Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected

Disclaimer up front: I work for GM, I don't work on SDC.

As I see it, self-driving is a cursed[0][1] problem. If you could choose a different problem space, or to ignore some complications, self-driving would merely be very hard. But the requirement to handle ANY external behavior with ANY external conditions and navigate to ANY destination, while also maintaining safety is impossible* satisfy.

One cursed corner of the problem space is ML itself: ML is amazing in that it enables emergent behavior [3], but ML is terrible in that it gives rise to emergent behavior. The traditional engineering mindset wants a map of inputs to outputs, but you don't get to choose your inputs in the SDC world, and you can't specify all of your outputs.

Another cursed corner is the Always/Never[2] problem. You want safety features like Automated Emergency Braking to Always kick in when there is a problem, and you Never want them to kick in when there isn't a problem.

I really don't know how any of this gets fixed. I do think that sensor fusion and advances in AI can reduce the size of some of the cursed area of the problem, but the problem is also meta-cursed in the definition of Self-Driving: the solution to normal cursed problems is to reduce or change the solution scope, but if you reduce or change the Self-Driving solution scope, then "it's not real self driving".

0. https://twvideo01.ubm-us.net/o1/vault/gdc2019/presentations/...

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_dimensionality#Machin...

2. https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/always-never

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3. edit: [pdf] https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/81580604.pdf Especially see section 4.3

Turns out you can't make ridiculously complicated autonomous tech that interacts with the real world in an incredibly nuanced and varied way out of pure VC hype.

I am a traffic engineer and one of the things that I do regularly is write 10 year traffic plans for small to medium sized cities, think 60,000 people max. When a lot of the self driving hype was really kicking off, I was told to make sure to incorporate them into the plans. This mostly consisted of a few sentences about self driving and that was it. When modeling future traffic growth, the client would always say, "these numbers a pretty high, do you thing self driving cars will lower them?" To which I would respond that it is doubtful. I am in the rural west where cars are a large part of life. Ride sharing and public transportation are rarely a thing outside of the core of towns. The idea of a self driving car that one doesn't own would be very odd to a lot of people in this area.

On top of the social side of things, the roads are not in great shape in northern climates and many of the visual cues that we use to drive can be missing or very hard to see for many miles. Striping delineating the edge of the road often gets worn away over the course of a few years and doesn't get re-painted for a few more. Some major roads connecting two towns may not even have a paved shoulder, just 24 feet of asphalt with a stripe down the middle. (For reference, 12 foot lanes with 4 foot shoulders are the general norm for this part of the US.) All of this and I have still yet to touch on weather.

I look forward to self driving cars. However, I don't think that they are going to solve many of our traffic issues outside of urban cores. For me, the incremental steps to reach self driving will result in fewer injuries and fatalities on our roadways, and that is a win.

I see the current Tesla system in similar light, it does very well in every day common situations and some of what it does is damn good; driving down country roads with curves and such is exhilarating but still safe.

Now currently the Tesla system does give you a much more clear idea of what the car does see around it but still no option to see what it fully records; there are means to get this footage but its not something every driver can.

Now my TM3 goes in at the end of the month for the hardware 3.0 upgrade which will allow it to process more of what it sees and also relay that to me. The difference in what other's have show in just what the car relays back to the driver exposes just how much information has to be processed.

Then comes the simple fact, the real issue is that the hard decisions are ones we make all day, driving by exception. We make so many choices that are exceptions to the rule we are numb to it, it is nearly subconscious.

Then the other issue, other drivers. Not just people who drive badly but those who will go out of their way to cause self driving cars issues. with the number of people on the road you will find them with too much regularity. More might pop up if regulation comes down which demands self driving cars or semi autonomous cars obey all traffic laws, especially speed limits. On some roads I drive just obeying the limit is enough to impart rage on other drivers.

Billions of dollars of VC funding go a long way to convincing people of what is possible, whatever the reality is.