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Even after $100B, self-driving cars are going nowhere

bloomberg.com

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Re: Even after $100B, self-driving cars are going nowhere

#281

Post by kylehotchkiss »

jonas21 wrote: post #277
Lutger wrote: post #106

Huge waste of money that could have been poured into public transport to actually solve our problems and improve our lives. What a tragedy.

This is all private money. If these companies didn't spend the $100B developing autonomous vehicles, it wouldn't suddenly be available for building public transit. Beyond that, $100B doesn't go as far toward building transit as you might expect. For example, San Diego recently spent $2.3 billion on a light rail extension that's projected to have 34,700 daily trips by 2030. If you assume most of these are round-trips,…

Do you mean the La Jolla trolley line? It seems like a nice idea (I’ve lived next to several trolley stops) but the virtually nonexistent ticket validation tends to make the trolley a magnet for negativity, and keeps me in my car.

Re: Even after $100B, self-driving cars are going nowhere

#282

Post by SergeAx »

oblio wrote: post #128
Lutger wrote: post #106

Huge waste of money that could have been poured into public transport to actually solve our problems and improve our lives. What a tragedy.

I'll be blunt about this. Most of this research is funded in the US and the hyper individualistic Americans as a group don't believe in public transport.

Self driving tech could and will be applied to public transportation too. With self-driving mini-buses we can serve more destination much more efficiently, fine-tuning commute supply to better fit the exact demand.

Re: Even after $100B, self-driving cars are going nowhere

#283

Post by nichochar »

cs702 wrote: post #185

In the short run, technological progress is much slower than anyone hopes, but in the long run it is much faster than anyone expects. My favorite example is that in 1987, the scientific consensus was that it would take "at least 100 years" and likely much longer to sequence the entire human gnome.[a] But the vast majority of it was sequenced by 2000, only 13 years later. Moreover, just two decades later, anyone could…

[Disclaimer] I worked for Cruise for 4 years.

I agree with everything you said, but chuckled at this particular part (which is very wrong): > Tesla is significantly ahead of everyone else.

Everyone in the industry knows that Tesla is nowhere near the tip of the technology. What Tesla does is _fantastic marketing_. Their whole self-driving division is just a mechanism to sell more cars.

At a high level, this is why:

- The hard thing about self driving isn't the first 95%, it's the impossibly long tail of the last 5% with unique, chaotic and rare scenarios (think, a reflective citern tank with a reflection of the back of a truck transporting stop signs, or terrible weather illusions with fog).

- Doing well on the last 5% is where most of the energy from Waymo/Cruise goes (the two leaders by quite a margin).

- Tesla is camera only. Weather alone means you can't reach critical safety because of this. Cameras don't do fog well, precipitation well, or sunsets/bad lighting well (see many Tesla crashes on freeways bc of this)

- Tesla does well on the 95% and Elon is a marketing genius, with those 2 things it's easy to convince outsiders that "Tesla is significantly ahead of everyone else".

My prediction: before the end of the decade, cruise and waymo have commoditized fleets doing things that most people today would find unbelievable. Tesla is still talking a big game but ultimately won't have permits for you to be in a Tesla with your hands off of the wheel.

edit: formatting and typo

Re: Even after $100B, self-driving cars are going nowhere

#284

Post by silisili »

Fricken wrote: post #72
case0x00 wrote: post #4

This article is kind of a wrapper for the linked bloomberg article, which is more interesting IMO. Driving of cars is a massive cooperative game with high stakes, and autonomous cars essentially need AGI in order to play to a degree that is safer than a human with other humans. Fully autonomous cars would be sick, but IMO you'd need massive infrastructure changes (realistically restricted to cities/urbanized areas) i…

This bullshit shows up in every HN thread on autonomous vehicles. Really only on HN. It's wrong, uninformed, and won't seem to go away. The challenges self-driving cars have nothing to do with infrastructure and everything to do with the other moving objects on the road. It's not that the vehicles can't detect the other things on the road. It's that they can't anticipate reliably what they're going to do. (However yo…

This reminds me of something the Rocket League devs said. Something to the effect that bots wouldn't be effective at the game because it's too challenging.

This is -not- my line of work, so I have no idea if that's true. But if it is, I don't see how we could have perfectly safe self driving vehicles.

Re: Even after $100B, self-driving cars are going nowhere

#285

Post by PinguTS »

cs702 wrote: post #185

In the short run, technological progress is much slower than anyone hopes, but in the long run it is much faster than anyone expects. My favorite example is that in 1987, the scientific consensus was that it would take "at least 100 years" and likely much longer to sequence the entire human gnome.[a] But the vast majority of it was sequenced by 2000, only 13 years later. Moreover, just two decades later, anyone could…

I remember the gnome thing. But that is nothing I have any knowledge about. So this area was for me like unknowledged people learn about things.

Automation is actually my area. Self-droving cars are in development for more than 50 years. In the 1970s it was more analogous technology that needed a lot of space. Fact is today technology is not that much better than that. Except, at the days it was highly supervised by professionals.

Many hardware devices we have in our cars today profited from those developments. Because radar and things are now cheaply avalaible. But self-driving is still not a thing. All the improvements in AI even didn't realy helped.

