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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'

#482
post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but if the system is designed in the wrong way, hackers could kill millions in a single moment. Admittedly, this danger already exists as in all modern cars between driver and car there is a layer of (hackable and wireless network connected) software.

Hackers could hijack a missile and kill a lot of people too. This is why we have security. And honestly modern cars are so computerized already I think your argument applies to them as much as autonomous cars.

I'll bite. Aside from Tesla owners, I do not know anyone in my life today whose vehicle connects to the Internet. Of course, I mean to say I don't see how your comparison to present day is accurate.

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

#484
post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We could say that now about automobiles. Indeed we can which is why some cities on the planet have gone carless and more and more opposition is mounting in the face of traffic deaths, pollution and so so on. Even in the US, maybe the most car dominated country in the world, there is a political revival of talks about high speed rail and alternative forms of transportation. The other important difference being that t…

Which cities have gone carless? Are you saying that's it illegal to drive a car in some cities?

Pontevedra in Spain for example, Venice and Oslo are also to large degrees car-free in the city proper. Yes cars are banned from the city, here's an article about the consequences.

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/sep/18/paradise-life...

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

#485

Level 5 means no human intervention, under any circumstance. Ice, snow, night, fog, unmarked roads, tunnels, mega-urban, isolated rural, parking lots/structures, etc, etc. I think he's correct. It's hard to think of any technology that works without human intervention whatsoever, no matter the conditions. We've had autopilot for decades, we're certainly not flying planes without pilots. Or even getting them from runw…

There will always be a facility to manually override the decisions of the autopilot. It’s likely to be a legal requirement so that in an emergency the vehicles can be directed to do things they normally wouldn’t (like drive on the wrong side of the road). But you don’t need a steering wheel to do that.

I imagine there’ll also be manual modes to get the car into trucks and ships, or even just out of the factory.

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

#486
post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

its not only lines on the road though: Imagine you are following a pickup-truck and out of the back an obviously empty box floats out of the bed and lands directly in front of your car. For a human its trivial to know the box is empty and its ok to hit it....does "AI" know that? Multiply that case x1000 and you have the conditions self-driving cars will need to handle on a daily basis.

If someone drives around with loose crap in the back of their truck that flies out, the truck driver is at fault not the self driving car. This is a danger we already have on the road. Humans make the wrong call on this sort of thing all the time. They also make stupid passes, yield the right of way at the wrong time, drive the wrong way down one way streets, cut each other off, fall asleep at the wheel, drive drunk,…

Right, except no one is claiming humans are perfect drivers but I have heard self driving car evangelists say countless times that self driving cars are going to bring an end to traffic deaths.

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

#487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hackers could hijack a missile and kill a lot of people too. This is why we have security. And honestly modern cars are so computerized already I think your argument applies to them as much as autonomous cars.

I'll bite. Aside from Tesla owners, I do not know anyone in my life today whose vehicle connects to the Internet. Of course, I mean to say I don't see how your comparison to present day is accurate.

>Aside from Tesla owners, I do not know anyone in my life today whose vehicle connects to the Internet

When did the whole OnStar botnet start? I think it's earlier than 2010.

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

#488
post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 seems to me 99.99% of all road markings are perfectly visible

I'm incredulous that that can be the case anywhere.

I live in a wealthy jurisdiction, and the road markings here largely are not what I'd consider to be "perfectly visible". I'd guess that currently, probably 3/4 of painted lane markings have one or more of the following issues: a) obscured by snow/ice, b) faded c) road under construction and lane markings don't correspond to current lanes.

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

#489
post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Autopilot is evidence that automated systems are already better than humans today. The edge cases scare people but on aggregate the stats show is superior to people. This sort of tech is only going to keep getting better.

Look up "Ergodicity".

Autopilot doesn't need to be 2x or 10x better than a human driver -- it needs to be 100x or 1,000x better, or nobody (sane) should touch it.

The problem is not that autopilot is superior than your own driving in the vast majority of the cases! The problem is the 1 in a million times when it makes a trivial mistake that virtually no human would, and kills you instantly. Like driving under an obvious semi-trailer, and shearing your torso off.

An understandable example: You have two games of chance, both with identical 5/6 chance of winning.

One game, you'll play immediately (and as often as possible). The other, you would never play, not even once.

How is that possible? Both have identical 5/6 chances of winning? But, one is "ergotic", meaning that the odds hold over the long term as often as you play, and one is "non-ergotic", meaning that as soon as you lose, you're finished.

One is a single dice roll.

The other is Russian Roulette.

Self-driving cars are Russian Roulette. One "mistake" on the part of the system, and you're dead. The fact that the "stats" prove that it is safer, overall, don't change the fact: you and your family are dead.

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

#490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And those unexpected situations are not edge cases either. Virtually every time you drive you’ll encounter a novel case that has never been seen before. Your human brain is good at improvising. Computers? Not so much...

My average drive distance is under 10 miles. The expected number of miles for Waymo to disengage once is over 3 orders of magnitude higher. I'd have to take 1000 trips before Waymo would have disengaged. That does not jive with your numbers (1 disengage per trip, roughly 10 miles), unless you're saying that Waymo's numbers are juiced by few city miles?

Gentle correction: 'jive' -> 'jibe'
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