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

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

#171

Post by DennisP »

anyfoo wrote: post #45
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…

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…

Autonomous cars will crash in situations where humans wouldn't, but the opposite is also true. Autonomous cars don't fall asleep, drive drunk, or get distracted on their phones.

Personally I try to stay alert while I drive, so I feel I'm safer driving myself than letting the machine do it. But I'm less confident that the best autonomous cars will have more accidents than humans in general, and they're improving all the time.

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

#172

Post by true_religion »

dane-pgp wrote: post #161
dogecoinbase wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, we'll just write down all the things there are in the world in order of how bad it is for a car to hit them.

I mean, you're right; someone making that list might not think to include "centaur", and maybe one Halloween a child is dressed up as one, and the computer vision system interprets the "centaur" as a horse instead of a child, and it makes the wrong decision, but how many centaur-related accidents do you think self-driving cars are going to be involved in each year? It's completely feasible to imagine writing a list o…

Even if a automated vehicles intelligence misinterpreted a human child to be a horse child, then it should only hit it in the unavoidable circumstance of trying to preserve a human life.

If it’s choosing between hitting a pole and hitting a pony, it should always hit the pole so long as no one is injured.

The real problem is that occasionally these cars today mistake roads for oceans, walls for roads, and people for inanimate poles.

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

#173

Post by diebeforei485 »

Why would it stop in the travel lane? In this scenario clearly the best choice is to go into a driveway if there is one nearby, next best choice is to back up, and if neither of those are possible just move forward.

I see no justification for stopping in the travel lane. Did it think it was being pulled over?

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

#174

Post by DennisP »

routerl wrote: post #168
gojomo wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are not uncountably many – we live in a finite world governed by understandable physical and civic laws. There's an actually measurable rate of humans blocking other traffic, and for how long before resolution, and an actually measurable rate of autonomous vehicles blocking other traffic, and for how long before resolved. If the rate for autonomous vehicles is already below that of humans, or rapidly headed the…

> There are not uncountably many OP was obviously not using that term mathematically (i.e. the cardinality of the power set of natural numbers), and obviously meant something in the neighborhood of "effectively not countable". And, again, in all but the formal mathematical meaning of the word "countable", many things are not countable (e.g. no one will live long enough to count all the natural numbers). In the real w…

> Are we doing the same for self-driving cars?

Effectively we are, as long as their developers fix the problems that led to the crash. Change the software and you have a new driver.

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

#175

Post by aetherson »

rglullis wrote: post #53
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.

This may seem an wild idea for those in North America, but how about just eliminating car dependency in the first place ?

Yes, why don't we just do the easy thing and fundamentally rework all the physical infrastructure of every locality all at once. Gosh, why didn't we think of that.

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

#176

Post by treesprite82 »

SllX wrote: post #157
treesprite82 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

If there’s no vehicles or people directly behind the car, no traffic close enough to pose a danger, and a quick spot check confirms this, why would it take you longer than 5 seconds to reverse out of the way? You don’t need to back up into Canada or something, a short distance is enough to let another necessarily impatient vehicle pass. In the end the garbage truck moved, which is why the fire truck was “able to pass…

> If there’s no vehicles or people directly behind the car, no traffic close enough to pose a danger, and a quick spot check confirms this

No traffic close enough to pose a danger isn't a given in this scenario - there may well have been traffic.

> why would it take you longer than 5 seconds to reverse out of the way?

I think many would be at least slightly hesitant to back into an intersection. There would be initial reaction/braking time, time to check for and evaluate options, then time to reverse backwards with caution.

> In the end the garbage truck moved, which is why the fire truck was “able to pass within 25 seconds of encountering the Cruise car”.

The autonomous car did yield to the right to the extent it could, so wasn't doing nothing for 25 seconds. Just that (I'll go with the first responders' judgement) doing so didn't give sufficient space.

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

#177

Post by csdreamer7 »

My first reaction to this was horror on seeing the title.

But... I rode an ambulance in the front seat transporting a family member in the back. Several cars drove in front of the ambulance in intersections, completely ignoring the siren. As we drove a several lane road that fed into the intersection was blocked by cars except for one lane, but it was too small for the ambulance to get through, only until the ambulance was stopped did the cars bother to make room. They are supposed to clear out well in advance. One even stopped in front and the ambulance drove around it. I commented on it, and the ER driver said that is how it is. This was late at night, in some traffic in southern California suburbia. I know cars make room in the sunlight. There were traffic cameras, likely police too; no one cared to enforce the law.

Not a complete blockage like that firetruck dealt with for 25 seconds on a small road, but if the software is made to respond to ER vehicles, would it perform better than humans 99% of the time?

I lost a bit of my faith in humanity seeing that one night-they could have easily made room. If it was during the day I think they would have acted better, while I believe a properly licensed and mature autonomous vehicle would have made room long before that day or night in most situations, and a human can take over in the rest like it did in that article.

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

#178

Post by taneq »

anyfoo wrote: post #84
robbrown451 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

> It seems it would have a way of prioritizing such things. You are putting the cart before the horse. The problem is not in prioritization, the problem is in having the correct ontology to even get to the "prioritization" stage. Does the car know what a fruit stand is? Does it know what a gas pump is? Does it know how the fruit stand relates to the gas pump in "expected outcome when being hit by a car"? If you say "…

> Does the car know what a **** is?

On a level below identifying stop signs and lollipop ladies and push carts, a SDC's stack needs to be able to identify:

1) Driveable areas. If something looks like a cliff maybe don't go there.

2) Fleeting obstacles. Dust blowing in the wind. A stray plastic bag, winging its way northwards to the waiting maw of a baby turtle. A person with a borderline credit score. A stray cat chasing a bug. That sort of thing.

3) Anything else that's physically present in the path of the car. Doesn't matter what it is. Do Not Hit The Thing is the second lesson anyone learns when being taught to drive, after Make It Go So Hit The Thing Is Even An Option.

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

#179

Post by hamburglar »

jstanley wrote: post #129
anyfoo wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It understands the axioms because they've been literally built into its tiny brain. No they have not. Do you know what an axiom is? Do you know how a calculator is implemented? It’s not about metaphysics, it’s about the difference in the experience of a lifetime compared to a car on a road. „Training data“, if you like.

I don't think it's a question of knowing what an axiom is or how a calculator is implemented. I think it's a question of disagreeing on what "understanding" means. What does it mean to understand something? Obviously (to me and I presume to you) a calculator doesn't understand anything! It doesn't have the capacity for understanding. Obviously (according to, I presume, feoren and Dennett) "understanding" means someth…

There is no math in a calculator. It’s a pile of logic gates assembled in a way to appear to perform mathematical operations. An ALU has no “understanding” of arithmetic, it’s just a canned, finite set of inputs and outputs. Not an axiom to be found.

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

#180

Post by krisoft »

anyfoo wrote: post #45
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…

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…

> for example, swerving into an unmanned fruit stand without being able to brake is much better than swerving into an unmanned gas pump.

This is just ridiculous.

If you believe that humans are making rational decisions in split seconds then you are delusional. A swerving, breakless human driven car will hit whatever happens to be where physics takes it. The scared monkey descendant holding on to the controls will as likely do the wrong thing as doing the right thing. Maybe a fighter jet pilot or a rally driver can do better but i wouldn’t count on it.

And besides how did that AV end up swerving with no brake? This is the reason why autonomous vehicles are set up with redundant brake actuation. If I would have doubts about our ability to stop the car I would much sooner implement a third independent brake system than to try to solve whatever philosophical runaway trolley problem you are concoting here.

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