What many people seems to forget AI is about to detect (learned) patterns and to make decisions based on those patterns. But AI is completely unpreditcable on patterns it can't recognise. AI will classify those into a know pattern. But this is random and as such the judgedment is random. That is the big difference to a human, which can still cope with an unknown situation.

That is the reason why many people from the industry say: real self-driving cars will take very much longer than the average publics thinks and was told by Elon, Uber and others.

Re: Even after $100B, self-driving cars are going nowhere

#286

Post by SergeAx »

I have a feeling that we have something like Pareto principle in effect here. We spent 20% of effort to solve 80% of the problem. Now we have to spend 80% of effort to solve remaining 20% of the problem :(

I am starting to believe in hybrid system at least for self-driving taxis. Autopilot works 80% of time, but in the case of uncertainty it calls a remote human driver to solve a particular problem. With 4G/5G coverage it is already technically feasible to drive a car remotely on a slow speed. Will have to master emergency slow down and stop on autopilot and of course detection of malicious or inadequate action from remote pilot.

Re: Even after $100B, self-driving cars are going nowhere

#287

Post by dionidium »

D13Fd wrote: post #200
oblio wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll be blunt about this. Most of this research is funded in the US and the hyper individualistic Americans as a group don't believe in public transport.

That’s really not true. Americans love good public transportation where it’s available and works well. Most US cities have lots of buses, and many have light rail. But in a big country with a spread-out population, public transportation is tough. American corporations perhaps aren’t as interested in public transportation, because there is no money to be made. And that is who is largely funding this self-driving vehic…

> But in a big country with a spread-out population, public transportation is tough.

This is oft-repeated, but it doesn't really survive a moment's scrutiny. You might as well say it's pointless to build a path from your back door to your shed, because the county is just too big.

Re: Even after $100B, self-driving cars are going nowhere

#288

Post by SergeAx »

batmanturkey wrote: post #32

WHY is a fully autonomous vehicle even interesting to pursue, given that wheeled vehicles and their infrastructural requirements are such a large expense and social and environmental problem relative to the benefits provided? I mean, out of all the moonshots, why die on this particular hill? I consider an actual hyperloop to be a much more compelling vision for the future: those pneumatic tubes the banks use in subur…

Hyperloop is a long range solution. Most of the commute today are within 20km. These are two completely different problems.

Re: Even after $100B, self-driving cars are going nowhere

#289

Post by iknowstuff »

gamblor956 wrote: post #253
cs702 wrote: post #185

In the short run, technological progress is much slower than anyone hopes, but in the long run it is much faster than anyone expects. My favorite example is that in 1987, the scientific consensus was that it would take "at least 100 years" and likely much longer to sequence the entire human gnome.[a] But the vast majority of it was sequenced by 2000, only 13 years later. Moreover, just two decades later, anyone could…

My perceptions contradict this article: (1) The technology is progressing faster than is generally recognized, with vehicles getting progressively better at dealing with edge cases and handling failures gracefully. (2) Judging by the videos I've watched online, Tesla is significantly ahead of everyone else. We must be watching different videos. And experiencing Teslas differently. I see Teslas constantly slamming on…

Oh my dog.

Part of this is the fault of Tesla's marketing, but you are wildly off mark. The cars you are seeing are Autopilot, not FSD. Most of them are even the even older, radar-based autopilot.

Tesla Vision has no issues detecting white semis crossing your path. Vehicles with radar, on the other hand, struggle with discerning those from overhead bridges, so if one appears close to a bridge, you're SOL due to whitelisting.

Tesla Vision in FSD is a much, much more developed version which has been excellent about detecting its environment, especially now with the new occupancy network. Its decision making needs work but you will notice, when watching all those videos, that detection of vehicles - even occluded ones - is not a problem at all.

Your comment about useless data is also wrong. They are experts in their field and they know exactly what type of data they need. Both Tesla and Karpathy himself have shown on multiple presentations that they focus on training unique/difficult situations because more data from perfect conditions is not useful to them anymore. They have shown exactly how they do it, and even showed the great infrastructure they've built for autolabeling.

Your claim about cruise control from competitors being equal to FSD is laughable. They don't even match Autopilot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xK3NcHSH49Q&list=PLVa4b_Vn4g...

Re: Even after $100B, self-driving cars are going nowhere

#290

Post by jeffbee »

cs702 wrote: post #206
bastawhiz wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm genuinely curious why you think Tesla is ahead compared to Waymo and Cruise. Autopilot struggles in my car on some fairly boring roads, while Waymo and Cruise are both operating real taxi services in vehicles without drivers. I can understand the argument that Tesla has lots of data from real world driving. But Google also has fleets of cars mapping out every road in the world.

Please keep in mind that I'm talking about FSD Beta, not the current production software, which is dozens of versions behind. Are you on Beta 10.69.2.3? If I had to articulate my reasons: * Judging by the videos available online, my perception is that many situations that were impossible for Tesla FSD Beta a year ago have become uneventful in recent weeks. Take a look at Chuck Cook's videos for example (I like the fa…

I really feel that you have been duped here. There is no reason to believe that Tesla Dojo even exists. At Hot Chips last year they showed some 3D renders of their supposed board. At Hot Chips this year they showed the same renders. At "AI Day" last month they showed a retarded humanoid robot. We have no basis to conclude that Dojo does, can, or will exist.
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