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Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

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

#561

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…

AI is not stochastical gradient descent optimization; neural nets are; but AI is bigger than that - planning, deduction, game theory and so on. You can find out buy buying and reading a text book.

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

#562
post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This "driver aid" model itself is starting to sound like a problem to me. You either have safe, autonomous driving or you don't. A model where a driver is assumed to disengage attention, etc but then be expected to rengage in a fraction of a second to respond to an anomalous event is fundamentally at its core flawed I think. It's like asking a human to drive and not drive at the same time. Most driving laws assume a…

> I fail to see the point of autopilot at all if you're supposed to be able to correct it at any instant in real-world driving conditions. -The cynic in me suggests we need autopilot as a testbed on the way to the holy grail of Level 5 autonomous vehicles. The engineer in me fears that problem may be a tad too difficult to solve given existing infrastructure - that is, we'd probably need to retrofit all sorts of sens…

Road sensors ain't gonna fix the long tail of L5. We can't even upkeep roads as is, like crash attenuators, which would have mitigated the fatality in OP article.

Also, highway lane splits are very dangerous in general. It's a concrete spear with 70mph cars whizzing right towards it. Around here, they just use barrels of material, sand I believe. Somebody crashes into one, they clean the wreck, and lug out some more sand barrels. Easy and quick.

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

#563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Emphasis on real. There is definitely something that most people would refer to as "self-driving" in cars on the road. Then you'd have to define what a self-driving car actually means. At least for me, self-driving means level 4 upwards. Everything below I'd consider assisted driving. > Unless you're suggesting the PR team decided to make shit like "Summon" available to the public, then it's not just "PR spin". As…

> Then you'd have to define what a self-driving car actually means. I said "for most people". For most people I know, a car that will change lanes, navigate freeways and even exit freeways is "self driving". It may be completely unreliable but even a toaster that always burns the bread is called a toaster: no one says "you need to define what a toaster means to you". > At least for me, self-driving means level 4 upwa…

Car engineers know what level 1-5 is. Level 1 and 2 are basic assist - cruise control and the like. Level 3 is the car drives but the driver monitors everything for issues the car can't detect. 4 and 5 are you can go to sleep, 4 means there are some situations the car will wake you up and after you get a coffee (ie there is no need for instant take over) you drive, while 5 is the car will drive anything.

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

#564
post #388

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…

In addition to all the hype-sters and scammers, you're probably seeing a lot of the often young urbanites with dreams of never owning a car and getting chauffeured around by super-cheap robo-Ubers all their lives. Many of them are either in denial or are feeling pretty betrayed at the moment.

That said, there are legitimate issues with incrementally improving assistive driving. People text and drive today without assistive driving. If a car can mostly make its way in rush hour down the highway autonomously, does anyone think that people won't routinely watch Netflix on their commute?

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

#565
post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could even make it so that you drive it yourself and keep it outside your home to use when you need. What an innovation that would be

Would be great if you could afford the $40k and insurance to house that 4000lb hunk of precious metal you spend energy moving around everywhere you go. A bus pass is a $1.75 on the other hand...

Don't be silly, not everyone is buying $40k cars. And the bus is a great solution if it exists, but in most places on planet earth it does not.

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

#566
This is from 2018 and the driver didn't even have his hands on the wheel, though he knew there were problems at that spot. Very careless driving. Personally I wouldn't use a mobile game while I'm driving a vehicle, nevermind software in development.

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

#567

According to this article: https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a30877577/driver-tesla-mod... "Data from his phone indicates that a mobile game was active during his drive and that his hands were not on the wheel during the six seconds ahead of the crash."

Gotta love how quick Tesla is to throw their customers under the bus using telemetry data the customer cannot access on their own..

The family is suing Tesla. Would you rather this evidence was presented in court after the family have already spent thousands in lawyer fees?

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

#568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I refuse to use Toyota's for the same reason. On I-95 in northern Virginia, people drive slow in the middle and left lanes all the time, so people are always weaving in and out of lanes trying to get around. This means you get cut off a lot . And every time someone cut in front, the truck would slam on the brakes well before it was necessary.

I've driven Toyota's all my life and never once been in a vehicle that does anything automatic beyond turning on the lights when it gets dark. Maybe you just need to avoid the Toyota model you bought.

Every single new Toyota from 2017 on has adaptive cruise control and emergency braking assistance. You can disable the EBA and use reg cruise control but it’s all on by default.

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

#569
post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very excited about the possibility of self-driving cars. Let the car drive while I take a nap or read a book. But I have a hard time believing that the technology is anywhere close to being mature. You need a lot of contextual knowledge to drive safely in unusual circumstances. I totally believe that within well-defined limits, AI already outperforms humans, but traffic has no well-defined limits. Anything can ha…

Let the car go park itself while I walk into the restaurant. Let the car go fill itself up with gas at night while I am soundly asleep.

> Let the car go fill itself up with gas at night while I am soundly asleep.

I'm bearish on both self-driving and the universal adoption of electric cars, but everyone will be plugging their car in at home long before they can make one that drives itself to the gas station.

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

#570
post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 an…

Yeah but speaking as someone kinda on the other side there are things like this 'actual Level 4' delivering stuff for real in Wuhan https://kr-asia.com/jd-com-uses-l4-autonomous-driving-soluti... Fair enough it's not very good - that one just went 600m - but it's hard to argue it won't exist for decades when it exists now. And historically going form sorta works but is rubbish in info tech eg. early cellphones, inter…

The issue is that there are so, so many edge cases to worry about. Simple example: someone decides to troll you in your self-driving car and steps out in front of it. You don't have controls in the car, so you can't go around them - you have to wait for them to move.

In reality, it seems like it would resolve quickly - you get out and yell at them, call the police if that doesn't work, etc. But it can get more sinister - criminals _already_ block the road to force drivers out of their car to rob them[1][2]. Now, if you know that might happen, you can just drive around the obstacle. Unless, of course, you're in a self-driving car where you might not even be able to get it to do a u-turn. Related issues would be areas where the practical advice is "don't stop" - not even at red lights - if you're there late at night due to the risk of car jacking[3][4] (this might be out-of-date now, to be fair). Can rules like that be encoded into a self-driving car?

OK, yes, you probably could find a way to do it. But that's almost certainly just the tip of the iceberg in terms of "ways people will fuck with self-driving cars" and "things people do that are technically illegal but still safer than the alternative." Could you solve enough of those in 5-10 years, _on top of_ making self-driving cars work in sun/rain/snow/fog/night/tornados/etc safely and consistently? I think that's very unlikely. Decades seems far more likely to me.

[1] https://abc7chicago.com/593111/

[2] (Non-EU only) https://wgntv.com/2015/03/31/robbers-set-up-fake-road-blocks...

[3] https://eu.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/201...

[4] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskLEO/comments/2rzsdz/are_there_an...

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