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Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

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Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#171

Post by totetsu »

toast0 wrote: post #166
ecpottinger wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In in Whitby, Ontario, Canada, a dad and his son were killed driving a car across a railway crossing with no gates. The dad (driver) was on his phone at the time and it is believed the phone blocked his view of the train and he was talking to much to hear the train. The person he was talking to said they were talking like normal and suddenly the phone cut off. Computers probably can not be worse that the people alrea…

> Computers probably can not be worse that the people already on the road. Computers are better than some drivers, but they're worse than others. If the goal is safety, computerized assistance is almost certainly better than self driving. Keeping the human driver engaged and doing their best, but having the computer supervising works a lot better than having the human supervising; it's hard for a human to remain aler…

> If the goal is safety

If the goal was safety, a computer assisting a competent driver would be the best. If the goal is private profits for a few individuals, then a computer that doesn't take a paycheck would be best.

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#172

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

lettergram wrote: post #162
filmgirlcw wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-driving cars are perennially five years away. Putting aside the question of whether the tech is there or not (and I would argue it isn’t there for commercial consumer use), the infrastructure and the laws will take years to catch up. This isn’t an overnight problem and many of the barriers are things that tech can’t just design around.

Not to mention there’s a huge voting block that’ll be against automation. I think the best first bet is just localized (robots in factories). I’m personally of the opinion we are 10 years away or more technically. Main issue is weather and the risk threshold people can tolerate. All the tests thus far are in environments are high sun, no rain environments. If we are already localizing to southern cities, we may as we…

In the snow belt the reflective top layer of the lane markings gets scraped off by plows. When it rains the markings will completely disappear at night. Machine learning optimized for the ideal case is never going to work in many parts of the country.

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#174

Post by johannes1234321 »

rhodozelia wrote: post #165
johannes1234321 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However that has to be secure that a hacker can't simply stop all traffic or cause speeding

Which is pretty much impossible if you let people have the physical cars. They will report their speed to other cars, they will measure their speed from pulses generated by something rotating on the vehicle, replace rotating thing with your function generator and then you can tell other cars you are going any speed you want. Turn up your reported speed and watch all the other cars get out of your way!

Well, you can take the input as a data point, but make the final decision based on sensor data. Thus the shared data can make the flow smoother.

But I'm also waiting for fake street signs to troll/manipulate self driving vehicles :)

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#175

Post by matz1 »

jandrese wrote: post #88
ecpottinger wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In in Whitby, Ontario, Canada, a dad and his son were killed driving a car across a railway crossing with no gates. The dad (driver) was on his phone at the time and it is believed the phone blocked his view of the train and he was talking to much to hear the train. The person he was talking to said they were talking like normal and suddenly the phone cut off. Computers probably can not be worse that the people alrea…

Self driving cars would have to kill over 1.35 million people each year to be as bad as human drivers[1]. But there is no reason we should be happy if a self driving technology "only" kills 1.2 million people in a year. That number is absurd and should not be considered acceptable. I think in the semi-distant future we are going to look at manual operation of a motor vehicle as a dangerous party trick, something only…

Hell, I would happy if self driving cars only kills 1.5 (slightly more) million people each car.

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#176

Post by gher-shyu3i »

rhodozelia wrote: post #168
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Toyota is the last company I expect to bring something new to market well. The last time they did that it was the Prius and it was kind of a fluke IMO. Toyota's entire market is convincing people (the bulk of whom will trade in in a few years) that a Camry/4Runner/Sienna is worth substantially more than an Altima/Tahoe/Pacifica based on a bunch of promises about reliability after 150k that the statistical first owner…

Not only are Toyota’s more reliable in the long run, they have fewer defects out of the factory, fewer lemons, and because of this reputation they don’t depreciate as quickly. I am going to get a new Tacoma every 2 years because I can sell the old one for nearly the same price as the new one. No more losing 50% of the value as soon as you drive it off the lot.

Aren't the new Tacomas made in Mexico? Do you think that will affect their reliability?

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#177

Post by mikepurvis »

kgin wrote: post #86
mikepurvis wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you need a high-bandwidth coverage-everywhere comms system and a robust infrastructure for remote teleop, like what Starsky was building: https://medium.com/starsky-robotics-blog/the-end-of-starsky-... Then the steering-wheel-less car at least has the ability to call for help when it's only 98% sure of what to do instead of 99.99% sure. But obviously this kind of model only makes sense in a fleet context, not as a…

Most remote assistance is not live driving. A remote human adds labels and maybe even marks out a safe path for the vehicle so that vehicle has enough information to proceed.

Starsky's was. Did you see the picture of their console?

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#178

Post by ghaff »

totetsu wrote: post #171
toast0 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Computers probably can not be worse that the people already on the road. Computers are better than some drivers, but they're worse than others. If the goal is safety, computerized assistance is almost certainly better than self driving. Keeping the human driver engaged and doing their best, but having the computer supervising works a lot better than having the human supervising; it's hard for a human to remain aler…

> If the goal is safety If the goal was safety, a computer assisting a competent driver would be the best. If the goal is private profits for a few individuals, then a computer that doesn't take a paycheck would be best.

Unclear. There's some level of computer driving competence where humans will simply zone out.

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#179

Post by argonaut »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #159
mNovak wrote: post #112

In the end this makes sense; an actual car company is much better positioned to actually profit from marginal improvements in self-driving (read: safety improvements) year over year, rather than wait for the windfall of FSD taxi service at some unknown point in the future.

Toyota is the last company I expect to bring something new to market well. The last time they did that it was the Prius and it was kind of a fluke IMO. Toyota's entire market is convincing people (the bulk of whom will trade in in a few years) that a Camry/4Runner/Sienna is worth substantially more than an Altima/Tahoe/Pacifica based on a bunch of promises about reliability after 150k that the statistical first owner…

The average age of a car on the road today is 11 years. Toyota's reliability really makes a difference for secondhand owners, and therefore used Toyotas command a premium, and you get more for your car when you sell it or trade it in.

Otherwise, it's true that new cars from many different brands are reliable enough nowadays, even brands that used to be bad like Hyundai (unless you want to buy a car and keep it forever). But used car sales far outstrip new car sales.

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#180

Post by qwertywert_ »

andyxor wrote: post #8
minimaxir wrote: post #2

Funny in hindsight from 2016: "Lyft's president says 'majority' of rides will be in self-driving cars by 2021" https://www.theverge.com/2016/9/18/12944506/lyft-self-drivin... https://medium.com/@johnzimmer/the-third-transportation-revo...

nothing new here, AI has been "5 years away" since the 1950s

weak AI is here, AGI is a ways away..
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