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Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

economist.com

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Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#111

Post by mr__y »

rmason wrote: post #14
xbmcuser wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that ditching Lidar by Musk is the wrong move. From what I have read most if not all the self driving accidents that Tesla have been involved in could have been avoided if a Lidar type sensor was involoved. With tech available trying to use the same limits as human vision is stupid.

I agree with Musk and George Hotz that lidar is never going to get there. That's because in Michigan the terrain that lidar has mastered changes drastically every time it snows. For those of us in snowy climates limiting us to self-driving to seven months a year isn't going to cut it.

Just because lidar is not working in certain places and certain conditions does not mean that it's always useless. It just means that an AV cannot rely [only ]on lidar. Lidar could be used as a suplementary sensor - that is providing additional sensory data when appropriate and switching to non-lidar mode when conditions require. This is one of the things where AV can have a clear advantage over [even above ]average driver: a superior sensory system

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#112

Post by macspoofing »

sliken wrote: post #85

Tesla claims that autopilot is involved in one accident for every 4.34 million miles driven. Seems like a useful number, of course the media reports that the average is 1 accident per 500,000 miles. So 9 times safer... right? Question is how many accidents do similar people (read that as rich enough to buy a $50k+ car) in similar conditions (highways) with similar cars (newish luxury cars) without autopilot? No fair…

You hit the nail on the head, it isn't a fair comparison. I suspect autopilot is largely used under 'safe' and ideal conditions, and as a glorified lane-assist/cruise-control feature. You add complexity, and things deteriorate. This is why Tesla had to severely pull back on their initial claims after several high-profile crashes due to driver inattentiveness, and you need only to watch Tesla navigating a parking lot with it's 'smart summon' feature to see we have ways to go still.

And you're correct, driver demographics are important as well. How does Tesla's autopilot safety record stack up to the record of other drivers of luxury cars? Luxury cars will tend to have, for example, proper tires for the season. The one accident I was involved in resulted from the other driver not having winter tires and rear-ending me at a red-light. So is it the autopilot that is responsible for the improved safety stats, or 'dumb' companion features, like a built-in blind-spot warning, and a properly maintained vehicle.

Also, though human rate of accident is on the order of 1 per 500,000 miles, the fatality rate is on the order of 1 per hundreds of millions of miles -> how does Tesla compare to that? Reducing minor accidents is important, but it isn't the primary consideration.

It's clear, this is a misleading marketing number. Don't trust the Tesla autopilot to drive you around safely without your full attention - that's not me saying - that's Tesla saying it.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#113

Post by icebraining »

bsder wrote: post #75
theieindjri wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why so many otherwise smart people fell for FSD hype. I'm not talking about the many con artists - I'm talking about the tech-savvy people who genuinely bought into FSD hype. How is it not obvious that FSD most likely requires artificial general intelligence and is, thus, probably somewhere between "many decades away" and "humans will never achieve it"?

> How is it not obvious that FSD most likely requires artificial general intelligence Because it doesn't. The issue is that all the self-driving car companies ignore how people actually drive. People memorize their local driving area--it's why teenagers are so incredibly dangerous and why if you put a new stop sign into an area you cause chaos for several months. A self-driving car needs to do the same--the advantage…

> The issue is that all the self-driving car companies ignore how people actually drive. People memorize their local driving area (...) A self-driving car needs to do the same

Self-driving car companies have been memorizing ("mapping") areas for years.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#114

Post by vasilipupkin »

ghaff wrote: post #94
macspoofing wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>even if the failure rate is on average /better/ Which has not been true thus far. That's the problem. > The driverless bar for safety is way higher than very clever driver assistance or even rocket science. Why shouldn't it be higher? Why shouldn't it be on the level of airline travel?

>Why shouldn't it be on the level of airline travel? In all fairness, commercial airlines operate in an environment that's mostly highly regulated with respect to maintenance, training, traffic management, etc. But I agree with your general point. After all--except arguably with respect to some drug side effects--there isn't really any consumer-facing product that regularly kills people and we shrug out shoulders and…

Tons: alcohol being just one example.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#115

Post by icebraining »

macspoofing wrote: post #73
crocal wrote: post #8

The article misses an important point. It’s not only a problem of technology, it’s also a problem of risk acceptance. While we accept to be killed by our own mistakes at the wheel, society (we) will not accept that a machine makes the same, even if the failure rate is on average /better/. This is the fundamental issue Elon Musk has. The driverless bar for safety is way higher than very clever driver assistance or eve…

>even if the failure rate is on average /better/ Which has not been true thus far. That's the problem. > The driverless bar for safety is way higher than very clever driver assistance or even rocket science. Why shouldn't it be higher? Why shouldn't it be on the level of airline travel?

