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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

#341

Post by ufmace »

DebtDeflation wrote: post #104
Fricken wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Object detection is an issue, but it doesn't only apply to "moving" objects. The current state of the art is having trouble differentiating between a "solid" stationary object like a tire or chunk of metal that must be navigated around, and something like an empty plastic bag that can be safely ignored. Regarding infrastructure, AVs also seem to have a lot of trouble with faded lane lines on roads.

This pretty much. You've got to be able to rapidly identify everything you see and predict what it's reasonably likely to do, which sounds like an AGI-scale problem.

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

#342

Post by cptskippy »

nichochar wrote: post #283
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: -…

I believe that Waymo and Cruise have more capable platforms that can more accurately measure the environment at those boundary conditions, where as Tesla's camera only approach more closely mimics human perception. But where do they stand in terms of datasets used for training their models?

It seems like Tesla has a huge advantage in terms of training data by leveraging a fleet of millions of vehicles.

Which is more valuable, experience or technology?

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

#343

Post by Retric »

subroutine wrote: post #330
Retric wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s fair. I suspect we are at least 30 years from a drunk to be legally able to order their self driving car home without issue simply due to cultural inertia. Assuming we get to that point it will probably be another 20 years after that before non self driving is seen in the same way as driving a motorcycle is today. Aka something that’s not suicidal, but defiantly excessively dangerous.

I'd agree with that estimate. But sheesh, 50 years from now seems like forever. Two final thoughts... (1) Maybe within the next 50 years devs can instill into AI, some meaning of death. As it is, I find some comfort knowing my driver realizes the difference between a field and a 40-foot cliff along the coast of Big Sur, and our shared theory of mind regarding the consequence of swerving to avoid something in those si…

I think (2) is more cultural than that. People reacted poorly to automatic elevators when they where first introduced and now people just don’t think about them as much more complicated than a light switch. The elevator broke and my light broke have the same feel of an inanimate object not working even though elevators are a lot more complicated.

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

#344

Post by cptskippy »

katbyte wrote: post #301
mota7 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Or perhaps it will be their advantage in the short term.

Imagine a foggy condition that causes a 50 car pile up on the highway. Which is more likely to avoid the collision, a Tesla that slowed down because it couldn't see or a Waymo/Cruise blasting down the highway at 65 mph because it's Lidar can see through the fog?

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

#345

Post by Symbiote »

thrwyoilarticle wrote: post #135
criley2 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Everything has been carefully mapped out ahead of time. That sounds sustainable and scalable to earth-size, for sure.

Earth size? When was the last time you drove in Madagascar? Most driven miles are the same commute in the same city 10 times a week.

I wonder if you know what some of the roads in Madagascar are like, or just picked a country.

https://www.dangerousroads.org/africa/madagascar/3415-route-...

(A colleague is there now.)

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

#346

Post by cptskippy »

teyc wrote: post #309
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.

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.

But you'll never be able to come up with all of the possible scenarios to simulate. What Tesla has demonstrated is creating virtual scenarios where they can dynamic adjust all factors (light, weather, traffic, etc) and base them off real world situations they've encountered where their Model failed.

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

#347

Post by tempsy »

joakleaf wrote: post #323
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: -…

As someone who also follows the progress online and watch the presentations by Cruise, Tesla, etc, I agree that Cruise is well ahead of Tesla. It feels like Tesla’s main strategy is to add more data, more compute power, more simulation, and hope for “convergence”. Maybe that will work, but right now it feels like Cruise’s technology feels more mature and thought through.

Is it? Remarkably Tesla’s compute bill does not seems to be growing exponentially with the amount of data it is supposedly collecting.

Point is I would not take anything Elon says at face value. He’s a marketer who is constantly bending the truth.

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

#348

Post by bsder »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #311
katbyte wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The counterargument to this is that since humans reach acceptable safety levels with vision only, it must be possible to do self driving with vision only. That said, augmenting vision with other methods does seem like a no brainer for better performance.

> The counterargument to this is that since humans reach acceptable safety levels with vision only

100+ car pileups in Southern California checking in to provide a counterexample.

The patchy fog in Southern California on I-5 can go from "not too bad" to "can't see your own hood" in a matter of seconds. Radar is going to catch hazards WAY before a human will.

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

#349

Post by phi-y »

oceanplexian wrote: post #333
joakleaf wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who also follows the progress online and watch the presentations by Cruise, Tesla, etc, I agree that Cruise is well ahead of Tesla. It feels like Tesla’s main strategy is to add more data, more compute power, more simulation, and hope for “convergence”. Maybe that will work, but right now it feels like Cruise’s technology feels more mature and thought through.

They’re not though. As of today I can’t buy a production car with Cruise. You don’t get points for building something that’s theoretically superior but not an actual product. It’s the same story with companies like Apple that wipe the floor of wannabe hardware companies with theoretically better specs. Like Apple, Tesla actually ships.

Cruise is going the uber route for their service. The robo-cars are already available in some areas

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

#350

Post by bergenty »

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…

There’s nothing boring about a car. It’s private, facilitates living outside of cities so it’s not dense and gross and offers the freedom to go anywhere with roads.
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