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Hacked billboards make Teslas see phantom objects causing them to swerve or stop

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Re: Hacked billboards make Teslas see phantom objects causing them to swerve or stop

#181

Post by piceas »

jcrawfordor wrote: post #31
liquidify wrote: post #21

Why don't we build some experimental infrastructure that is designed specifically for self driving vehicles?

A number of dedicated test facilities for autonomous vehicles exist, some operated by universities, some by government agencies, and some of the autonomous vehicle vendors own their own (more common for those aligned with major automakers which generally already have large proving grounds, but Uber apparently has a small one). I think the issue is that a dedicated test area will just never reflect the full set of pro…

An example from Hamburg: TAVF - Test Track for Automated and Connected Driving

~37-55 traffic lights, ~9km, 108.11p, city driving on 1-7 lanes (mostly 2-4) with on and off street bicycle lanes (Please don't hit me test cars!).

As a resident on the test track I have only once seen it in use. It would be fun to acquire a suitable radio and try listening in to what's being broadcast but that's a project for another day.

https://tavf.hamburg/en/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11p

Re: Hacked billboards make Teslas see phantom objects causing them to swerve or stop

#182

Post by kirillzubovsky »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #43
smallstepforman wrote: post #35

There are many reasons why I dont believe in self driving cars, the first (and strongest) is to imagine that the software was written by my collegues (and myself).

I sort of find the idea of self-driving cars as ... selfish? Don't want to drive, take the bus. The idea that we all need our personal chariots (and now robotic chauffeurs) seems to me to be the height of irresponsibility. And, yes, I am guilty of owning a car myself and feel guilt about it. But for some reason the self-driving bit just seems to take it to another level for me. Maybe too there's an air of elitism abo…

Speaking in terms of pure economics, improvements to self-driving cars today will eventually lead to mass-market adoption and substantially lower costs for everybody.

Take cell phones for example, they were big, expensive, had only one function, and only available for the rich just about 30 years ago. Now they are cheap, powerful, pocket supercomputers available to mostly everyone.

Another example is farming and supply chain. 100 years ago you were pretty limited to the foods available in the local store, but now you can get anything your heart might desire, be that bananas from Mexico for 69 cents, or Sake from Japan for $20. The world has greatly benefitted from advancements in technology that was once only available to the richest.

Most of the mid-class luxuries we enjoy today, from airlines, to hot tubs, to game consoles and books on Kindle, all of that had to be developed and brought to light, first expensive, and then gradually cheaper and cheaper.

Eventually even the buses will drive themselves, and that will only happen if we invest sufficient energy and resources into making the tech available and improving today.

Re: Hacked billboards make Teslas see phantom objects causing them to swerve or stop

#183

Post by Acinyx »

shajznnckfke wrote: post #160
morpheuskafka wrote: post #145

I think the concept of the line of death, from browser security UI design, is relevant here. The space outside of the highway right of way is completely uncontrolled and the Tesla should know better than to look at a billboard hundreds of feet up in the air for regulatory signs. The MUTCD has rules about where signs are to be placed--look only in those places. [1] https://textslashplain.com/2017/01/14/the-line-of-dea…

The problem is that they don’t have lidar and therefore can’t reliably measure depth, right? A billboard far away high up in the air may appear in the same direction as a closer road sign if you don’t have depth perception. You should be able to infer it from a camera with the right model but those methods are more fallible. Similar root cause to that time the guy got beheaded by a white truck perpendicular to the hi…

They put this "billboard" right at the height and location of a normal stop sign, location is not going to help for this.

Re: Hacked billboards make Teslas see phantom objects causing them to swerve or stop

#184

Post by hashtagmarkup »

krainboltgreene wrote: post #124
jvanderbot wrote: post #117

Cars should not detect "obstacles". They should detect roads. They should not seek _exceptions_ to driveable space through classification- or segmentation-first strategies. They should only detect driveable space. Full stop. You either detect a full-stopping-distance's worth of clear road through reliable (non visual) ranging with dense enough samples to preclude wheel-catching voids ... or you will continue to run i…

> They should only detect driveable space. I'm interested to hear how you decide what's drivable without detecting things that decide if roads are undrivable.

