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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]

#301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not at all. Self-driving cars cannot yet safely navigate complex or unusual scenarios. That's assuming accidents are caused by complex and unusual scenarios instead of humans being inattentive during routine tasks. If machines fail at complex tasks but fail safely then that's not an argument against self-driving cars being safe, it's only one about their limited usefulness.

> If machines fail at complex tasks but fail safely then that's not an argument against self-driving cars being safe, it's only one about their limited usefulness. They don't, not at the moment. The software detects the situation is outside its capability space and says "jesus, take the wheel!". For all practical intents and purposes the only reasonable way to interpret the current self-driving car statistics is to t…

> For all practical intents and purposes the only reasonable way to interpret the current self-driving car statistics is to treat every single human intervention as a would-be accident.

Not necessarily. If the AI response is to stop the car when it can't figure something out, then the cost of each of those situations is the car not continuing on as quickly as it should (and maybe stuck cars if we dont have a way to override the stop/take control manually).

Every hand over to a driver is not an accident.

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

#302
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…

Because we are happy to accept bad consequences due to human error and human shortcomings. Even more so if the human with the errors and shortcomings also share the risk (e.g a distracted driver takes a risk themselves).

I think few are “opposed” to self driving cars, but I’m not optimistic about when we’ll see the tech being widespread (level 5 self driving), and I think the ethical can of worms might delay it even further.

I’m optimistic about cars that drive very safely for 95% of the way on 95% of all trips, with equipment that isn’t very expensive

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

#303
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…

I think people fixate on “better” without really defining what that means. Imagine it as bell curves. The mean of the computer might be worse than the mean of the human, but the variance is likely to be a lot tighter, which means less of the computer bell curve will be in the “danger zone” where accidents happen.

It’s ok if the human can technically do better, so long as the machine is more likely to avoid severe failure

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

#304
post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Show me a self-driving car functioning in the middle of a blizzard and we can start talking. Southern California and the weather it experiences is a poor representation of what is required for self-driving to replace humans.

Isn’t it enough if it recognises the limits of its own capability and safely asks you to take over?

I can't drive, so no, not really.

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

#305
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a problem even in production autopilot in Teslas. When stopped at a stop light, you can see cars "dancing" and rotating randomly in a jittery fashion. Today during an auto lane change, the system blinked a truck from two lanes across in and out of my target lane, causing the car to cancel going into an empty lane after quarter ways entering it, twice.

The dancing cars were fixed several months ago in an update. The computer used to just recognize cars, and then align them according to the lanes it sees. At a stoplight it when it had trouble seeing the lanes clearly the cars would rapidly change orientation. Since they updated the neural net to also recognize the vehicle orientations the dancing has stopped. I have seen a lane change cancel recently, a couple weeks…

Model 3 owner here: the dance where cars spun around and landed on top of you is gone but detected cars are still quite jittery. I notice that when I'm stopped and also when I'm driving. This is quite noticeable in the transition between different regions in the car (presumably when the vehicle is handed over between different cameras or sensors). Even something relatively simple as the traffic aware cruise control will sometimes slow down for no apparently reason or simply turn itself off in the rain. Given the combination of the visualizations and the performance of cruise control and autopilot I think Tesla is very far away from fully autonomous driving under all conditions. But they'll probably keep getting better at the semi-autonomous/good conditions/freeway "self-driving"/"augmented driving"...

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

#306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Te…

> 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.

I'm curious how you square this with the fact that humans learn to drive with intermittent sensory input from only two cameras plus some auxiliary sensors. Clearly, humans can extrapolate from very limited input. Why can't Tesla demonstrate object permanence after years of development?

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

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would much rather we invest billions into existing public transit solutions as a community. A light weight electric train doesn't need advanced LIDAR + AI to navigate, it can transport 100x people than a single car.

Well, that depends on what problem you're solving. Self-driving vehicles aren't solving mass transportation. They're solving ubiquitous personal transportation. They may also solve mass transport by being cheap, ubiquitous, and by performing an end-run around the piles of local regulation that restrict mass transit.

> the piles of local regulation that restrict mass transit

Yes, that's what's stopping local governments building more mass transit, it's all those regulations imposed by the pesky local government!

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

#308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> then consider the lower reaction times of machines Meanwhile, Teslas run into the backs of car carriers because they only recognise the car it's carrying and not the truck bed extending behind it. It might react faster, but it needs to identify the danger first and up until now, it's much worse at that in many situations. Yes, you're right, once it's safer, it's safer. That makes your statements just as vacuous as…

> Meanwhile, Teslas run into the backs of car carriers because they only recognise the car it's carrying and not the truck bed extending behind it And someone rear ended me the other day because they didn't notice cars were stopping. Yes, self-driving cars make mistakes, but humans make all sorts of mistakes, too. The question is, do self driving cars have more accidents per mile (or more damage per mile/injuries per…

> The question is, do self driving cars have more accidents per mile (or more damage per mile/injuries per mile/ deaths per mile) than human driven cars?

It should matter if they have less, but in the real world it doesn't matter, because it's "scary" to be rear-ended by an unthinking machine, and business as usual to be rear-ended by a clumsy human, so people will always hold machines to a much higher standard.

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

#309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that depends on what problem you're solving. Self-driving vehicles aren't solving mass transportation. They're solving ubiquitous personal transportation. They may also solve mass transport by being cheap, ubiquitous, and by performing an end-run around the piles of local regulation that restrict mass transit.

Self-driving is largely a reaction to the single-person-single-car scale problem. When you're trying to transport millions of people on a weekday, cars will never be able to meet demand. Look at China trying to vertically scale their highways resulting in 40-lane wide highways and multi-day traffic jams.

Username ... does not check out.

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

#310
post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't doubt for a second that people like Musk (and before him for example Steve Jobs and Jack Tramiel) can be very demanding and sometimes difficult to work for. I also don't doubt for a second that a lot of the stories told have a sour grapes quality to them: If you're good at the kind of job they're offering, you can easily find employment somewhere else and you're also probably smart enough to move on of your o…

> I worked for an erratic, sociopathic boss once. I quit after about six months. Unless you're a masochist or truly have no other options, you'll soon realize it's not worth whatever extra money or prestige the company name might possibly come with. Many people move their families, buy houses, and make large commitments taking new jobs (plus are normally granted large stock vesting at a given schedule). There's a lot…

Some of that fall under "having no other options", which is of course a very unpleasant situation to be in.

I'm not, however, desperate enough for wealth to sell my sanity for stock options. :-)

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