Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen' • Hacker News Board

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

#861

Post by tjohns » Sun, Jan 19, 2020, 9:38 PM UTC

jsgo wrote: post #860

cameronh90 wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’ve seen intersections where people have went offroad in an accident and knocked down stop signs and people know when approaching that it should be there. Would a car? The only way I can see that working is if there is some kind of geographic location of various stops and the like, but at that point, you need consistent connectivity to obtain that kind of data, right? May work in larger towns and cities, but what ab…

We’ve had offline GPS units for decades. You could easily have a database of every stop sign, and it would fit on an SD card.

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

#862

Post by ericd » Sun, Jan 19, 2020, 9:55 PM UTC

holoduke wrote: post #689

ericd wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 differe…

I do have some idea, I use them in my work. What are you calling inputs here? And gens?

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

#863

Post by ericd » Sun, Jan 19, 2020, 10:01 PM UTC

justapassenger wrote: post #632

ericd wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> But Tesla's fleet is getting more driving experience every day than you will get in your entire life, and every time they train on one of those exceptions, the entire fleet will benefit. That’s not how machine learning works. You can “train on exceptions” as much as you want, and you have 0 guaranteed results. It can help, it can make no change or it can cause unexpected regressions.

It certainly can cause unexpected regressions, but of course that's being monitored during training. I'm not saying this is some real time learning system, nor that the system behaves perfectly on an exception case as soon as it's added to the training set. My point is that their engineers are getting an incredible amount of data on tricky driving situations to train their models on, far more than a human will see in their entire driving career, and when their model improves to deal with those, it improves for everyone. And at some point, these systems will be much better at driving than any human alive.

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

#864

Post by jeromebaek » Sun, Jan 19, 2020, 10:13 PM UTC

Think about it. Soft AI that assists the driver (automatic turning, cruise control, automatic brakes) is now mainstream. Why is it that full self-driving cars are categorically different? Because it requires full faith in the machine. When assistive technology goes wrong, the driver can correct it and -- get this -- the reason the driver can correct it fast enough is precisely because the driver doesn't fully trust the technology. the driver is on alert, always, because they know the technology is not meant to be trusted fully. now a full self-driving car asks the driver to trust it fully. so the "driver" can take a nap, read a book, whatever. if the driver needs to be on alert, it's by definition not a fully self-driving car. and i dont think we will get there, ever.

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

#865

Post by TheSpiceIsLife » Sun, Jan 19, 2020, 10:53 PM UTC

9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #703

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people don’t live in Japan. There are no commuter trains Tasmania.

Compared to Japan, there are no people in Tasmania.

I guess my wider point was that today, 55% of the world’s population lives in urban areas, a proportion that is expected to increase to 68% by 2050.[1]

Urban commuter trains will have little effect on that ~45% of people who won't live near them even if they are built.

On the flip side, though, I guess, that doesn't mean we shouldn't build more train lines.

1. https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/2018-...

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

#866

Post by wozniacki » Sun, Jan 19, 2020, 11:02 PM UTC

naravara wrote: post #535

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?

Yeah. For the cost of all this retrofitting of roads, you’d be able to build the most insanely comprehensive transit system anyone has ever heard of. FWIW though, it probably is possible to use this sort of technology for buses and shuttles. You can’t fix markings on ALL the roads, but you can make sure the markings are good enough on main arterials to have a dedicated bus lane.

For the love of everything holy, some of us just dont want public transit - especially having seen the horrors of most public transit options even in the best managed nations and conditions.

From one of my previous comments on a different post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19638171

- - - -

Reducing the number of cars (and therefore traffic) on the roads will benefit everybody You seem to have a rose-tinted view of the world we live in.

  Have you ever had to commute in less-than-ideal 
  conditions?
  Heavy snow? Sleet? Black ice?
  Have you ever lived in places that are not
  perfectly flat? or lived in places that 
  are hot that make bicycling unfeasible?
  Did you have sporting gear / work gear that
  you had to lug? Did you know some people have
  to fetch their own gear to work
  Did you have to take calls during transit?
  Did you know its common practice for employees
  to call into meetings during their commute and/or
  help assist operations via conference calls?
  Have you had to shop for more than a baguette
  or a bagel at a store? You know how cumbersome
  that gets for even a family of three?
  Do you have the slightest clue how much casual 
  violence and crime happen on public transit?[1]

Not to belabor the point but there simply are dozens of cases where bicycles or public transit just don't cut it. Not to mention the hygiene, personal safety (from other passengers for example) and personal space aspects involved in someone choosing a mode of transportation other than public transit or bicycling. Ride-sharing, autonomous vehicles and emission-free vehicles should all alleviate the issues we currently face with traffic, parking and accidents.

