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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

#291

Post by m_mueller »

slimsag wrote: post #158
plank_time wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw Levandowski do a presentation of self-driving at an Uber all-hands and it was then and there that I knew that self-driving is 20+ years away. The example video showed so many small things that we take for granted as a human driver that would need to be built in or hand coded that AI or neural nets would never be able to get. There just isn’t a way that you can train every single little thing that could cause an…

AI/neural nets are good at detecting patterns, but only marginally so. Humans have such incredible pattern recognition that we have built-in fear mechanics for when things are _not_ a pattern we recognize. What percentage of the time do you experience fear when performing a task such as driving? Think about it - that's the margin for error that humans have in pattern recognition for that task.

You're raising an interesting point here. Humans pattern match everything (and integrate it into a world model). When something out of the ordinary appears, attention is brought to it immediately. By comparison, today's AIs just match what they can, leaving everything else out. I don't think that FSD can happen as long as that's the case.

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

#292

Post by romwell »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #201
romwell wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why, I'm perfectly willing to take either definition of AI.

My objection to the parent comment still stands; our world is not running on that.

For example, Wolfram Alpha, or OpenAI's algorithms that can learn how to play Super Mario will fit the definitions you provided, but our present world does not depend on systems like that.

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

#293

Post by romwell »

paxys wrote: post #205
romwell wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Slap AI on sufficiently many things, and sure, the world is running on AI!

For one, I think it's silly to apply that moniker to something that's not at least interactive.

Machine Learning / Data Mining pipelines that I've touched were running nightly, and furthermore, the systems they powered could continue functioning even if the pipelines crashed / weren't running.

Because with ML, both the input and output are data (information, at best). ML doesn't interact with commands.

The whole point if "A" in AI is that it's contrasted with Human Intelligence. Nightly batch processes simply ain't it.

Sure, people will still slap that label on anything, but it's boring to do so in the context of this discussion :)

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

#294

Post by m-ee »

meowkit wrote: post #261
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…

Waymo is at the head of the pack. I think we will see full self driving limited to cities + highways this decade. ZOOX is another company I'm watching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoox_(company)

Have some friends at Zoox and can't say I'm confident in them. Retention appears to be a massive problem, entire teams up and quitting.

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

#295

Post by jpmoral »

XorNot wrote: post #259
gpm wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subways the world over do without just fine.

The train system in Sydney, Australia has a guard cabin which it's recommended to ride near at night when there aren't many people about.

I don't know if it's because I've only been here four years, or because I'm from a city/country with a lot more crime, or it's my train line, but I've never felt unsafe on the late trains or the night buses.

Also, for the unfamiliar, 'guard' here does not mean an armed guard.

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

#296

Post by LightG »

omgwtfbyobbq wrote: post #74
LightG wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if I don't want to, I can't help but keep up with his marketing-claims through the interests I have. My take, being aware of him but not focused, is that beta-FSD has already been released! ... I mean ... what? Maybe I've got it wrong.

It's been released to a small number of people, but... beta-FSD isn't level five. The only specific statement I've read from him is that the basic functionality for level five will be available this year. What's interesting to me is that people seem to attribute what news articles synthesize about his statements as statements made by him. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53349313

But you see how he/they should be clearer about it?

To me, FSD is ... FSD ... what's FSD if it isn't level 5?

Sorry, to Elon fans (and I appreciate Tesla), but it's nonsense and people are fools to put up with it, let alone pay $10k or whatever it is for the "opportunity" to have it later.

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

#297

Post by eloisant »

danielheath wrote: post #218
azinman2 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human drivers still do meaningfully cost money to employ, and they do annoying things like needing to sleep or take rest room breaks. Autonomous trucking would completely revolutionize the industry.

Autonomous trucks for urban trucking are a pipe dream, but maybe for long-haul routes. That said, it's not at all clear to me that developing autonomous trucks for long interstate routes would be meaningfully cheaper than laying rail on literally every high-traffic route on the planet, which uses perfectly-understood technology and has entirely predictable returns.

You can have a driver in the truck for the city portions (at the beginning and the end of the trip), but sleeping on the highway rather than having to stop the truck for a full night.

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

#298

Post by eloisant »

hellbannedguy wrote: post #247
nradov wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beyond experience and fear, I think an autonomous vehicle will need a reasonably accurate mental model of how other human drivers on the road are likely to react.

I feel this way too. I've noticed over the years that the morning commute is a symphony of madness. Drivers going over the speed limit. Drivers doing illegial things in order to get to work, and keep the traffic moving. Cops seem to let a lot of infractions go during the morning commute. (The rest of the time they let nothing go, but in the morning commute they just seem to know it's a symphony of driving?) I picture…

If the 25mph speed limit doesn't make sense on that road it needs to change. If it makes sense, then the self driving car going at speed limit is the right thing to do and human drivers should do the same.

It's as simple as that.

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

#299

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

wpietri wrote: post #154
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...

One of the curses of software projects is "premature convergence", where people to a ton of extra work for an overoptimistic launch date. I have to wonder how much wasted effort went in to trying to be seen as a leader in what turned out to be a hype bubble. Steve McConnell also talks about a common estimation pattern: managers keep asking if something can be sooner, and are only stopped when some engineer proves tha…

I dunno, I remember that many of the commenters here were equally optimistic in 2015-16. It took a lot of arguments and discussion before people realised that it was much harder than it seemed.

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

#300

Post by weego »

filmgirlcw wrote: post #157
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...

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.

Self-driving cars will always be x years away until purpose built and dedicated self-driving car roads are built to take out the variables that put safety at risk.
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