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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

#201

Post by OkayPhysicist »

romwell wrote: post #160
paxys wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world is already largely running on AI, just not the version of it that is in people's heads by watching sci-fi movies.

The world is running on good old software . I don't know of anything important that's running on anything that can be reasonably called AI . I think we can get by without Siri. Of course, if you include the entirety of machine learning under the AI label, then whatever. But in my opinion, a principal component analysis does not an AI make. Statistical inference has been around since before computers were invented.

That's the rub, isn't it? Your definition of AI is basically "things we can't do by computer yet", which will always be unobtainable, by definition.

Meanwhile, you've got marketers that are also trying to use that definition, in order to sell you on some software solution, despite it being oxymoronic.

Two better definitions of AI that I'm a fan of are "Algorithms that model intelligence" (where "intelligence" is the ability to use knowedge in inference), or the broader definition of "Second-order algorithms" or algorithms that, rather than encoding a process that finds a solution, encode a process for finding a process that presents a solution.

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

#202

Post by aeturnum »

twodave wrote: post #191

I feel like all these self-driving companies aren't actually in it to achieve the success. They know it's a long way off, they're just trying to hit enough milestones to get scooped up by somebody bigger. Perhaps with the exception of Tesla, who I have no explanation for. Self-driving cars are so far down the totem-pole in my opinion--if we're going to have to rework our roadways in order to accommodate self-driving…

At a technical level, I think smart roads are more straightforward. However, I think a purely technical analysis ignores why self driving cars have been so popular.

The cost of replacing the entire US road system with "smart" roads would doubtless be astronomical - as well as increase the maintenance and infrastructural requirements. We've probably had the technical capabilities to create self-driving-capable roads for years, but the costs are probably too high for people to take it seriously "at scale."

Machines that do things "as well" as humans in similar roles have been a science fiction staple for over a century. That machines do focused tasks much, much better than humans haven't stopped people from searching for "drop in" replacements for tasks that currently use a human. Suddenly, the scale is on the level of a single vehicle - very manageable if it works. That's why people were so willing to spend billions of dollars to avoid spending trillions on all that road replacement - because they wanted the worlds they saw in science fiction.

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

#203

Post by mattkrause »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #117
markkanof wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct on the aggregate, but that doesn't necessarily work when applied to each individual driver. I'm a pretty attentive and cautious driver. In the 20 years I have been driving I've been in one accident and that was because another driver was attempting to make an illegal left turn, came across two lanes of traffic, and t-boned me. So if self driving vehicles are only doing better than the worst human driv…

Everyone thinks they're an above-average driver. Half of them must be wrong, so the reliability of any individual's self-assessment is about equal to chance. And even if you're one of the genuinely good drivers—your record certainly sounds excellent—our laws should account for the fact that most drivers can't judge their own skill.

...and they might be right.

It doesn't seem impossible for there to be a long tail of driving (in)ability: most people drive pretty well, with a small fraction that are distractible or reckless enough to account for most accidents.

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

#204

Post by sumedh »

Barrin92 wrote: post #87
theluketaylor wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The edge case that I always go to on why truly autonomous vehicles are decades+ away is winter driving. Lane markers and road signs disappear. Slush and salt spray constantly obscure sensors. Winter driving as a human driver requires an entirely different approach and Waymo hangs out in the Arizona desert where there is basically never any inclement weather.

don't even need to go to bad environmental setting. Let's talk about other countries. I haven't seen a lot of self-driving cars in Rome or Mumbai yet, there's a lot of places where traffic rules are treated more like suggestions than actual rules. American style neat wide highways and grid-like streets are not how the places look where most cars are being driven right now already.

Mumbai literally has bumper to bumper traffic, I think any self driving car's sensors would just go crazy and give up.

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

#205

Post by paxys »

romwell wrote: post #160
paxys wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world is already largely running on AI, just not the version of it that is in people's heads by watching sci-fi movies.

The world is running on good old software . I don't know of anything important that's running on anything that can be reasonably called AI . I think we can get by without Siri. Of course, if you include the entirety of machine learning under the AI label, then whatever. But in my opinion, a principal component analysis does not an AI make. Statistical inference has been around since before computers were invented.

People have wildly different definitions for what "reasonable AI" is, especially people working in the field. Colloquially the last decade or so of advancements in machine learning and data mining is all considered AI.

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

#206

Post by jtolmar »

twodave wrote: post #191

I feel like all these self-driving companies aren't actually in it to achieve the success. They know it's a long way off, they're just trying to hit enough milestones to get scooped up by somebody bigger. Perhaps with the exception of Tesla, who I have no explanation for. Self-driving cars are so far down the totem-pole in my opinion--if we're going to have to rework our roadways in order to accommodate self-driving…

> Just trying to hit enough milestones to get scooped up by somebody bigger.

A few years back, during the peak of the self-driving hype cycle, I considered doing exactly this. I think with a small team of sensor and Bayes filter experts, a car outfitted with expensive but off-the-shelf sensors, and about a year of dev time, you could get a car that self pilots 95% of the time on a wide suburban road in clear conditions. That extra 5%, other road types, and worse visibility conditions would each take you far more effort than that. But if your goal was just to show results fast and get acquired, it'd be easy to convince people you were almost there.

> A roadway can be MUCH smarter than a car.

If we're building specialized roadways, you can steer a vehicle with two strips of metal tied together by wooden boards. And it can travel twice as fast as a car while holding a hundred times the passengers. And it was invented 200 years ago.

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

#209

Post by grandmczeb »

Animats wrote: post #186

Uber gave up in December 2020 and sold off their technology to Aurora. Waymo is now offering rides in Phoenix AZ with no "safety driver".[1] "Waymo One is our fully public, fully autonomous ride hailing service. Now anyone can take fully autonomous rides anytime they're in Metro Phoenix. Just download the app and ride right away."[1] Waymo also now has significant non-Alphabet investors, having raised US $2 billion i…

> No pricing yet, so this is still a demo.

If you’re referring to the Waymo rides in Chandler/Phoenix, they do charge. JJRicks (a YouTuber with no affiliation to Waymo AFAIK) has a spreadsheet of the rides he’s taken.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OiYGH4Vmdo_4HYMC9YVA...

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

#210

Post by paxys »

aeturnum wrote: post #202
twodave wrote: post #191

I feel like all these self-driving companies aren't actually in it to achieve the success. They know it's a long way off, they're just trying to hit enough milestones to get scooped up by somebody bigger. Perhaps with the exception of Tesla, who I have no explanation for. Self-driving cars are so far down the totem-pole in my opinion--if we're going to have to rework our roadways in order to accommodate self-driving…

At a technical level, I think smart roads are more straightforward. However, I think a purely technical analysis ignores why self driving cars have been so popular. The cost of replacing the entire US road system with "smart" roads would doubtless be astronomical - as well as increase the maintenance and infrastructural requirements. We've probably had the technical capabilities to create self-driving-capable roads f…

You don't have to replace the entire road system. A hybrid model can also exist. Complicated city streets can be "smart", while self driving tech can be good enough to traverse long stretches of highways (which it can basically already do).
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