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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'

#711

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.

People tag signs on the freeway, to the point where caltrans still has razor wire over some of the signs. It's already happening.

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

#712
post #225

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…

I think I am going to side with VW on this. I have always been skeptical of fully autonomous vehicles, and I do not believe they will _ever_ exist on the roads that currently stand. Driving safely in all conditions without aid from a human is simply too complex a task for code that can be audited and verified. If some AI model that's been trained on a billion years of driving experience shows promise, but it is some…

but it is some incomprehensible black box of weights, I won't be getting in that car.

You don't understand the complex weighted probabilities in your doctor's head either, but you trust them to diagnose cancer (which incidentally machine learning is beating humans at). None of the algorithms in doctors' heads can be formally proved to work in all circumstances, nor can the code that runs medical equipment.

A full understanding of complex systems (machine or human controlled) is not possible today in many domains, that's why we measure results. If the data shows that self-driving cars are safer, we will switch. At present, that's what it shows.

As to special roads/markers, these would make the technology less effective at dealing with the unexpected (crash ahead, moose on road, cyclist in the lane etc), and many of the leading companies don't think they are necessary. I can see cars forming networks which report danger, or adding more sensors, but don't think our roads will have to change for self driving, which will be prevalent within the decade IMO without infrastructure changes.

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

#713

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t mind driving 200 times one hour commuting a year. I want to a) not own a car but be picked up by one I can share with others b) be driven home after having a drink. Both of those use cases are only working if there is a 100% (or close to) self driving solution. Driving 95% of the way or 95% of the trips is nice, but I wouldn’t pay Tesla autopilot money for it. The value in the 95/95 autopilot is because it wi…

> Driving 95% of the way or 95% of the trips is nice People will abuse that. They will get high/drunk/whatever and when that “5%” rolls around (quite unexpectedly mind you), they’ll run into a bus full of nuns. Always assume people will be judgement impaired because “the car can drive itself”....

Where the 95% ends can only be a decision the car makes. There can’t be a button you push when you think “come on autopilot you can do it, It’s just a short jump and you’ll fit through that narrow passage in the run-up easily!”. Autonomous cars will give up and stop when they require manual intervention.

But, this is also why I think the next car manufacturer race will be about who can solve this for their customers. That is, who solves the problem of making 95% autonomous cars able to drive in 99.9% if all situations without manual intervention by the driver, where the provides automatic remote control from massive rooms full of people steering drunk car owners out of situations the autopilot couldn’t. The better the autonomy, the fewer people needed to remote override.

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

#714

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 will eventually update markings and beacons on the roads to make it easier for the cars”

We have already done this, they are called railways. Some of them evening have self driving trains.

To get self driving cars on roads you need a human level AI. Trying to get away with less intelligence by restricting the environment will never get to the point where it will be safe to have automated vehicles - you can’t provide infrastructure clues to the vehicle to help it tell when a child is about to run out into the road for example (and there are many other examples too) so you would have to segregate them physically from everything else and then you might as well stick to railways

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

#715
post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of this discussion on smart infrastructure is moot, imho, because it won't be guaranteed to be there on all roads and cars will have to be designed to work even when the smart infrastructure breaks down. So this means that self-driving cars will have to safely handle these cases and that also means that it is likely that cars will have to still be able to be driven manually. Bottom line: self-driving cars will ha…

I dunno. Americans seem to want these giant 4x4s even when they leave the city twice a year; they'd be better off (certainly safer... most trucks are more dangerous for other people and for the occupants) if they had a little car for city driving and rented the off road cargo hauler when they needed it. A city-only car would be totally useful for people who live in cities; you just rent something when you want to go…

Sure there are niche markets where fully self-driving and self-driving only cars may make sense.

But they still need to handle fault cases: e.g. they cannot only rely on a beacon sent by traffic lights because that beacon or the whole traffic light might out of order. So, imho, while smart infrastructure may help self-driving cars and traffic management it does not allow you to avoid the "hard work", which to make sure self-driving cars will behave safely and reasonably completely on their own.

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

#716

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you destroy a yield sign, maybe it will eventually cause some problems, or maybe not. We could imagine a world in which destroying smart infrastructure could pretty instantaneously and reliably cause massive traffic jams, which seems like it would appeal more to certain trolls and perhaps protestors. We could also imagine a world in which more subtle attacks could reliably and fairly quickly cause injury/fatality…

If it's such a busy location to cause a big jam, how did the vandals get away with destroying it? In out of the way places, it won't cause a big jam.

Few places are busy in the middle of the night.

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

#717

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?

Never mind that money for basic road maintenance is diverted because people want to pay less tax/rates and vote for politicians who promise this bugger the long term effect.

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

#718

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 will eventually update markings and beacons on the roads to make it easier for the cars” We have already done this, they are called railways. Some of them evening have self driving trains. To get self driving cars on roads you need a human level AI. Trying to get away with less intelligence by restricting the environment will never get to the point where it will be safe to have automated vehicles - you can’t prov…

"Human level AI" is a tricky wording. Sure, we may never get a program we would trust to serve in a jury, convince us about existence of God or just have a casual conversation with. But ask Go players how is that resistance to machines going.

When I drive and there's a child walking on the sidewalk, I'm not analyzing the chances the child will jump onto the road. I'm just assuming the parents have succeeded at explaining how to not kill yourself, without that assumption I would go crazy with too much things to worry about. AI does not get crazy, nor even tired, with too much tasks. It might usually come up with the same result that I always apply - just drive slowly through roads with children on sidewalks. But it might do something I won't do - slow down even more if the child seems to be doing something suspect.

One of the problems with Google-designed self-driving is that it goes slow and refuses to go if uncertain. I imagine that's why those cute little cars without driving wheel were axed. Even if the system has driven a bajillion miles without inflicting any risky situation, it won't sell if it can't guarantee doing your commute in your usual time. But it can't assume the same risk you take every day, that if that child behaves extra stupid and law misfires, then you might find yourself traumatized and without a driving license. Because when AI loses that license, it's killing the whole business. So, the bar for safety must be higher, slowing you down to a fully-controllable crawl, or constraining to high-safety situations. Hence, you get all those highway-assist features all over the place.

Disclaimer: I work in Google, but have no insider information about Waymo. Just remember these marketing materials back from the Chaffeur days and still think that was the way to go.

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

#719

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, level 5 autonomy is an ever shrinking number of edge cases. Human drivers also have edge cases like being drunk or otherwise incapacitated by strokes, heart attacks, getting phone calls, old, tired, etc. We still allow them on the road despite this and the notion that those things are some of the root causes of the many deadly accidents each year. Once autonomous cars are obviously safer than that, it will become the norm. We're not that far off from that. First we'll see mass deployment of level 3 & 4 first with safety drivers and when it becomes clear that those are a liability at best, also without. From there to level 5 is a matter of semantics since we'll basically have vehicles driving themselves most of the time.

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

#720

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, level 5 autonomy is an ever shrinking number of edge cases. Human drivers also have edge cases like being drunk or otherwise incapacitated by strokes, heart attacks, getting phone calls, old, tired, etc. We still allow them on the road despite this and the notion that those things are some of the root causes of the many deadly accidents each year. Once autonomous cars are obviously safer than that, it will be…

I don't even think level 5 at individual car level is needed. Tesla can operate their fleet like a Amazon does with their warehouse robots.
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