> Why shouldn't it be higher? Why shouldn't it be on the level of airline travel?

Who said it shouldn't?

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#116

Post by mxcrossb »

crocal wrote: post #8

The article misses an important point. It’s not only a problem of technology, it’s also a problem of risk acceptance. While we accept to be killed by our own mistakes at the wheel, society (we) will not accept that a machine makes the same, even if the failure rate is on average /better/. This is the fundamental issue Elon Musk has. The driverless bar for safety is way higher than very clever driver assistance or eve…

Is this really true though? Frequently I hear claims that safety standards are too strict and liability too great, but all of that could be addressed through suitable government policy.

Maybe these companies just want it both ways. They can then brag about how safe their AI is, but blame the ignorant masses for it not actually being deployed.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#117

Post by Slartie »

bittercynic wrote: post #60
theieindjri wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why so many otherwise smart people fell for FSD hype. I'm not talking about the many con artists - I'm talking about the tech-savvy people who genuinely bought into FSD hype. How is it not obvious that FSD most likely requires artificial general intelligence and is, thus, probably somewhere between "many decades away" and "humans will never achieve it"?

Doesn't seem obvious to me. FSD using affordable sensors seems like an unsolved problem, and I haven't heard a convincing proof that it is or isn't solvable. Did high accuracy OCR without AGI seem possible before it was developed?

Yes, because it was clear from the beginning that it would be just a pattern matching exercise. No reasoning necessary, no actual, deep understanding of the written text.

It was always known that pattern matching would be what ML algorithms would be great at - since the 60s or do. Reasoning about and "understanding" things - well, not so much. Some people hoped that this behavior would at some point just "emerge". But they basically resorted to this because they did not see any promising path to these goals.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#118

Post by mlang23 »

handpanda wrote: post #37
baroffoos wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>While we accept to be killed by our own mistakes at the wheel, society (we) will not accept that a machine makes the same Ideally we should not be accepting either. It is outrageous how many people we allow to be killed regularly for slightly more comfortable transport.

I think there's an implicit bargain made when you get in a car that a person is driving: you're both risking your lives on this journey. A self-driving car is risking possibly millions of dollars and bad publicity, but not a life. It's hard to trust a computer like that.

Ultimately, you dont have to trust a computer. You have to trust the corporation that built that computer. That is quite different IMO. How am I supposed to entrust my life to a machine built by a corporation that just recently dropped the slogan "we wont do evil"? How am I going to entrust my life to a machine that has been built by a company that, like all the others, is maily interested in maximising profit margins? Why should I believe they care about my health as an individual? As you said, if I am passenger of a human driver, I can at least hope they dont want to die. If the machine crashes itself, who cares?

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#119

Post by froidpink »

koonsolo wrote: post #103
crocal wrote: post #8

The article misses an important point. It’s not only a problem of technology, it’s also a problem of risk acceptance. While we accept to be killed by our own mistakes at the wheel, society (we) will not accept that a machine makes the same, even if the failure rate is on average /better/. This is the fundamental issue Elon Musk has. The driverless bar for safety is way higher than very clever driver assistance or eve…

The same can be said about airplanes, which have a way longer history of automation. Anything in an airplane is automated: takeoff, flying and landing. Pilots make mistakes all the time, but they still need to do things manually to keep their practice high. People just do not want to go in an airplane without any pilots. In metro's it's not that obvious if someone is driving it or not. But airplanes, 'we' want a huma…

My favourite pinnacle moment in the history of plane automation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJkEYAy7Qc4

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#120

Post by megablast »

crocal wrote: post #8

The article misses an important point. It’s not only a problem of technology, it’s also a problem of risk acceptance. While we accept to be killed by our own mistakes at the wheel, society (we) will not accept that a machine makes the same, even if the failure rate is on average /better/. This is the fundamental issue Elon Musk has. The driverless bar for safety is way higher than very clever driver assistance or eve…

> While we accept to be killed by our own mistakes at the wheel, society (we) will not accept that a machine makes the same, even if the failure rate is on average /better/.

We seem to accept being killed by someone else, since that is how most of the 40,000 people are killed every single year in the US. I don't hear too many drivers complaining about that.

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