Even after $100B, self-driving cars are going nowhere • Hacker News Board

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

#301

Post by katbyte » Sat, Oct 15, 2022, 10:28 PM UTC

mota7 wrote: post #294

nichochar wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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: -…

Excellent example: "reflective cistern tank with a reflection of the back of a truck transporting stop signs" People tend to forget just how hard the edge cases in vision are!

It’s weird to me people forget how bad vision can be for driving and Exocet Tesla to somehow be better then our own eyes.

How often a do you encounter situations like bad fog/sun set/rain at night where it’s a total struggle to drive and you slow right down to a crawl and even then only do alright because of a ton of inference?

i think Tesla deciding to go vision only will be regarded of one of the greatest blunders is self driving history.

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

#302

Post by Gordonjcp » Sat, Oct 15, 2022, 10:28 PM UTC

andrepd wrote: post #79

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…

Cars are bad. Electric cars are a bit better than ICE cars, and self-driving cars might one day be better than human-driven cars. But they're still terrible: they're still big, inefficient, polluting, loud, dangerous, and take up precious space. Cars are completely unsuited to cities, and cities which are designed around cars are terrible . This to say: the future is having cars removed from cities entirely . Focusin…

No-one cares about cities.

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

#303

Post by Gordonjcp » Sat, Oct 15, 2022, 10:29 PM UTC

CyanLite4 wrote: post #276

These companies are swinging for the fences and instead striking out. A base hit would suffice for most people. I just want a reliable car that can steer in the highway so I can eat a burger or answer a text message. GM’s SuperCruise is nearly there but has too many safety restrictions. It doesn’t need to work in inclement weather or construction zones. Being able to answer emails or watch a YouTube clip on a long ro…

Why don't you go by train?

If you don't like driving, don't drive.

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

#304

Post by mrb » Sat, Oct 15, 2022, 10:31 PM UTC

jeffbee wrote: post #290

cs702 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Dojo does exist. There are real-world pictures of it: https://media.datacenterdynamics.com/media/images/training_t... source: https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/tesla-details-doj...

However, to my knowledge, Tesla is still in the "bring up" step. I think that was a mistake to pack 25 dies on a single system-on-wafer. Very hard to cool.

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

#305

Post by Salgat » Sat, Oct 15, 2022, 10:34 PM UTC

bastawhiz wrote: post #198

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'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.

Aren't Waymo and Cruise constrained to specially tailored cities? Autonomous driving that can be activated literally anywhere in the country is far more impressive, even if it has cases where it doesn't perform as well.

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

#306

Post by Fiahil » Sat, Oct 15, 2022, 10:40 PM UTC

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…

> Americans love good public transportation […] Most US cities have lots of buses

So… Apparently not…

The USA is probably the worst place in the world for 1) high speed trains 2) buses. And the only place I know where the train _waits_ for cars to go through.

If only they could see by themselves how bad it is during their next trip to Switzerland, the Netherlands, Japan, London, Paris (even France in general) and many many other countries and cities that have a functional network of high speed trains, metro, tramway and regional lines…

I hope you’re not ready to die on that hill.

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

#307

Post by Gordonjcp » Sat, Oct 15, 2022, 10:42 PM UTC

prmoustache wrote: post #54

I'd rather see we remove all non professionnal motorized vehicles from the road and invest those billions in high frequency and coverage public transport. That would mean more accessible transport to everyone, including disabled people, less people dying on the road, safer transport for pedestriants, cyclists, bicycles, scooters, rollerskates, better emergency services who don't have to deal with ugly traffic. Our wo…

"Our world do not need one car for everyone."

Where you live.

Where I live, it's not unreasonable for everyone to need a couple of vehicles each depending on what they're doing.

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

#308

Post by Initial_BP » Sat, Oct 15, 2022, 10:42 PM UTC

jboy55 wrote: post #299

Initial_BP wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure about the current state of the actual ML, but compared to other self driving companies Tesla has a treasure trove of data because they have so many vehicles on the road at all hours of every day. The edge cases are the parts that are hard to identify and solve so having all that drive time data to identify edge cases would seem to give them a big advantage.

If the data doesn't have the details required to build accurate models, then the data is just costing Tesla money. Since Tesla's are just cameras only, with telemetry, they can replay scenarios with existing roads, but what happens when someone cones off half of the road?

I imagine they have a way to replay incidents from their cars in a simulation and even if it's not super accurate, they could likely look at camera data and rebuild a similar situation (Sim or real life to identify and test the edge case)

I work at another autonomous car company (as a security engineer not ML related work) and I know we have a Lot of simulated situations that we run the ML against and add more from situations collected from actual driving.

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

#309

Post by teyc » Sat, Oct 15, 2022, 10:46 PM UTC

Initial_BP wrote: post #293

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.

Not sure about the current state of the actual ML, but compared to other self driving companies Tesla has a treasure trove of data because they have so many vehicles on the road at all hours of every day. The edge cases are the parts that are hard to identify and solve so having all that drive time data to identify edge cases would seem to give them a big advantage.

Most self-driving is about avoiding collissions, and signalling intent, especially when streets are narrow and there's merging or shared use. The physics of cars, people, bikes and kids around roads are well understood (acceleration, velocity). This can be simulated, and a game engine can generate data for virtual sensors to be trained. There's no reason to require time on the road.

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

#310

Post by sneak » Sat, Oct 15, 2022, 10:48 PM UTC

oliveshell wrote: post #204

onethought wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What sensor suite is that?

Radar, ultrasonic proximity sensors, and/or LIDAR, presumably. Tesla has famously removed all radar/ultrasonic sensors from their newer cars in favor of a purely camera-based system.

How do humans drive without these sensors?