However doing away with cars or vehicular traffic is just pollyannaish madness.

[1]

Teen robbed at gunpoint at Fruitvale, BART officer says writing a report is a 'waste of resources'

https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/bart-police-refuse-repo...

- - - -

edit: formatting

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

#867

Post by ozim » Sun, Jan 19, 2020, 11:42 PM UTC

aantix wrote: post #835

ozim wrote: post #797

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell that to guy that had smartwatch and his wife noticed he had high heart rate somewhere at night where he should be doing something else. I don't have link for the story. But idea behind this is not that one should not cheat on his wife because he will get caught. To be really a human and be honest, one must not have an urge to cheat on his wife(husband) because he loves her. If someone has dirty thoughts and only…

This argument is about that you have to make concessions - tradeoffs. You have a choice to not use the autonomous car, to not use the apple watch, to choose a privacy-conscious internet carrier.

Real world trade offs please...

If there are only autonomous cars that track your position how are you going to make trade off?

Right now I don't have Facebook but no one in my family or friends is contacting me. Why? Because I don't have Facebook. This is my trade off. Real trade off would be if I could select different provider and still be in contact with my family and friends. Right now it is monopoly degrading my quality of life. If I would have different options that I could for example pay for but they would not use my data as tracking that would be different.

If there would be way to pick your autonomous car provider by price/privacy it can be trade off.

If it is one option that you can use or not use it is not about trade off. I am not native English speaker but trade off for me is when you have multiple options to choose. No that you have all or nothing....

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

#868

Post by Nasrudith » Mon, Jan 20, 2020, 12:01 AM UTC

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…

That doesn't sound like a proper set of assumptions - that human accidents will be fender benders while self driving will be chunk-salsa worthy. The cumulative fatality risk applies to both parties. Humans will die in fatal accidents that no Self Driving car would do.

The 1000x better demand is more a stupid human illusion of control thing like fearing flying more than a road trip of equal distance.

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

#869

Post by m463 » Mon, Jan 20, 2020, 3:17 AM UTC

mattkrause wrote: post #583

m463 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. new technologies are over-estimated in the short term, and under-estimated in the long term. Decades ago our computers were "soon" to be voice controlled, listening to our speech and doing our bidding. That was a big load of hype. However, over time and below the radar it became true as computers first answered phones, then took limited commands in cars and smartphones and now it is basically true (without a…

"I dictated this , to the quiet office. The word area isn't too bad." [What I actually said was 'I dictated this entire comment in a quiet office The word error rate isn't too bad '. Built-in recognizer on a Mac.]

darn autocement.

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

#870

Post by justapassenger » Mon, Jan 20, 2020, 4:23 AM UTC

ericd wrote: post #863

justapassenger wrote: post #632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But Tesla's fleet is getting more driving experience every day than you will get in your entire life, and every time they train on one of those exceptions, the entire fleet will benefit. That’s not how machine learning works. You can “train on exceptions” as much as you want, and you have 0 guaranteed results. It can help, it can make no change or it can cause unexpected regressions.

It certainly can cause unexpected regressions, but of course that's being monitored during training. I'm not saying this is some real time learning system, nor that the system behaves perfectly on an exception case as soon as it's added to the training set. My point is that their engineers are getting an incredible amount of data on tricky driving situations to train their models on, far more than a human will see in…

It’s one of great misunderstandings (or more likely - very effective way of getting money) to claim that machine learning is a data problem. We’re so far away from that point, that we have literally no idea what’s needed to make ML a data problem. Algorithms are extremely simple, and it’s all more or less curve fitting.

Media (and surprising amount of tech people as well) tend to claim that ML learning is like human learning - repeat something enough times and you’re done, you know how to do it. ML is no where close to that point.