Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division • Hacker News Board

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

#331

Post by wpietri » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 6:34 PM UTC

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #327

wpietri wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then that raises another interesting possibility: that absolutely nobody at the deranged-optimism companies knew what they were doing. Because there were definitely experts who knew those dates were impossible. Less 18 months after that Lyft prediction, roboticist and AI expert Rodney Brooks said that free-roaming auto-taxis wouldn't be running before 2035: https://rodneybrooks.com/my-dated-predictions/

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his stock price depends on not understanding it.

Wisdom for the ages.

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

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Post by johannes1234321 » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 7:12 PM UTC

netrus wrote: post #230

johannes1234321 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

It's easy to put up fake street signs to troll/manipulate human drivers, yet that hardly ever happens. I have read stories of people putting up fake speed cameras in their front yard to slow down traffic, but no one dares to fake speed limit signs.

Here in Gemrany I there are signs with "voluntarily 30" or similar combined with some surrounding images etc. and yes one can fake it, but most fakes can be identified realtively easily by humans (positioning, color, material (non-reflecting cardboard), ...) some high quality fake sign might however exist for a while.

Also there is the reverse: people stealing signs (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25223633) or putting stickers on them (or snow, mud, ...) where most humans know what to expect (stop sign, yield, ... have specific shape for a purpose; empty frame where city starts; ...)

Going out of a somewhat controlled small area in SV/SFO or AZ is a huge task. Going to a different country requires complete re-learning of the models ... and then there are humans ...

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

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Post by slimsag » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 8:42 PM UTC

eptcyka wrote: post #303

slimsag wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think the recognition performance is irrelevant, the failure mode of a model not knowing when there's something it can't recognize is the issue. Most clssifiers will just fail silently and let the toy car drive into a trailer.

Your argument implies that "I don't know what is in front of me" can just be used as a signal to "stop the car", but that still isn't OK (slamming on the breaks on a freeway because a trailer has someone's face on the back of it, for example)

Recognition performance matters.

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

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Post by omgwtfbyobbq » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 8:53 PM UTC

legolas2412 wrote: post #304

omgwtfbyobbq wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean this comment? I remain confident that we will have the basic functionality for level five autonomy complete this year. Basic functionality for level five isn't level five.

"Basic functionality for level five isn't level five." I'm surprised you say this totally seriously. For me this means that level 5 will be this year, and then there might be extra new cool features, which are not necessary. Basic functionality for level 5 sounds like both necessary and sufficient to me

I view part of basic functionality of level five as "Can the car drive on all roads in at least some circumstances?"

That's still not sufficient, because it needs to do that in all circumstances (vehicles, people, animals, stuff, weather, etc), but even if it can handle all the circumstances (also basic functionality), if it can't at least all roads, then it's not level five.

Right now, it's level two, and it's IMO going to be level two for a while. People can ask about level five, but I take any statements about Tesla's current autopilot and/or beta as statements about the level two system.

People can assume that those statements are about some future level five system, but I don't think that's an accurate assumption unless someone from Tesla says autopilot and/or the beta is now level three, four, etc...

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

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Post by omgwtfbyobbq » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 8:55 PM UTC

detaro wrote: post #316

omgwtfbyobbq wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was asked that question, but he didn't say he was confident they would reach level five this year. He did refer to the current FSD beta, which is a level two system, and expressed confidence in the technical roadmap and progress they are making between each beta iteration. Then he talked about the level of reliability they would need, capabilities of the system, and challenges they have. I guess, I'm confident bas…

If your response to "why are you confident about X" is "I am confident because...", you can't claim you didn't say you were confident about it.

That's not the situation though.

The question is "why are you confident about X", and the answer is "I am confident because we're making progress in these ways with Y".

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

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Post by steve_adams_86 » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 9:31 PM UTC

joe_the_user wrote: post #102

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I think people conflate seeing people drive erratically or doing dumb things in cars with an inability to operate a car in a way that ultimately prevents deaths. Humans are incredibly good at that in the bigger picture for reasons that are currently impossible to replicate with a computer. Criticize human driving all you want, but even the worst of us can typically manage to get from point a to point b... Someh…

One of the eye-opening things about the wikipedia statistics is that advent and universality of mobile phones at worst caused a very small uptick in fatalities. With all the bullshit you see with on the road, somehow people manage to mostly avoid death doing it. My guess is people can pull attention back to the road at moments it's really needed.

For sure. Well, humans don't really need to make great decisions individually to be protected, ultimately, by most people making an effort not to kill or be killed – to some degree at least. It's a very strange and fascinating thing about us.

I mean, that industrial agriculture eventually results in food on tables across the globe. So many systems at work. Run by the same people using their smart phones in their cars, haha. We manage to collectively make things happen.

Easy to criticize, but hard to argue against the results?

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

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Post by rhodozelia » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 10:33 PM UTC

johannes1234321 wrote: post #174

rhodozelia wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

Sensor data is the input and can be faked!

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

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Post by rrrrrrrrrrrryan » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 11:43 PM UTC

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!

I've always thought we should just start with a dedicated lane on the highway for self driving vehicles, raise the speed limit on it, and let the vehicles communicate with each other.

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

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Post by rrrrrrrrrrrryan » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 12:02 AM UTC

lumost wrote: post #263

cma wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3:1 of the gross goes to the driver. Much less after driver expenses like wear and tear, gas and insurance.

that's the rub of a robotaxi service. A hypothetical taxi launchable today would probably have ~30 billion R&D 1:10 remote safety operator ratio (1p employees, not contractors). 100K Bill of materials/vehicle for the lidar sensors etc. Compare this with an externally owned 8 year old vehicle being driven by someone who doesn't confer liability to the company. Even if the dream was realized there likely isn't a viable…

Vans exist, and rides can be pooled in denser areas. I imagine a 24-hour robovan with multiple paying passengers at a time would pay itself off relatively quickly.

People here like to whine that this would be recreating the bus, not realizing that the reason buses suck is because they have rigid departure schedules, and fixed startpoints and endpoints. People mainly take Ubers over the bus because they're much more flexible.

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

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Post by rrrrrrrrrrrryan » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 12:13 AM UTC

moralestapia wrote: post #93

elpakal wrote: post #73

I learned to drive in Mexico at 13, where there are almost literally no rules or traffic signals (see the black arrow on the wall? that means don't stop). I remember thinking about how different things were when trying to get my driver's license in US at age 16 - almost easier - in spite of how many more rules there were. I wonder how self-driving cars perform when trained in a world of rules and order and are then t…

>where there are almost literally no rules or traffic signals ... That's a lie, though. The meme that México is an uncivilized place is dumb and doesn't hold much substance. Edit: Downvote me all you want, GP's statement is laughably easy to disprove. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

As a Mexican-American living in San Diego, driving in TJ is way different.

Like, so chaotic that I refuse to do it different. I leave the driving to the locals when I'm there.

I don't think anyone's saying Mexico is uncivilized. It's a beautiful place with beautiful people, massive cultural output, great universities, etc.

I'm just not going to invest in a startup trying to build self-driving cars for Latin America anytime soon.