not expect fully autonomous cars 'in my lifetime'
#15Full self-driving requires artificial general intelligence and I don't think that will be around for at least another 100 years, if ever.
It is truly amazing how much hype FSD has generated, even among smart technically-savvy people.
Re: Steve Wozniak says he does not expect fully autonomous cars 'in my lifetime'
#16I'm a little younger than Woz, and I am skeptical we'll have truly autonomous self-driving cars in my lifetime. Three thoughts: 1. Any of us who work in software development know that "getting to 90% done is easy... it's the second 90% that gets you". And I believe that to the extent that we may seem to be 90% of the way to self-driving cars, it's definitely the "first 90%" not the second. The devil truly is in the d…
I agree. In my various conversations on this topic around the bay area, people are generally overly optimistic, who believe it'll happen in next couple or so years, and people who are overly pessimistic. Possibly a gross generalization but generally the people who are overly pessimistic are the ones who are or have till recently been engineers, while the people who are overly optimistic are the ones further away from…
1) Car insurance can work exactly like it currently does. The car owner's insurance is liable by default, however if the car itself is in some way at fault (performing out-of-spec), then the insurance company goes after the car company. This can already happen if something like brakes fail or accelerator gets stuck.
2 & 3) Yes there are some edge cases that you can't train for, but same with humans. What do humans do in an edge case like a torrential downpour? Simply pull over.
Even if there are edge cases, consider that humans are pretty bad drivers on average, over 1.25 million deaths per year, and 50 million injuries in the US alone.
Suppose that in a couple years, self driving cars are not perfect due to the edge cases, and still cause 250k deaths / year. Would you allow them at that point? Even with those stats we should consider only allowing self-driving cars and begin to outlaw human drivers.
Re: Steve Wozniak says he does not expect fully autonomous cars 'in my lifetime'
#17DARPA Grand Challenge was started in 2004, so it’s been 15 years of constant research to get this far. We have at least another 15 to go.
Re: Steve Wozniak says he does not expect fully autonomous cars 'in my lifetime'
#18Woz is expecting to die within 5 years.
Re: Steve Wozniak says he does not expect fully autonomous cars 'in my lifetime'
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree. In my various conversations on this topic around the bay area, people are generally overly optimistic, who believe it'll happen in next couple or so years, and people who are overly pessimistic. Possibly a gross generalization but generally the people who are overly pessimistic are the ones who are or have till recently been engineers, while the people who are overly optimistic are the ones further away from…
1) Car insurance can work exactly like it currently does. The car owner's insurance is liable by default, however if the car itself is in some way at fault (performing out-of-spec), then the insurance company goes after the car company. This can already happen if something like brakes fail or accelerator gets stuck. 2 & 3) Yes there are some edge cases that you can't train for, but same with humans. What do humans do…
Car insurance: I had made a simplified argument, but to itemize, auto insurance may work the same for auto-theft and some liability coverage. But, it definitely cannot work the same for anything remotely related to driver (or in this case self-driving system's) fault.
Edge Cases: Humans use their brain and adapt. Self driving systems have no concept of adapting, hence the result is undefined.
> over 1.25 million deaths per year, and 50 million injuries in the US alone.
In US in 2016 there were 36,750 fatalities[0][1], so much much lower than the 1.25 million number you're using.
So, no, personally I will not prefer self-driving cars if they are not perfect due to the edge cases, and still cause 250k deaths / year
And the reason is simple, and why throwing statistics is now the right approach: I'd rather have my life in my hands and my driving where I can take a corrective defensive action than rely on an AI model where it is unpredictable when the lightning will strike and a bug/untrained edge case will kill me. I will prefer to be in control.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in... [1] https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...
Re: Steve Wozniak says he does not expect fully autonomous cars 'in my lifetime'
#20I think he literally means nothing more than "Apple isn't making a car OS." Their focus is your pocket and other carry-alls, and not at all interested in your car outside of how those pocket and carry-all devices can connect to it.
Hell, their focus is only barely on the desktop anymore. For the same reason. Tracking is way more interesting when not anchored to a desktop, and other companies already got the car thing going.