Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

kqed.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 919 posts

Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#441

Post by neuronic »

Alupis wrote: post #388
fxtentacle wrote: post #187

I avoid new technology, exactly because I'm an engineer. I wonder if that is just me, but when new technology is introduced and hyped, I usually take a quick look at implementations, research, and talks just to get an idea of what the state of the art really is like. As a result, I have become the late adopter among my group of friends because the first iteration of any new technology usually just isn't worth the iss…

This whole self driving, fully autonomous thing has become some sort of strange faux-religion. It's followers see no other possible solution as acceptable. Instead of putting our heads together to make really good driver assistance technologies and being satisfied, the darn thing needs to also drive itself everywhere otherwise we're leaving something on the table! Untill we have zero deaths, we cannot stop demanding…

> This whole self driving, fully autonomous thing has become some sort of strange faux-religion.

What really bugs me, as someone working in consulting as a hands-on backend developer with a previous background in technical consulting at an accounting Big4 (student job), is the insane amount of PR, politics and marketing talk by people who have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA what they are talking about. I witnessed politicians and C-level industry people talking out of their asses to ... idk ... drive stocks? Look smart in the face of Tesla? PR? No clue.

Self-proclaimed experts in magazines and talk shows raving about how AI is going to change everything. I had colleagues telling customers about the magnificent rise of AI and none of them could even spell "gradient descent". Backed by a law or accounting degree they KNOW that self-driving is just around the corner and they are very vocal about it while easily impressed by tightly controlled demos at some international tech fair. Everyone just seems to fall into the hype trap without a single brain-byte spent on researching the actual issues and what's most sad is actual engineers/technical people not doing their due diligence and informing themselves BUT THEN GOING OUT TO TELL THEIR NON-TECHNICAL FRIENDS ABOUT THE AUTONOMOUS FUTURE. Ugh.

I held a minor internal talk at work about self-driving cars for people generally with other backgrounds but light superficial interest due to "Tesla" and "the hype". They were surprised to see that we are likely decades away from actual Level 4 (not the marketing garbage that some companies put out) because even a slight change in weather can really fuck with all systems on the roads right now.

Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#442

Post by johnjungles »

fxtentacle wrote: post #187

I avoid new technology, exactly because I'm an engineer. I wonder if that is just me, but when new technology is introduced and hyped, I usually take a quick look at implementations, research, and talks just to get an idea of what the state of the art really is like. As a result, I have become the late adopter among my group of friends because the first iteration of any new technology usually just isn't worth the iss…

This is an oversimplification of Tesla’s technology, and they don’t use Tensorflow, other people’s pre-trained models, and computer vision isn’t the only thing that is a part of driving, they use radar and ultrasonics as well.

I try new technologies all the time to get a sense of where it is in coming to fruition. I think what you mean is, you’re more skeptical of claims.

The same way you claim you can’t learn anything about NY in your bathroom, you don’t know anything about Tesla or Self-driving if you haven’t tried it. You should at least test drive it under controlled conditions where you feel comfortable before closing yourself off completely.

Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#443

Post by davedx »

thdrdt wrote: post #236
fxtentacle wrote: post #187

I avoid new technology, exactly because I'm an engineer. I wonder if that is just me, but when new technology is introduced and hyped, I usually take a quick look at implementations, research, and talks just to get an idea of what the state of the art really is like. As a result, I have become the late adopter among my group of friends because the first iteration of any new technology usually just isn't worth the iss…

Yes. Current self-driving might be safer than the avarage driver, but what most people forget is how unsafe it is when it fails. It fails harder than most avarage drivers and even bad drivers. In my eyes self-driving should still be called driving-assistance.

So when I see multi-car pileups on the motorway with cars that are a torn up husk (actually I've seen totalled cars just on inner city junctions where the speed limit is supposedly 50 kph), that's failing less hard than self-driving?

Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#444

Post by kraig911 »

Fail fast, fail often doesn't work when your life is on the line. I'm sure Tesla did a good job testing but this is one of those things where the world simply is hard to work out what happened. Mind you that the self driving car is probably way better than a comparable human driver. Why do we not feel bad when a human accidentally kills himself from faulty programming too?

Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#445

Post by [deleted] »

Angostura wrote: post #392
m00x wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Autopilot never meant full automatic control. In a plane context, which was the most common until now, it's only used to keep a trajectory steady, and anything unusual has to be taken care of by a human pilot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopilot > Autopilots do not replace human operators, but instead they assist them in controlling the vehicle. Names don't really mean anything, it could have been named anything.…

> Names don't really mean anything This is so, so wrong. Names explicitly set people's expectations.

[deleted]

Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#446

Post by lmilcin »

Well, being an engineer and understanding how fraught with problems AI is (well, it is not AI it is just ML), I would not be handing my life to the algorithm yet.

I understand these things are probably necessary step but maybe it shouldn't be possible for a car to drive in complex traffic without steering and focus of the human driver, yet.

Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#448

Post by throwaway92384 »

Alupis wrote: post #388
fxtentacle wrote: post #187

I avoid new technology, exactly because I'm an engineer. I wonder if that is just me, but when new technology is introduced and hyped, I usually take a quick look at implementations, research, and talks just to get an idea of what the state of the art really is like. As a result, I have become the late adopter among my group of friends because the first iteration of any new technology usually just isn't worth the iss…

This whole self driving, fully autonomous thing has become some sort of strange faux-religion. It's followers see no other possible solution as acceptable. Instead of putting our heads together to make really good driver assistance technologies and being satisfied, the darn thing needs to also drive itself everywhere otherwise we're leaving something on the table! Untill we have zero deaths, we cannot stop demanding…

It is a religion, nothing "faux" about it. It fills the same needs, and uses the same mechanisms within the human mind as more traditional religion.

It is also completely bonkers, as it makes bold assertions about the real world, with which reality will eventually disagree, whereas older religions tended to keep their most dogmatic positions unfalsifiable (the afterlife, the soul, vague prophecies, ...)

Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#449

Post by arethuza »

sam_goody wrote: post #419
Alupis wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This whole self driving, fully autonomous thing has become some sort of strange faux-religion. It's followers see no other possible solution as acceptable. Instead of putting our heads together to make really good driver assistance technologies and being satisfied, the darn thing needs to also drive itself everywhere otherwise we're leaving something on the table! Untill we have zero deaths, we cannot stop demanding…

IMO, flying cars will eventually arrive. Perhaps it will be limited to specific "lanes" (it will be much more palatable to the masses if it must (like cars) keep to a limited area). But it will not need to recognize pedestrians and bikers and human driven cars, and some standard will be introduced to allow all them self driving cars to talk to each other. At that point, Level 5 will be much easier, even obvious. All…

"But it will not need to recognize pedestrians and bikers and human driven cars"

If they want to land at some point presumably they have to avoid landing on these things?

Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#450

Post by fulafel »

tiborsaas wrote: post #437
PopeRigby wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think self driving cars are a ridiculous solution to a problem we created and doesn't need to exist. The US building out the country for cars wasn't a good way to do transportation. If we just had trains going from city to city and subways in the cities, we wouldn't even need self driving cars.

I never owned a car, but going anywhere, anytime, at will is a very real thing and cars are the obvious solution. Humans are terrible at safe driving and self driving will eventually solve this. I don't see how this is not the future of transportation.

We're going to lose the global warming battle if we don't reduce personal cars in transportation. (And no, EVs don't solve it, they still have way too big CO2 footprints)
Post reply on HN