There are lots of edge cases that human can adapt to easily but would confuse machines. The risk is that when that edge case comes up if the car go full bat sht crazy and kills someone, that will bring down the hammer.
Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected
201–210 of 287 posts
Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected
#202There are lots of edge cases that human can adapt to easily but would confuse machines. The risk is that when that edge case comes up if the car go full bat sht crazy and kills someone, that will bring down the hammer.
Just look at parking lots and self summoning. Tesla is still in step 2 of 10
Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can see you've never tried to actually get charges brought against someone using dashcam footage...
I wear a helmet cam, and yes, as an individual it's basically impossible to get traction, even when you have a clear plate and face shot. But when the self-driving car company has thousands or millions of these incidents on record, they'll quickly find themselves wielding enormous power. They'll be able to correlate across time and space, similar to how phones running Google Maps are reporting their position and velo…
Heh, imagine "vigilante" network justice. Oh, hey, you messed with our cars one too many times. We'll arrange for some cars to line up in front of you and drive 25.
Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected
#204Self-driving stops being a (difficult) AI problem if you force all cars to be self-driving and network with each other. It converts the behavioral/theory-of-mind problem into a distributed computing problem. We could have had self-driving in the 80s with this approach. Imagine where we would be today if we had decades of 24/7 trucks and ubiquitous robotaxis. It would be a completely different world. It's a shame huma…
relying on networked cars is monstrously fragile. One critical error in the system is going to tank everyone, disconnecting from the system is going to drastically reduce the safety of both the individual and the system, as it now has to deal with rogue elements, and the potential for malicious attacks, like terrorism or simply some sort of natural freak event is huge problematic.
I think the direction of the thought is reasonable though, you should just take it a few steps farther. If networked infrastructure is a good idea, then maybe cars are not a good idea. We already have driverless, well defined, organised modes of transportation, they're called trains.
modern subway systems already pretty much drive themselves, they also come with the added bonus of not having everyone carry two tons of steel around.
Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected
#205Alternate 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…
it became clear that Uber's strategy (under Kalanick anyway) was premised on replacing drivers with AIs before the cash ran out This is kind of nitpicking, but this has always been a backup plan at best for Uber. Look at their expenditures and it is clear that their strategy has never been "all in" on self-driving. Their main plan was and basically still is a combination of driving competitors out of the market, incr…
> driving competitors out of the market,… raising prices, and lowering payments to drivers
So, textbook monopoly behavior.
Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected
#206near human levels of AGI will be needed to achieve Level 5 AVs- change my mind.
Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected
#207What I think is interesting is that none of these articles talk about one specific implication of self-driving cars. What happens to car-insurance companies? Seems like with self driving cars the form of car insurance we have now wouldn't be really necessary. I expect car-insurance profits to decline. Isn't there an incentive ( read: lobbying ) for car insurance companies to discourage self-driving cars?
In competitive jurisdictions, car insurance isn't a profitable venture per customer - insurance companies make money on the float.
In other jurisdictions, auto insurance is provided by a single public auto insurer - these rarely run a notable profit.
Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
Being excessively cautious makes you an unpredictable driver as well. Unpredictability is the antithesis of safe driving.
In my experience, I have never been surprised by overly cautious drivers, only drivers who have an excess of confidence. How do you define 'excess caution'?
As a frequent pedestrian in Seattle, overly cautious/"courteous" drivers are a big nuance. Particularly drivers who are over-eager to stop at crosswalks, sometimes parking in the middle of the intersection to wait for the cross walk on the other side. Some drivers around here have a habit of stopping prematurely too, waiting for me to cross before I've even gotten to the intersection.
Sometimes it gets truly absurd. Once I was standing on the sidewalk at an intersection waiting for an Uber when a driver stopped at a green light and started honking at me, furious when I refused to cross the road.
Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected
#209When I was starting my engineering career, it was right around when the first DARPA challenges had started. The hype was beginning, and my optimism towards technology was strong. I thought the predictions and timelines would be correct, and I still feel strongly that self-driving will be safer than humans in the long term. Recently, I bought a newer Subaru, with EyeSight. It has adaptive cruise and lane keep assist.…
Earlier today I was driving on the highway with autopilot (I have a Model 3) and came to a section where the road is angled in such a way and the pavement is old enough that there is a fair amount of standing water. Driving manually, I steer to the right or left slightly to avoid the ruts filled with an inch or two of standing water. Autopilot, on the other hand, was perfectly happy to blast right through it. That's…
That's a particularly insidious circumstance since standing water can conceal hazards from any vision system these cars or humans have. I would expect self-driving cars to refuse to drive through water in any circumstance. There could be a large pothole in the puddle that would ruin your car.
Worse than a mere car-destroying pothole, what if the flooded portion of the road no longer existed at all? That's a common enough occurrence that student drivers are generally warned about it specifically, warned to never drive across flooded sections of roadways because your car might fall into 10 feet of water without warning. If a self-driving car doesn't avoid a scenario we teach teenagers to be wary of, I don't think it deserves to be called self-driving.
Re: Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
In Portland, OR we have 4-way intersections where the stop signs alternate every 2 blocks. Drivers still tend to stop at every intersection, even when they have no stop sign.
Ha, I don't come to a complete stop, but I'm guilty of slowing down at the intersections without stop signs because I've experienced enough instances of cross traffic blowing through their stop signs. In the city I think it would probably be better if all intersections were four-ways.
Yes, while I found this annoying about San Francisco when I first moved there, I soon came to appreciate the value of the consistency.