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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'

#681

Post by kart23 »

cameronh90 wrote: post #537
kart23 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cant have other people on the road then. If I was a protestor or bored teen, I would find it pretty fun to block self driving cars' cameras and sensors, stranding them and creating chaos. Imagine a line of self driving cars just blocking a busy street. It wouldn't be hard to do, but it would take a lot of work to recover them to the point it wouldnt be profitable for the companies running them.

It would be fun, then the police would show up and arrest the people who did it using camera footage from the automated cars. Most people are good people, and the ones who aren't already fuck with the road network now causing all kinds of chaos.. throwing bricks from bridges, ripping the copper out of traffic signals, but it's relatively rare because most people aren't trying to ruin everything at great risk to their…

cuz its just funny. If you saw little robots all over the place run by facebook or $mega_corp, wouldnt you just strand them for fun? Cameras are easily defeated by a hoodie and a mask.

Bricks from bridges could kill people and just damages regular people's property. It's just different.

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

#682

Post by RayVR »

nostrademons wrote: post #668
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #175

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?

The impetus will be wartime, just as the impetus for the interstate highway system and most of the railway system was wartime. In peacetime, self-driving cars are a nice-to-have that can save many billions of driver hours and a few traffic fatalities. In wartime, they're literally a matter of life or death. The side that can handle all of their logistics without exposing their precious humans to enemy fire has a huge…

This argument is tough to swallow. The real push to build interstate highways was in early 1950s and began in earnest in 1956. National defense was only one piece of the justification for the project.

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

#683

Post by FooHentai »

cameronh90 wrote: post #545
einrealist wrote: post #257

Earlier 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.

What's stopping people from destroying yield signs and other safety critical road infrastructure now? Sometimes common sense helps, but it you're out to cause chaos, there's a ton of things you can do today that would cause crashes - but most of the time, people don't.

You have to actually go out there and physically do the act.

In a wired world the distance to everything is zero. If you can find an 'in', you can carry out this attack in any place in the world, from the comfort of your nerd cave or barracks.

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

#684

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

imhoguy wrote: post #261
deltron3030 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Onboarding cars onto trains in a driver friendly way should also be considered. This way you don't exclude non self driving cars, and still have good coverage (taking into account that railway systems aren't far behind highway coverage in many countries).

This is the way of traveling thru Channel Tunnel. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurotunnel_Shuttle But one needs to plan and book a travel in advance. There are also capacity limits.

Ferries have limits too, like grid-locked streets also do.

The way, the channel, the [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erlang_(unit)

all there to calculate whodunit in advance, this is no Voodoo, just calm glance at what is there, to not get stuck, that would suck, and be unfair.

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

#685

Post by grawprog »

cameronh90 wrote: post #545
einrealist wrote: post #257

Earlier 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.

What's stopping people from destroying yield signs and other safety critical road infrastructure now? Sometimes common sense helps, but it you're out to cause chaos, there's a ton of things you can do today that would cause crashes - but most of the time, people don't.

>What's stopping people from destroying yield signs and other safety critical road infrastructure now?

People do destroy yield signs and other safety critical road infrastructure now. I've known more than one person with an appropriated road or safety sign as a home decoration.

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

#686

Post by michaelmrose »

pjkundert wrote: post #489
tensor wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 obvi…

You are overcomplicating things. Every minute of drive time is Russian roulette with on average very low chances of losing.

The only thing that matters is the overall odds there is no inherent mathematical difference between the 2 scenarios.

There is no difference to prefer more likely death in common scenario to less likely death in a stupider scenario.

If you believe otherwise you ought to explicate with numbers.

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

#687

Post by mrep »

macinjosh wrote: post #246
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those kind of pile ups already happen now when people drop crap from overpasses, how would it be any different?

because unless the driver is a raging asshole usually the person behind while you are going 80 has more stopping distance than 5 fucking feet.

That's because you're thinking of human drivers whom are so slow to react that it is recommended they keep a whopping 2 or 3 seconds [0] worth of trailing distance to respond to changing road conditions like the person in front of you slamming on their breaks. The hypothetical clustering of self driving cars requires them to react at much faster times so they don't need to keep as much space between them.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-second_rule

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

#688

Post by michaelmrose »

pjkundert wrote: post #602
kens wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People die all the time from driving under a semi-trailer. Look up "Underride". Over 200 people die every year from underride crashes in the US, so this isn't a mistake made only by autopilots. In other words, if we switched to self-driving cars and three people died every week when the autopilot drove into a semi-trailer, that would be a big improvement.

So, your family would be ok that your car sheared you off in a quirk unnecessary accident, so long as the overall stats were better than average? Non-ergotic stats are not comparable to ergotic (group) stats.

Given 100 individuals who would have died in everyday accidents all would prefer a 99% chance of survival.

Given a population of a million all would prefer a 1 in a million chance of death under a semi to a 1 in 10k chance of being smeared in a more average fashion.

Your argument is the same one used against seat belts with people advocating a strictly inferior survival strategy to prevent a rare misadventure.

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

#689

Post by holoduke »

ericd wrote: post #329
spookthesunset wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about dirt forest service roads? What about the dirt parking lot at that wedding you just went to? How will it find a parking spot? How will it get into a ferry where people direct you to the correct spot? How will it deal with an accident up ahead where some drunk bystander is trying to direct traffic? How will it know to ignore the drunk guy? What if it isn’t a drunk guy but a sober person directing traffic? D…

How will it deal with an accident up ahead where some drunk bystander is trying to direct traffic? How will it know to ignore the drunk guy? What if it isn’t a drunk guy but a sober person directing traffic? Does the car obey in that case? Most people wouldn't instantly know how to handle those cases either. Many people would obey the drunk guy. Maybe that's the right thing to do. None of those are edge cases because…

You have any idea what the current state is of neural networks and their practical use? Most work only in very predictable controlled environments. Once you add one new ingredient things will fall apart. A 'complex' ai currently has less than 100 different things to deal with. And you need a hell of a fast machine to simulate millions of gens. In case of a self driving car you need approximately 1.000.000.000 different inputs. If you would the Moore law to predict the moment we deal with that amount you would have to wait about 500 years.

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

#690

Post by blub »

nostrademons wrote: post #668
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #175

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?

The impetus will be wartime, just as the impetus for the interstate highway system and most of the railway system was wartime. In peacetime, self-driving cars are a nice-to-have that can save many billions of driver hours and a few traffic fatalities. In wartime, they're literally a matter of life or death. The side that can handle all of their logistics without exposing their precious humans to enemy fire has a huge…

Dropping bombs on smart highways seems much easier than hitting a moving vehicle.
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