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Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected

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Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected

#81

Post by Robotbeat »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #57
derefr wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO cars are for getting between cities, or between places in non-cities; within a city, the economical long-term solution is to just replace the roads (save for cargo corridors) with some kind of pod rail network, i.e. self-driving four-seater trolleys. The exceptions become far fewer if there's nothing on the "road" but other rail-bound vehicles. In such a future, if you lived in a city but owned your own real car…

> some kind of pod rail network, i.e. self-driving four-seater trolleys If you go that far, the problem is already trivial right? Just making roads specifically for self-driving vehicles would make the problem trivial. What the companies are trying to accomplish is self driving cars in current conditions.

I've thought for a while that The Boring Company is a hedge by Elon in case self-driving turns out to be unsolvable in a timely manner...

Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected

#82

Post by ghaff »

NohatCoder wrote: post #42

I think car companies try to rely way too much on machine learning. You get some promising results fast, but it is all inside a black box, both verifying the correctness and changing what is wrong are almost impossible jobs. Maybe machine learning can be used to tell the difference between a dog and a plastic bag, but you'll need some hard code to describe how to react to either.

>ut you'll need some hard code to describe how to react to either

My understanding is that's largely how it's done. The ML part is mostly about recognizing objects. But the car doesn't "learn" how to drive. It's told how to drive depending on what's happening in its field of view.

Which is why there's probably misperceptions about the importance of miles on the road. It uncovers un-programmed situations but it's not like the car runs over someone and reinforcement learning leads to it not doing that next time.

Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected

#83

Post by reggieband »

I've been watching Lex Fridman's youtube podcast and there is a recent interview with Jim Keller [1]. Keller is a chip designer famous for his involvement in multiple chips at Intel, AMD, Apple and he was co-author of the x86-64 instruction set. He also worked for Tesla.

There is a point in the conversation where Lex and Jim clearly disagree about how "easy" self-driving AI should be. Lex is clearly pessimistic and Jim is clearly optimistic. I have to admit I was more swayed by Lex's points than by Jim's, but it is hard to discount someone so clearly (extraordinarily) expert and working directly in the field.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb2tebYAaOA

Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected

#84

Post by viburnum »

axguscbklp wrote: post #61

Yes, harder than hype and deluded optimism expected. Plenty of people have seen through the hype and delusion for years now. Level 5 requires AGI. AGI is probably nowhere close to being realized - humans may well be centuries away from reaching the necessary technological level. Humanity might never get there at all. In any case, if humanity ever developed AGI, it would revolutionize the world. Self-driving cars woul…

You’re right, but this is a religious conviction for nerds, like their belief in space colonies. They flip out if you don’t play along.

Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected

#85

Post by bdamm »

chipperyman573 wrote: post #38
cletus wrote: post #33

Alternate headline: Some people overstated how simple this problem was because they didn't know what they were talking about, could promote themselves as experts, could get funding for a self-driving startup or some combination of the above. I guess that isn't as pithy but it's closer to the truth. When it became clear that Uber's strategy (under Kalanick anyway) was premised on replacing drivers with AIs before the…

Counterpoint: personally I don't avoid doing things on the road from fear of the person behind the wheel but for fear that their reaction will cause an accident (swerving, slamming on the brakes, etc). Self driving cars have the same problem and honestly are probably less predictable. This might be due to the fact that I don't really care much about road rage. At least where I live, the chance of someone getting out…

I had that opinion too, until someone decided to get out of their car and escalate a situation that really shouldn't have been such a big deal. But they were macho in a car oozing with hormones so yeah, it happened. Even so, I'm personally more motivated by financial damage, the headache of dealing with insurance, and the consequences of being found to have broken the law, than I am by the threat of road rage.

Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected

#86

Post by pasttense01 »

dstroot wrote: post #6
Mattasher wrote: post #4

You have to wonder, when you see these stories, whether the engineers in charge of these programs spent much time driving around, trying to see the road like an AI might. In my experience, driving in the city, it's rare that I can go more than a few miles before some exception comes up that requires human judgment. Here's a few of the things I saw just last week: * Car double parked. Do I cross the center line to go…

> Cop directing traffic by hand at an intersection. That’s going to be really challenging. Good one!

The cop can carry a transmitting device which will communicate with cars telling them what to do.

Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected

#87

Post by golemiprague »

Self driving cars are going to work only in an environment where all cars are safe driving cars. In China they start running trackless light trains which makes much more sense. I believe dedicated routes for self driving cars will be a cheaper and more efficient alternative to trains and it will be the way forward long before we have a full self driving environment.

Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected

#88

Post by technofiend »

cletus wrote: post #33

Alternate headline: Some people overstated how simple this problem was because they didn't know what they were talking about, could promote themselves as experts, could get funding for a self-driving startup or some combination of the above. I guess that isn't as pithy but it's closer to the truth. When it became clear that Uber's strategy (under Kalanick anyway) was premised on replacing drivers with AIs before the…

>Alternate headline: Some people overstated how simple this problem was because they didn't know what they were talking about, could promote themselves as experts, could get funding for a self-driving startup or some combination of the above.

I jokingly call it management myopia: anything I don't understand can't be that hard.

Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected

#89

Post by krtong »

If you could create instructions efficient enough for a computer to drive a car, it always seemed like you just created the best instructions for a human to drive a car too, and a human who had similar instructions would always be a better driver of the two. "Pay attention to this, prioritize these things, brake when this occurs, turn when this occurs, safest speed is this given these parameters." and so on. You would think silicon valley would be obsessed with learning how to drive really well given the amount of time so many engineers have spent on automating it. We should have our own F1/WRC team by now sponsored by these companies.

Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected

#90

Post by bdamm »

wyxuan wrote: post #70
WalterBright wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is an interesting point. I can see that human drivers will be much more willing to drive aggressively (i.e. play chicken) if they know the other driver(s) are AI and will take evasive action. For example, I avoid doing things on the road that an inattentive other driver might be slow to react to and hit me, such as suddenly cutting across 3 lanes of traffic.

A little bit like how some people aggressively brake in front of Tesla drivers

Exactly. It's a form of bullying. Taking a swipe at cars that are under AI control is a form of intimidation just like "rolling coal", popping the finger, throwing coins at other cars, ICE pickups parking in EV charging spots, etc. So while it makes sense to me that an AI car should do something to indicate it is so to other drivers (e.g. quick double-pulse of the hazards every 10 seconds perhaps) that comes with a very real possibility of greatly increasing "road rage" incidents and even potentially undermining what driving assistance is meant to be for.
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