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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'

#451

Post by jakeogh »

erik_seaberg wrote: post #424
jakeogh wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The links I provided contain significant context, can you be specific on what is unclear? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21108631

They sell self-heating canned food. It's not a claim about sapience.

That's the point, I'm arguing that human-level sapience is required. Even if you disagree, set aside the driving part; these machines must correctly interact with real (and adversarial) general intelligences.

And really, yes it is used that way in the marketing. It's not accidental.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16620132

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#452

Post by FireBeyond »

standyro wrote: post #438
FireBeyond wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"some time in the future"... ... while Musk promises "you'll be able to self-drive, coast to coast, this year" (haha, no).

For a bunch of "tech visionaries" that Hacker News is supposed to embody, this thread is full of such shortsightedness. I self-drove from Southern California to Phoenix, Arizona, so I guess that's like 1/10th of the way. I couldn't have imagined that ten years ago. Part of the job of being a CEO is to sell the dream, even if it's years or decades away.

Highway driving in SoCal on nicely maintained highways in the summer is the easy part of self-driving. Winter driving on local roads in Pittsburgh is the less easy.

> Part of the job of being a CEO is to sell the dream, even if it's years or decades away.

He literally said you would be able to do it _this year_. That's after he said you would be able to do it in 2018. And that's after he said you'd be able to do it in 2016. And all the while charging thousands of dollars for the promise of it "coming".

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#453

Post by zdragnar »

nrp wrote: post #394
heavyset_go wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no evidence that automated driving systems are any safer than human drivers, or that they ever will be.

From Tesla's latest Vehicle Safety Report: > In the 4th quarter, we registered one accident for every 3.07 million miles driven in which drivers had Autopilot engaged. For those driving without Autopilot but with our active safety features, we registered one accident for every 2.10 million miles driven. For those driving without Autopilot and without our active safety features, we registered one accident for every 1.…

Am I correct in thinking that most people use autopilot in the most boring parts of or most boring drives?

It seems to me that knowing the autopilot isn't 100% perfect is a good reason to not rely on it in more dangerous or complicated scenarios (construction, roads with poor markings, school areas).

I haven't followed too closely here though, just curious if that is a reasonable hypothesis.

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#454

Post by hrktb »

janee wrote: post #403
colordrops wrote: post #165

I 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…

Agreed, "never" is a ridiculously unfathomable amount of time if you define it on say our species extinction date. I'm presonally bullish on fully autonomous transport because of the industry interest shown in it and the potential demand for it. The latter I don't see going away unless something comes around that makes it redundant.

I think a lot of people sharing this sentiment assume cars will always be there, or at least will still be relevant when we finally have generic autonomous driving nailed down.

If it takes 50 years to have a fully ready environment with beacons, networking etc., will we still be riding “cars” on “streets” ? I ‘d guess when we reach that point we’ll also have solved the “getting from A to B” in completely different ways.

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#455

Post by LastZactionHero »

never? What does that even mean? We've only been driving cars like 100 years. Only had computers for 60, and decent portable ones for 20. Self-driving literally just became remotely possible, and you're telling me never?

This is an off-the-cuff remark turned into a clickbait headline for a fairly bland article.

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#456

Post by sjy »

joe_the_user wrote: post #390
simias wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think self-driving cars are like fusion reactors, they're perfectly possible on paper and, like, totally 15years away from now. There's a certain similarity but I don't know any paper that actually gives any assure that self-driving is going to ever be possible. The only theory is "we will prevent extraneous factors and then calculate".

So is that different to fusion power? We know how to build automobiles, and we know how to trigger nuclear fusion, but in both cases we are struggling to build the technology to harness these powerful forces in a safe and convenient way.

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#457

Post by sydd »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #175
colordrops wrote: post #165

I 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…

We can't even bloody keep the yellow markings on the road visible, and "paint" is a technology we've had for thousands of years. Where in dog's name is the money for installing and maintaining all that smart infrastructure going to come from?

it won't happen overnight everywhere. there are other transportation methods that require lots of infrastructure to maintain, e.g. trams, subways where the need is big enough to worth it. I guess we will see the same with roads, busy avenues will be smart, and small country roads will require manual driving.

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#458

Post by baybal2 »

ehsankia wrote: post #179
baybal2 wrote: post #109

I think he is the one and only sane C-level person in the industry, after hearing this. People claiming most of AI hype barely know what the "AI" people mention is. And people who go as far as drawing rosy pictures of human like general AI being your personal chauffeur are past ridiculous. The entire idea of human-like general AI for practical applications is like trying to make people using horses for transport in 2…

Isn't it a little silly to call someone "only sane C-level person" after one comment? Also, while claiming these innovations are only a few years way may be insane, saying they will never happen feels probably just as non-sense. History hasn't been on the side of such absolute claims. It will take time, but Waymo already has working 100% self-driving cars out in the wild. Yes it's in a small area, with perfect weathe…

I do feel like that. From my past few years dealing with automotive clients, I haven't heard of a single company that was not completely obsessed with it.

All and every piece of electronics we did in the automotive sector had some lame "AI platform" attached somewhere, for no apparent reason.

The most blatant "AI washing" I saw was an "AI power steering" which was a plain PID, inferior on all fronts to purpose made systems already on the market.

Second to it was an "AI airbag," which was basically an OpenCV hello world that will trigger the airbag ahead of time. Terribly unreliable, and would've probably killed more people than saved.

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#459

Post by threeseed »

senordevnyc wrote: post #248
threeseed wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think autonomous taxi services will be niche. Think about Uber cars today. Their entire value proposition centres around them breaking parking laws in order to pick you up. Now the liability for that behaviour is with the driver. In an autonomous car the liability would be Uber which is why they won't do it. An Uber that needs to look for parking in order to pick you up is never going to work in most busy…

Think about Uber cars today. Their entire value proposition centres around them breaking parking laws in order to pick you up. I take Uber and Lyft in NYC multiple times per week. No one ever “parks”, they just pull up, you jump in, and off you go. Takes less than a minute in most cases, doesn’t block traffic, and I suspect it virtually never results in a ticket. Maybe if they sit there for 10 minutes or more, but th…

There are explicit laws in NYC to allow this behaviour which is understandable given the power of the taxi lobby and history of the city.

Similar laws simply aren't present in most other cities. Stopping in the middle of the road to pick up passengers is illegal and drivers do it since the police are never there. Hence my point that Uber would never program this illegality into their self driving algorithm.

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#460

Post by robbrown451 »

maxbond wrote: post #293
robbrown451 wrote: post #3

This strikes me as weird: > "This is one of the hardest problems we have. This is like we are going to Mars," Hitzinger said in a comment. "Maybe it will never happen." First of all, it seems obvious that we are going to go to Mars, eventually. Maybe not any time soon, but never? Seriously? But the bigger thing is that there is about 1000 times more economic benefit to self driving cars than of going to Mars, at leas…

I don't mean to be rude, but I have strong feelings about this attitude. Let's take going to Mars. We can't reliably go to the moon. We can't even go everywhere on the Earth, where we have every possible advantage. Spend a year on the ISS and you'll develop all sorts of health issues. Spending time on Mars isn't likely to be less hazardous. We may send humans to Mars but it is by no means guaranteed. (And I would als…

"Until someone builds a real self-driving car it is just an idea."

I think it's more than an idea when we have self driving cars, they just don't meet our standards for safety yet so they aren't legal on public roads.

I mean, we had airplane flight in 1903. Good chance you'd die if you went up in one for the first decade. But we did have powered flight.

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