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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

#881

Post by Erlich_Bachman »

hvidgaard wrote: post #873
radium3d wrote: post #760

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Autopilot is not a misleading name actually. You, the press and others just have ingrained a false definition of the word. "An autopilot is a system used to control the trajectory of an aircraft, marine craft or spacecraft without constant manual control by a human operator being required. Autopilots do not replace human operators, but instead they assist them in controlling the vehicle. "

If everyone defines Autopilot as an automatic system, shouldn't the definition in the dictionaries be updated? That was a rhetorical question, because it happens all the time. Besides, Tesla claim that it can drive you unassisted on the highway, so they are very much coining that definition as well.

Everyone does not. This is why you see this many people have a problem with how you seem to use that word.

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

#882

Post by kgabis »

davedx wrote: post #509
randycupertino wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started avoiding Teslas on the freeway after watching the video of this guy putting on his makeup and shooting a youtube video while on autopilot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cT_rEa4X1nA

Just curious: do you also avoid Subarus, Seats, BMWs, Audis and the other cars with adaptive cruise control? Or is it only Tesla drivers you consider this dangerous?

It's called Tesla autopilot. Average user is more likely to do silly things in cars that are advertised to have an autopilot rather than adaptive cruise control.

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

#883

Post by neop1x »

snowwrestler wrote: post #586
xkemp wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Predicting with All-Caps confidence that autonomous driving is "decades away" is at least as indefensible as overly optimistic predictions were.

I think autonomous driving advocates would do well to look at the history of computer handwriting recognition, an easier technical problem with lower consequences that received significant investment over decades. But it has never gotten good enough to succeed in the marketplace against alternatives. Why? It never exceeded consumer expectations, which are extremely high for automated systems. Even a correctness rate…

My error rate in recognizing handwriting would be much higher than a free, open-source recognizer. I am very bad at recognizing other people's handwriting. I don't understand your need for 0 errors. Real life is full of errors and imperfections, there is chaos everywhere. Seems like you expect unachivable.

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

#884

Post by jjeaff »

Spooky23 wrote: post #589
ijpsud wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that just "image de-obfuscation" though? Seems like narrow AI will be able to out-class humans at that in no time. You can generate as much training data for that as you want. Doesn't really require human-type intelligence. Though I guess you might mean that the obfuscation makes the edge cases even harder, which makes sense.

I have a car (Honda Pilot) where the company decided to make the lift gate window too high, probably to accommodate mounting the spare tire inside the cabin. This design makes you dependent on the rear camera for most reverse use cases. It probably made a lot of sense in the Southern California design center. In Upstate New York, that camera is covered in road spray and salt, and my brain cannot see anything or act e…

And I have heard rumors of lobbying going on to get the requirement for rear view mirrors dropped when video feeds are provided to replace the functionality.

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

#885

Post by coldtea »

azernik wrote: post #838
coldtea wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In fact, PV prices have dropped DRAMATICALLY since 2000 ( https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014... . looks at the different trends 1986-2001 and 2001-2012), as have the prices/performance of the energy storage systems needed to make them practical. Can't open this, but the abstract also shares this: "Market-stimulating policies were responsible for a large share of PV's cost decline" This par…

The subsidies created the scale and experience required to lower the costs; they're not included in the cost numbers. With current technology, they are cheaper without subsidies.

I read that in various places, but I'm still suspicious. There are lots of ways to hide subsidies (green tax cuts for example).

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

#886

Post by hugh-avherald »

Piskvorrr wrote: post #808
hugh-avherald wrote: post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Required reaction times would be around 2-3 s. Even if you took 10s, you're not going to die -- you might hit the edge lights though

At which point you're arguing semantics: "it's not the short landing that kills you, it's the impact into whatever you hit there!" You're describing Asiana Airlines 214, whose crash killed 3. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214

No I'm saying the pilot flying an aircraft correctly configured for autoland in which the autoland system encounters a fault does not require subsecond reaction times to avoid a crash.

Asiana Airlines Flight 214 is irrelevant because (1) it was not correctly configured for approach, (2) the autopilot was switched off over a minute before the crash, and (3) the autopilot did not fail.

The parent of this thread was an argument over whether a aircraft flying on autopilot needs the pilot monitoring it to have subsecond reaction times to avoid a crash. It doesn't.

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

#887

Post by neuronic »

eastof wrote: post #818
neuronic wrote: post #441

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…

Sorry for the out of the blue unrelated reply, but I am currently stuck working as a technical consultant at one of the Big4, how did you make your way out of this? I feel like I am learning about antiquated technologies, and that pivoting to a software engineering job more aligned with my interests, skills, and sanity feels harder every day. Even something like you describe you are doing now sounds much better than…

Sorry, late reply.

I got out by never really getting in I am afraid. I worked for 1.5 years in technical consulting as a student job while getting my informatics degree.

Once I obtained my degree, I declined an offer by said Big4 firm and took another offer where I got to go hands-on with coding. I had previous coding experience which helped and then amazing colleagues who boosted my start.

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

#888

Post by easytiger »

maeln wrote: post #880
easytiger wrote: post #320

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

Yeah, very clever. There is many reason why one would like to avoid having to take a care all the time: 1. I cannot drive if I went to a friend a drunk alcohol or consume weed 2. Why would I drive if somebody/something could do it for me, and i get to do whatever i want during this time 3. Gazoline, insurance, maintenance, repair, ... a car can be very costly especially if use intensively 4. Cars are polluting a lot,…

And yet there are almost as many cars as adults in the USA.

How do you think all those issues are solved presently?

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

#889

Post by Reason077 »

snowwrestler wrote: post #851
Reason077 wrote: post #790

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "handwriting recognition... has never gotten good enough to succeed in the marketplace against alternatives." There is little market demand for handwriting recognition, and thus little active research goes into it. Not because it is a difficult or problematic technology, but because better alternatives exist that make it irrelevant. Even if someone were to come up with an absolutely perfect handwriting recognition…

This is all true today, but it was not true in the past. There was a time in the computing industry when everyone believed that pen interfaces with handwriting recognition would be a crucial enabler for highly mobile computing. Both Apple and Microsoft built major product launches around this idea in the early 1990s.

Oh, absolutely. I remember that era well. But I'm talking about today, of course.

What changed was that touch screens became better. The old capacitive touch screens were clunky, slow, inaccurate. You could put a keyboard on them, but the lag and poor accuracy meant you couldn't really touch type comfortably. Then multitouch came along and made on-screen keyboards much more responsive and accurate.

But also, Blackberry and (pre-smartphone) phones with SMS made people more comfortable with the idea of using keyboards for text entry on handheld devices. And crucially, auto-correct and predictive text entry covered up for accuracy errors and made text entry by keyboard even more attractive.

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

#890

Post by nytesky »

keanzu wrote: post #847
PeterisP wrote: post #844

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are tipping points. If always taking the taxi everywhere is more expensive than the cost of owning your own car, then most people drive their own cars and taxis are for special occasions. If after a tech change always taking the taxi everywhere is less expensive than the cost of owning your own car, then most people would do just that, and only a minority would own a car. A switch from 20/80 to 80/20 is transfo…

> has further societal effects Like parking or more specifically - not parking. Here's an example development: "And parking clocks in at a full 29% of the developed land here, taking up twice as much total space as the actual buildings." https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/2/6/movie-set-urban...

Parking may be reduced but the flip side is that we will have hoards of always cicuclating cyber cabs or we’ll have private owners returning and summoning their private vehicle from free parking at home, thus doubling the trips taken

Not to mention sending a car out for errands. Self driving will free up parking garages, but fill up the roads.

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