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An autonomous car in SF blocked a fire truck responding to an emergency

wired.com

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Re: An autonomous car in SF blocked a fire truck responding to an emergency

#91

Post by defen »

feoren wrote: post #85
anyfoo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that there are literally uncountably many situations that a human with "general intelligence" will understand and react to accordingly. Sometimes smoothly, sometimes less so. But a non-conscious automatic entity needs to have the required behavior programmed in explicitly. So yes, you might argue that for this particular situation, you "just" need to put in the proper programming and AI/ML training and…

> needs to have the required behavior programmed in explicitly This is missing the entire point of ML. ML is literally defined as not having to explicitly program responses in for every situation. Needing to pull over because a fire truck has told you it's coming your way in 2 minutes is pretty easy compared with some of those other "uncountably many" situations these cars need to deal with. > the autonomous machine…

> This is missing the entire point of ML. ML is literally defined as not having to explicitly program responses in for every situation.

So how do you know how the system will respond to an arbitrary situation? You could easily argue that we don't know how an arbitrary human will respond to an arbitrary situation, but we have systems in place to deal with the consequences if they handle it badly.

For example, if a driver handles a situation badly enough, they could lose their license. If an autonomous car does something bad enough that a human would have lost their license, what happens? Do all of that company's cars get pulled off the road until the bug is fixed and validated?

Re: An autonomous car in SF blocked a fire truck responding to an emergency

#92

Post by anyfoo »

feoren wrote: post #85
anyfoo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that there are literally uncountably many situations that a human with "general intelligence" will understand and react to accordingly. Sometimes smoothly, sometimes less so. But a non-conscious automatic entity needs to have the required behavior programmed in explicitly. So yes, you might argue that for this particular situation, you "just" need to put in the proper programming and AI/ML training and…

> needs to have the required behavior programmed in explicitly This is missing the entire point of ML. ML is literally defined as not having to explicitly program responses in for every situation. Needing to pull over because a fire truck has told you it's coming your way in 2 minutes is pretty easy compared with some of those other "uncountably many" situations these cars need to deal with. > the autonomous machine…

> This is missing the entire point of ML. ML is literally defined as not having to explicitly program responses in for every situation.

I suggest you look up the free lunch theorem of supervised learning.

> A calculator absolutely "understands" arithmetic.

I'm not sure how that's anything else than proving my point. Let's say a calculator "understands" arithmetic. It does not understand anything I would apply those calculations I make with it to. I cannot tell it "calculator, go do my taxes".

Your particular example is not even true: A calculator is able to perform calculations, it does not understand any of the axioms, theorems, and uses around it.

Re: An autonomous car in SF blocked a fire truck responding to an emergency

#93

Post by hgomersall »

feoren wrote: post #85
anyfoo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that there are literally uncountably many situations that a human with "general intelligence" will understand and react to accordingly. Sometimes smoothly, sometimes less so. But a non-conscious automatic entity needs to have the required behavior programmed in explicitly. So yes, you might argue that for this particular situation, you "just" need to put in the proper programming and AI/ML training and…

> needs to have the required behavior programmed in explicitly This is missing the entire point of ML. ML is literally defined as not having to explicitly program responses in for every situation. Needing to pull over because a fire truck has told you it's coming your way in 2 minutes is pretty easy compared with some of those other "uncountably many" situations these cars need to deal with. > the autonomous machine…

Yeah, you generally have to hope it effectively interpolates between stuff it has been trained on in ways that make sense.

Re: An autonomous car in SF blocked a fire truck responding to an emergency

#94

Post by kergonath »

ben174 wrote: post #26
anyfactor wrote: post #23

The trend of autonomous cars is one of the things that I believe is not practical. Even the most sophisticated machine learning algorithm requires repetition and constant input to be optimized. But there is infinitely many variables when it comes to driving on a street level. Driving is intuitive on a city street. The scope of autonomous vehicles should be limited to places where there is clarity of transit and very…

This seems to warrant repeating every time this is brought up: It just needs to be 1% better than human drivers. If the net result is 1% less tragedies - sign me up. If it's better than the alternative, I'm in.

Better regulations and fewer huge SUVs or trucks with massive blind spots would result in more than a 1% drop. Better public transport would, as well. Sure, it’s not shiny new technologies…

Re: An autonomous car in SF blocked a fire truck responding to an emergency

#95

Post by google234123 »

capitainenemo wrote: post #76
_ea1k wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An average pilot takes ~4 seconds from noticing an engine failure to when they respond. I don't know how long getting out of the way would take an average driver in this situation, but I'm guessing that its at least 15 seconds. People are nitpicking your nitpick, but the distinction really does matter in this kind of scenario where the argument is that "seconds count".

