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Tesla's self driving algorithm's overlay [video]

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Re: Tesla's self driving algorithm's overlay [video]

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no evidence that computers are any better at driving than humans, and there is no evidence that this generation of machine learning will be able to tackle this problem sufficiently. All signs point to driving requiring an understanding of what's going on around you, which this generation of ML does not provide. On the other hand, there is a lot of hype and promises being made without the results to back them…

How would you compare both? Computers can process millions of objects and things all at the same time, with a error margin than any human being would love to have.

It doesn't matter how many objects a system can process if it can't recognize what they are or which ones are actually important, like say, the truck crossing in front of you.

Re: Tesla's self driving algorithm's overlay [video]

#202
post #191
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two issues, first: I thought fully autonomous driving was meant to be done by now? Second, don't Tesla & SpaceX have a reputation for being a terrible place to work, with Musk expecting everyone to be working as hard (or harder) than him, and firing people in weird and capricious ways.

> I thought fully autonomous driving was meant to be done by now? That is not what Elon predicted at Autonomy Day last April. He thought they would be feature-complete by the end of 2019, which is to say, that all the basic code paths necessary for best case city driving would be functional. If you've done software development, you understand that getting to "feature-complete" is different from "code-complete", which…

He said a million self driving vehicles would be on the streets a year from FSD day.

To try to say the hardware for FSD is now present in 1M vehicles (which I doubt) is disingenuous to the insinuation Elon made that FSD is right around the corner. They're not meaningfully closer to FSD today than they were three years ago. Somewhat closer? Sure. A few feet on a journey that's a few miles though.

Re: Tesla's self driving algorithm's overlay [video]

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cameras are running at higher fps, but the processed outputs don't need to go that fast. At 65MPH, 18fps is one frame for every 5 feet of travel.

Not fast enough to react to someone swerving into your lane.

Much faster than a human would react. Acutely focused humans generally take at least 1 second to hit the brakes in an emergency. Longer if distracted or tired[1].

[1]: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233039156_Brake_Rea...

Re: Tesla's self driving algorithm's overlay [video]

#204
post #190
post #140

It still strikes me why so many people are still against a future with self driving cars. Sure, people throughout history are scared of change & new tech. But if you look at this video and compare the amount of stuff the camera catches AND processes, with the things you are seeing & processing, it's really hard for me to see me being better at it than a computer. The reality of driving (as a human) is that most of it…

At least traditionally, the driver had direct physical control over the vehicle through hydraulics. Obviously this has become less true over the past couple of decades with the introduction of electronic systems, but the traditional imprint remains in the popular mind. (Truly) self-driving cars are, inversely, completely outside the control of the "driver". Anyone who has considered it even briefly has realized that…

They're already in use in the case of repeat drunk drivers and it's not a stretch to imagine similar technology in other ways with traditional vehicles. Self driving is completely orthogonal to this concern.

Re: Tesla's self driving algorithm's overlay [video]

#205
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not fast enough to react to someone swerving into your lane.

Cars don't tend to jump sideways all of a sudden (and if they do, then usually by outside force, which tends to be hard to avoid). There's plenty of frames to detect that (note that the view shown is not the only camera, otherwise making a turn safely would be fairly impossible).

They don't have to "jump" sideways. All it takes is someone assuming you aren't there and moving into the space you occupy.

Re: Tesla's self driving algorithm's overlay [video]

#206
post #140

It still strikes me why so many people are still against a future with self driving cars. Sure, people throughout history are scared of change & new tech. But if you look at this video and compare the amount of stuff the camera catches AND processes, with the things you are seeing & processing, it's really hard for me to see me being better at it than a computer. The reality of driving (as a human) is that most of it…

> The reality of driving (as a human) is that most of it happens on autopilot anyway.

Right. So the marginal benefit of a self-driving car to people who feel that they already drive on autopilot most of the time is low. Especially when they weigh that benefit against the risk of putting their life into the hands of a 4000lb machine controlled by what? A computational system programmed by the same group of people (in the general public's mind) that brought them clippy, the Hawaii nuclear missile scare, algorithmic flash crashes, bloated ad-filled websites, telephone bots, 8 remote controls per living room, and Flappy Bird.

Re: Tesla's self driving algorithm's overlay [video]

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not fast enough to react to someone swerving into your lane.