Obviously, roads should have minefields and electrified fences to ensure drivability. Potholes will be outlawed. Weather will be punishable by death.

Re: Hacked billboards make Teslas see phantom objects causing them to swerve or stop

#185

Post by hashtagmarkup »

toxik wrote: post #157
dmitriid wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A one-way street is also a drivable flat surface. As is a road with no lane markings. Can you guess why blindly driving down each of these will be dangerous?

Right, but can you guess why stopping in the middle of traffic for a fake stop sign is bad? Walk before you run is the essence of the argument here.

> Walk before you run is the essence of the argument here.

Walking on the highway because you got spooked is the essence of the reason why you're dead.

Re: Hacked billboards make Teslas see phantom objects causing them to swerve or stop

#186

Post by bitwize »

toxik wrote: post #159
bonestamp2 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe this will be fixed in a later update Maybe. I hope so. But from my understanding, context is the hardest part of computer vision.

Yes, human reasoning is not just pattern matching but mixed with deductive thinking. A picture of a stop sign is not a stop sign, neither is a reflection of one. Trying to teach a neural network all of these exceptions seems like a terrible approach and would likely not work very well.

That's why getting a computer to do basic real-world shit that humans do with aplomb will likely require a merger of GOFAI with the new, statistics-based AI.

Re: Hacked billboards make Teslas see phantom objects causing them to swerve or stop

#187

Post by bipson »

AdamHede wrote: post #180
godelski wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone else linked this[0] article that has a video of the attack. I think seeing the video will paint a different picture than what you have in your head. The "billboard" here is in a location that a stop sign would be, not your average highway billboard. One would hope Tesla's system has some depth awareness. Honestly I'd be impressed how they could do so much if it didn't. [0] https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-mo…

This is pretty important. The way the guys does this is very close to how you could also fool a human by hanging up real stop signs in the wrong places, and "stupidity" people would start to respect them. The only difference here is that a mere 500 ms flash elicites a response, where a human wouldn't notice. on balance, a 500 ms response time does seem like a feature more than a bug compared to a human.

Well, which one is it now:

Are self-driving computers superior to humans and make less mistakes, or is it OK for a computer to be tricked by something some humans would also not detect?

Btw. I think I can tell if there is a real stop-sign or something on a billboard after some 'huh'-moment and without slamming on the brakes. And humans still go circles around AI regarding plausibility-checking very out-of-the-ordinary events.

Re: Hacked billboards make Teslas see phantom objects causing them to swerve or stop

#189

Post by noodlesoups »

nexuist wrote: post #64
dreamcompiler wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which would fail in the case of construction workers holding up stop signs or school buses deploying stop signs, to cite just two examples.

It's actually comical in a way that we possess the technology to build robots that can operate heavy machinery and practically interpret the world the same way we do, but we still have to worry about people holding up plastic signs. It makes me think that the first real wide scale self driving vehicle deployment will have to come from a nation state rather than a corporation; the easiest way to solve all of these pro…

robots that can operate heavy machinery do not interpret the world the same way we do, and do not have anything resembling actual intelligence.

That is exactly why they can't interact with real world cases of fully valid plastic signs coming out of nowhere.

Re: Hacked billboards make Teslas see phantom objects causing them to swerve or stop

#190

Post by noodlesoups »

brianwawok wrote: post #36
ianmobbs wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LIDAR maps out the world around you in three dimensions, so with that data, there's no way it would mistake "a 'Stop' sign hidden within a fast food commercial [...] only flashing on-screen for a fraction of a second" (article) for an actual stop sign

But it would fall for a cardboard stop sign on a stick held up by a troublemaker.

That requires a whole different kind of effort. These hacks can be done remotely from the other side of the world and leave little trace
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