Only because the garbage truck moved out of the way.

Which was double parked... Anyway, I dont think most human drivers would have driven in reverse in this situation either.

Re: An autonomous car in SF blocked a fire truck responding to an emergency

#96

Post by treesprite82 »

SllX wrote: post #70
sokoloff wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the emergency vehicle is delayed, what percentage of the delay is Cruise’s fault and what percentage is the garbage truck’s? I assign less than 50% to Cruise.

Let’s be generous and say 50/50. But look at it this way: one was a vehicle with no driver present in the seat, and the other was a vehicle in which a driving agent is never not present. A human driver in that situation should not spend longer than 5 seconds figuring out and implementing a way to safely let the fire truck pass. The Cruise car took longer. If a human were present with two working eyes and ears and arm…

> A human driver in that situation should not spend longer than 5 seconds figuring out and implementing a way to safely let the fire truck pass. The Cruise car took longer.

Impossible to say for certain, but I'd bet that a significant number of human drivers would yield to the right (as the autonomous car did), or take longer than 5 seconds to reverse back into the intersection (as was desired of the autonomous car).

Re: An autonomous car in SF blocked a fire truck responding to an emergency

#97

Post by google234123 »

zinekeller wrote: post #33
tpmx wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stating the obvious, but: 25 secs I agree that the difference (5 secs) most of the time isn't all that important. I just don't see the need to round up for no particular reason.

Does your point appreciably change the meaning of the argument? Definietely not, even a 10-second delay is too long for emergencies. There are times where that five-second difference matters but I feel this falls into a bad-faith argument.

A 10 or 30 second delay is the probably the difference between an emergency driver that likes to speed and one that does not.

Re: An autonomous car in SF blocked a fire truck responding to an emergency

#98

Post by rurp »

flutas wrote: post #52
aetherson wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your suggestion here? That garbage trucks don't pick up on streets without two lanes in each direction? The reality of driving is that there are a lot of these messy situations, and driverless cars need to be able to handle them.

> What's your suggestion here? That garbage trucks don't pick up on streets without two lanes in each direction? Maybe they don't block the travel lane for extended periods, just like any regular person is expected to not do. The article is basically saying "it's ok for the human driven car to do, but not the self driving car."

Suppose the travel lane had been blocked by any other obstacle, say some large object fell into the road. The Cruise car would have failed in the exact same way, there just wouldn't be an extra human in the loop to blame.

Re: An autonomous car in SF blocked a fire truck responding to an emergency

#99

Post by [deleted] »

robbrown451 wrote: post #77
anyfoo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that there are literally uncountably many situations that a human with "general intelligence" will understand and react to accordingly. Sometimes smoothly, sometimes less so. But a non-conscious automatic entity needs to have the required behavior programmed in explicitly. So yes, you might argue that for this particular situation, you "just" need to put in the proper programming and AI/ML training and…

"But it does not change that the autonomous machine does not understand the complex world it is driving in in the slightest, and that, for example, swerving into an unmanned fruit stand without being able to brake is much better than swerving into an unmanned gas pump." It seems it would have a way of prioritizing such things. That doesn't seem particularly complicated, to be honest... weighted decision making is cer…

[deleted]

Re: An autonomous car in SF blocked a fire truck responding to an emergency

#100

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

flutas wrote: post #18
gojomo wrote: post #6

Given that often human-driven, or human-parked, cars create similar temporary obstacles, the most important question here is: does this happen more-often, or for longer-periods, with autonomous cars? I don't see the article, or quoted sources, even trying to make that comparison - so this is really only a half-story, compared to what's relevant. Further, given the remote-guidance possibilities with autonomous cars, i…

> Given that often human-driven, or human-parked, cars create similar temporary obstacles, the most important question here is: does this happen more-often, or for longer-periods, with autonomous cars? Honestly the article is pure tech-scare bait. It blames a car that stopped (while it was driving) when a truck was driving at it head on, but tries to glance over the fact that a (human driven) garbage truck is the rea…

The garbage truck being double parked while it was collecting garbage is probably common. They probably are used to routing around them.

I go around double parked cars in my city all the time. Sometimes drivers in both directions need to magically negotiate.

The driverless car that doesn’t understand it has to safely get out of the way of a fire truck is the new part of this situation.

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