Much faster than a human would react. Acutely focused humans generally take at least 1 second to hit the brakes in an emergency. Longer if distracted or tired[1]. [1]: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233039156_Brake_Rea...

Braking is slowed by the limitations of nerve conduction down to the legs. You can swerve away from danger with faster reaction time.

Re: Tesla's self driving algorithm's overlay [video]

#208
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The system isn't AI based... It's currently based on static programming. This is why a development team would have to think of every possible scenario that could happen on roads to make self driving cars really work. I'm not really sure what this dichotomy is that you're describing. It certainly looks like they're using computer vision to detect the bounding boxes of cars, and the field of computer vision is widely…

You replied to the 4 scenarios I posted, but forgot the thousands of others left while you missed my point. They were rhetorical to illustrate that nothing yet can replace a trained, experienced, and attentive driver effectively yet. There are no simple answers to the above questions, but if a driver causes the accident, they are accountable. Companies want to launch this tech but not own accountability for accidents…

Go watch Elon's presentation Autonomy Day. He pointedly addresses it.

Specifically, he shows an orders-of-magnitude chart, each point accompanied by a picture of a car presented at that magnitude of occurrence. At one extreme is "car" as they appear with most common frequency (in front of you, rear visible). At other extreme is "car" in an extremely unlikely occurrence (airborne, bottom view prominent). The system Tesla implements addresses such a broad range of information & occurrences.

Tesla has upwards of a million "full self driving" vehicles on the road now, all gathering video, all processing that data, all feeding what they learn & experience back to Tesla. The computers, even if not actually driving, are constantly observing situations, categorizing, and comparing to what humans do as a response. Extreme situations (crashes etc) are flagged and routed to Tesla for incident analysis; the AI is corrected & taught to handle the situations, and all vehicles updated accordingly in short order.

Upshot: Tesla DOES have a system for addressing, learning, encoding, and improving the "thousands of other" scenarios. By the time "full self driving" is unleashed, the Tesla AI system will already be trained to extremes by a million "trained, experienced, and attentive drivers"; insofar as some cases may be insufficiently covered, they will be statistically less common & dangerous than the baseline error rate of human drivers (distracted, drunk, debilitated, dumb).

As far as accountability, Tesla is working hard to build a decisive system & case that if bad happens, it is a statistical anomaly which is still better than the alternative of not using self-driving tech. There is a legal principle whereby one may violate the law when obeying it would cause greater harm; autonomous vehicles are close to crossing that line for the better.

And yes, great profit is due those who improve humanity via technology.

Re: Tesla's self driving algorithm's overlay [video]

#209
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it does not have to be flawless, it just has to statistically cause fewer accidents per kilometer/year than what human drivers cause in a similar situation (which is already non-zero, and in some countries actually quite high). Even though it logically makes sense, there are some nuances to it, most prominent of which is: When human drivers cause accidents, they are held responsible by the legal system. Who's respo…

> Who's responsible when your car made the decision? Is it Tesla? Is it the driver? Any time a Tesla is involved in an accident, it seems like the company is more than happy to throw out reams of log data "proving" that it isn't their fault. But yet at the same time they maintain marketing material claiming their "auto pilot" feature is (or will be) so awesome that the human driver is only there to make the lawyers h…

That's actually totally non-contradictory. The human is there to make Tesla's lawyers happy, and they are definitely very happy to have an easy scapegoat to blame if their tech fails to live up to the hype.

Re: Tesla's self driving algorithm's overlay [video]

#210
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The proper rules[1] of a 4 way stop are probably pretty straightforward to encode, and probably easier for a computer to apply than a human, but the real issue is that you can't trust the other drivers (or AIs) to understand/follow them consistently. So the interesting part is how these kinds of systems can almost instantly react when another driver starts to go, and let them go. In NYC, where I live now, the de fact…

The car stopping if another car goes before it brings up another issue. If self driving cars start showing up on the road and are recognizable, you'd be able to "bully" the self driving cars since you know it'll always give right away. Imagine being stuck on an on-ramp behind a car that is programmed with infinite patience and extreme risk aversion; you could be sitting there quite a while.

The human driver can always take over if the car isn't being aggressive enough.

Also the feeling of "how long" is too long to wait changes a lot when you are in more of a passenger mindset.

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