Thank God! Self driving cars are not a solution to the world's problems. Better public transport is. Why can't we have self driving buses that replace trams? The level of AI needed for that is already there. As the population of major cities grows, we can't expect everyone riding around in their own car. Public transport is better for citizens and the environment. We need to be reducing the number of vehicles on the roads and ideally not covering the planet with asphalt altogether. Trams in cities like Amsterdam and the London underground are much more efficient modes of transportation than self driving cars will ever be.
Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'
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Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'
#372Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am more fearful of trolls, tricking the technology. I doubt, that the software / hardware will have a common sense, like we humans have. Its this common sense that keeps us alive in unexpected scenarios, like when the paint on the road is missing.
I would argue that signing beacon messages with a PKI infrastructure would migate that issue.
Who is the signing authority? China? The United States? Russia?
Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'
#373I find it extremely unethical for Tesla to sell its customers a $6000 option to "Enable full self driving mode" some time in the future. Does anyone really think that this will happen before their car is totaled/broken/old/end of life (10-15 years)?
People seem to drink enough marketing PR to buy it. That whole company is built as a cult and as a PR playbook. Any other company would not be able to pull that type of dirty tricks.
*Any other company without an Elon Musk type of frontman. Maybe Richard Bronson could do it if he were a little younger. No one else comes to my mind.
Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'
#374Thank God! Self driving cars are not a solution to the world's problems. Better public transport is. Why can't we have self driving buses that replace trams? The level of AI needed for that is already there. As the population of major cities grows, we can't expect everyone riding around in their own car. Public transport is better for citizens and the environment. We need to be reducing the number of vehicles on the…
They are _a_ solution, for sure. They just aren't _the_ solution. I'm not sure dense cities are _the_ solution either, especially as more and more work is done remotely. I think humans weren't meant to be cooped up in a tiny concrete box. I like my backyard, and the forest behind my back yard. One size does not fit all, and it's not really feasible to tackle lower density living setups with "public transport", at least not in a large country like US. Moreover, this isn't "either-or" thing. I'd love it if my car could drop me off at the train station and then parked itself at home, then picked me up on my way back.
Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'
#375Translation: we were caught with our pants down, we're now 10 years behind the leaders in the field, and when the tech actually matures in 10 years, it might undo Volkswagen.
Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'
#376Earlier quoted context omitted.
You may not be getting in that car, but I certainly will. After all, every driver on the road today is an incomprehensible black box where not only do we not know the parameters, we don't even know the function they're parameterizing. Every instance functions differently, and our testing procedures have woefully low coverage.
When one of those black boxes malfunctions it gets taken off the road. When the AI malfunctions, are we going to shut down entire classes of vehicles until the problem is confirmed fixed? Not to mention that most software fixes cause other bugs...
At least the software is fixable. Other humans are not.
Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'
#377Earlier quoted context omitted.
Umm, that is is point though - with autonomy the cars presumably won't break the law and stop where it's technically illegal for 30s to pick you up. They will presumably need to find somewhere legal to park to do so.
You might want to look up the legal difference between parking, stopping, and standing. The vast majority of pickups in nyc at least are not illegal under any current law.
They block bike lanes all the times. It’s illegal to stand, stop or cruise in bike lanes.
Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'
#378Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would argue that signing beacon messages with a PKI infrastructure would migate that issue.
Also, a stake in the ground on the edge of the road that says, I'm 15 feet to the right of the center lane will probably pay for itself in a couple years of stripping. You put two in the ground that say, I'm 15 feet to the right of the centerline and 35 feet from the next beacon and you never have to paint a centerline there again.
But all you've done is swapped one thing that will be poorly maintained for one thing that's already poorly maintained.
Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have to disagree. Most of the value is in taxi services, where you get dropped off / picked up exactly where you want, there is no need to dedicate so much land and structures to parking, there is no need to have cars sit idle for 95% of their existence, and no need to search for parking spots and walk long distances. Of course, I live in a city, where parking is a major pain. But the other things still hold. It it…
> It it far more efficient of resources to have cars be used most fo the day, rather than sitting idle. This is better and more easily addressed by car sharing services like car2go than autonomous cars. The more I use them the more I wish for a world where every car was shareable: you need to go somewhere? you simply get into the nearest parked car and drive it to where you want to go. And, unlike autonomy, there are…
How do carseats for children work with these services?
Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'
#380I agree in part in that I am skeptical that full self-driving cars will happen in the next few years, but he is completely wrong when it comes to the long term. Not only will the tech get as good as humans, but most forget to account for the fact that the environment will meet the cars part way. We will eventually update markings and beacons on the roads to make it easier for the cars, implement networks in which the…
I think self-driving cars are like fusion reactors, they're perfectly possible on paper and, like, totally 15years away from now.
I'm sure it'll be possible some day, but I'm not positive that it'll be possible in the general case before we reach the Singularity. And when we get there self-driving cars are going to be a small side-effect of this unprecedented revolution.
I can't help to draw a parallel between these threads about self-driving cars where many people are saying that it's basically a done deal and we just need to wait a few years, and that thread I read a few hours ago about the Boing 737 Max re-certification being delayed once more. I know it's a bit of a fallacy to treat HN has a singular entity but when I read the threads about the 737 the consensus in here is that "it's a death trap and I'll never fly one of these planes ever again" but at the same time we're totally optimistic that the industry will have perfected self-driving technology in our lifetimes? The industry has been cutting corners on planes that cost a fortune and didn't manage to make them safe to operate in unobstructed airspace because of a minor sensor dysfunction but they're totally gonna nail the incredibly complex task of operating a 1+ton vehicle at highway speeds in much less controlled environment?
I can totally see an ever-increasing amount of driver assistance in the future. But fully autonomous driving everywhere at all times? I'm really not so sure.