I always find these things over hyped. Like yes, you can trick an autonomous car into stopping or crashing. But you can also trick a human into stopping or crashing by running into traffic with a construction hat and stop sign, or dropping rocks from an overpass. The reality is that road safety relies on the vast majority of people agreeing to not kill each other.
Hacked billboards make Teslas see phantom objects causing them to swerve or stop
231–240 of 264 posts
Re: Hacked billboards make Teslas see phantom objects causing them to swerve or stop
#232I'm not sure that counts as a phantom object. That's something that looks like a stop sign, positioned where a stop sign could be. Admittedly its only shown for half a second but I imagine a distracted driver who looked up suddenly could be equally fooled. Having video ads on screens that drivers can see and be distracted by is the real problem.
Possibly, but many/most humans would quickly realize the sign was out of place, quickly vanished, etc and not stop the car or swerve too far. This is a solvable problem. Just another example of where "AI" is lacking a sense of intuition.
It could be given an extra sense with LIDAR but that is 'a fool's errand' and not as profitable.
I should start carrying a stop sign in my pack, have some fun on the highway.
Re: Hacked billboards make Teslas see phantom objects causing them to swerve or stop
#233There 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…
> I sort of find the idea of self-driving cars as ... selfish?
>Don't want to drive, take the bus.
A big issue with public transport is the “first/last mile” problem. You want to take the light rail to commute 25 miles to work but the station is two miles away from your house and the closest station to your work is over a mile. “Just walk” does not work for everyone, either because of weather (getting soaked by rain or sweating too much in your work clothes), or physical abilities, or time. So are you looking to take the bus to the station and from the station to work? How much time does that add? Do the schedules even line up well? If you buy a bike, is it allowed on the light rail, is there a safe place at your work for it? Do you drive a car and leave it at the station, and what do you do on the other side to get to the office?
Autonomous vehicles can/should be used in conjunction with public transport to solve the first/last mile problem. Hail a small electric autonomous car to take you to the light rail station, and hop into another one at the other end that takes you directly to work. It is still convenient for the individual and it still eliminates 23 miles of vehicle driving in a dense urban environment and removes the need for a parking space in a location that space is likely a premium.
Same with busses. They take forever because they have to stop so often. They have to stop so often because people can’t walk long distances to a more central location for pickup. People in the lowest incomes that, out of necessity, have to use the bus system may commute for multiple hours simply because of these inefficiencies. But if you had small 10 person shuttles servicing a limited area to bring local people to and from their front door to a more central bus location, you could reduce the number of stops a bus makes over a commuter distance by an order of magnitude and turn a 2 hour commute into a 40 minute commute.
Re: Hacked billboards make Teslas see phantom objects causing them to swerve or stop
#234Anyone else getting strong "I, Robot" (the movie) vibes from this line of research? I can see this happening as an opening shot to an action movie. Some reporter finds out that $government is doing $bad_thing. They pack up the evidence, rush out the door to talk to their editor. A slick, self-driving car pulls up as they exit the building, they enter and pull away. It is a rainy night, and the car zips along the city…
I have to admit, that was captivating. The part about cryptic images that resemble children gave me the chills for some reason.
Re: Hacked billboards make Teslas see phantom objects causing them to swerve or stop
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
Make it better? Move to a better area? I strongly advise that anyone who pays attention to national politics diversify at least 50% of that energy into local issues.
Moving has a lot of inertia, and might not be possible if nobody is interesting in buying your house, or other area's rent is too high. Your area might have _had_ great service, but has rapidly degraded. There are tons of things outside your control. Having a car is the common answer to gain back some of that.
You'll notice I had a solution ahead of moving.
Re: Hacked billboards make Teslas see phantom objects causing them to swerve or stop
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
Possibly, but many/most humans would quickly realize the sign was out of place, quickly vanished, etc and not stop the car or swerve too far. This is a solvable problem. Just another example of where "AI" is lacking a sense of intuition.
It could be given an extra sense with LIDAR but that is 'a fool's errand' and not as profitable. I should start carrying a stop sign in my pack, have some fun on the highway.
As a cyclist who frequently gets buzzed by cars, it's certainly interesting to ponder the possibilities.
Re: Hacked billboards make Teslas see phantom objects causing them to swerve or stop
#237Anyone else getting strong "I, Robot" (the movie) vibes from this line of research? I can see this happening as an opening shot to an action movie. Some reporter finds out that $government is doing $bad_thing. They pack up the evidence, rush out the door to talk to their editor. A slick, self-driving car pulls up as they exit the building, they enter and pull away. It is a rainy night, and the car zips along the city…
I mean you've basically described the opening to Upload on Amazon.
Re: Hacked billboards make Teslas see phantom objects causing them to swerve or stop
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
There have already been (audio) ads that trigger speech-recognising machines like Alexa, and in that case I would very much say it is free speech.
Like the famous 2017 Burger King ad that deliberately hijacked nearby Google Home smart speakers. [0] There's an argument to be made that it should be covered by cyber-attack laws. You aren't allowed to deliberately take control of someone else's computer without their permission. Consider a hypothetical example: an author without use of their hands, who uses text-to-speech to write books and to control their compute…
>There's an argument to be made that it should be covered by cyber-attack laws.
Yes, but smart speakers should not rely on laws to prevent successfull attacks.
Re: Hacked billboards make Teslas see phantom objects causing them to swerve or stop
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are advantages and disadvantages to each. The computer failure methods are new to us, but we're all too familiar with human failings. Humans have much slower reaction times. Humans get sleepy, drunk, or distracted. Humans sometimes get angry or impatient and do dangerous things with their vehicles. The important metric is accidents per mile driven. Right now, Teslas on autopilot seem to be significantly safer t…
Now are those metrics comparable? Are they normalized for conditions and location? That is situations where autopilot disengages and driver does not take action counted in? Weather, type of road and so on has huge effect on number of accidents. Unless those are taken in consideration it's only lies...
I'm going to say that these are not normalized. It's fairly well known (and NHTSA data backs it up) that the accident rate for the types of vehicle Tesla builds (luxury 4/5 door sedans) accounts for a fraction of total vehicle accidents.
A portion of this is a result of the ability for young adults to purchases $30-40,000 cars: 16-19 yo drivers make up around 2/5 of the total accidents in the US.
https://aaafoundation.org/rates-motor-vehicle-crashes-injuri...
Additionally, 4 door sedans in general (which describes most Tesla models) are only involved in approximately 27% of all accidents. The Model X, a compact SUV, only accounts for about 13% of all accidents.
https://cdan.nhtsa.gov/tsftables/tsfar.htm# (look at table 37)
But it doesn't make for nearly as good of a press release.
Re: Hacked billboards make Teslas see phantom objects causing them to swerve or stop
#240Better article: https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-model-x-autopilot-phantom-... Original research: https://www.nassiben.com/phantoms
The newsweek article has basically no information. Either of these would be much better