Google Street View: A wolf in sheep’s clothing • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Street View: A wolf in sheep’s clothing

#11

Post by roop » Tue, Jun 05, 2012, 7:01 AM UTC

lucb1e wrote: post #4

I thought Google's Street View cars couldn't drive very fast to be able to take those pictures. When not driving at full speed, it's not really a good learning set. Also the link says they get to "know every road by definition", but you could read that almost entirely from TomTom's maps as well. Roads change, weather conditions change, etc. I'm not so sure Google really uses their Street View car data for their self-…

> Also the link says they get to "know every road by definition", but you could read that almost entirely from TomTom's maps as well. Roads change, weather conditions change, etc.

'Know' here doesn't mean just knowing the road as in a map. OP meant 'know' (I presume) in the sense that: the data on how the street view driver drove through that road and under what conditions (including weather, traffic, et al.) is learnt by the machine learning algorithm.

Re: Google Street View: A wolf in sheep’s clothing

#12

Post by wavephorm » Tue, Jun 05, 2012, 7:02 AM UTC

The driver-less car seems like just a side-project of Google's primary business goal: to steal Social Network marketshare from Facebook in the form of shoving Google Plus down our throats. I mean, what's more important, innovating and giving people a technology which will improve their lives, or forcing them to use a website in which to show them cat pictures and click on context-aware advertisements?

Re: Google Street View: A wolf in sheep’s clothing

#13

Post by slavak » Tue, Jun 05, 2012, 7:09 AM UTC

Is the author seriously implying a car loaded down with lots of cameras and doing an average of 30MPH is Google's ultimate vehicle for training driverless cars?

If he's right, God help us all.

Re: Google Street View: A wolf in sheep’s clothing

#14

Post by mayanksinghal » Tue, Jun 05, 2012, 7:18 AM UTC

ziadbc wrote: post #9

melvinram wrote: post #2

Decent thought experiment but the whole "wolf in sheep's clothing" part is just link bait title or a really bad analogy. A more appropriate analogy would be "a head fake" as the late Randy Pausch so aptly put it.

It isn't really linkbait. I doubt adrian is worried about getting traffic to his blog. A sheep follows the herd, but the wolf drives itself. Pretty good analogy if you ask me.

> A sheep follows the herd, but the wolf drives itself

I doubt that the author is using 'sheep' and 'wolf' to refer to the herd behaviour of the former versus the self decision making ability/nature of the latter.

I cannot give a very well analyzed comment on the seriousness or the _wolfiness_ of this initiative by Google, I haven't given it a deep thought yet. I am, however, unable to understand the arguments of why what Google is doing, is bad. The author elaborates the possibility of Street View feeding Driverless Project and the latter increasing efficiency of the system. The reasoning behind this being vicious is missing.

"A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing is an idiom of Biblical origin. It is used of those playing a role contrary to their real character, with whom contact is dangerous." - Wikipedia. Role contrary to real character, possibly. Dangerous, I can't see how.

Re: Google Street View: A wolf in sheep’s clothing

#15

Post by ordinary » Tue, Jun 05, 2012, 7:28 AM UTC

lucb1e wrote: post #4

I thought Google's Street View cars couldn't drive very fast to be able to take those pictures. When not driving at full speed, it's not really a good learning set. Also the link says they get to "know every road by definition", but you could read that almost entirely from TomTom's maps as well. Roads change, weather conditions change, etc. I'm not so sure Google really uses their Street View car data for their self-…

I thought Google's Street View cars couldn't drive very fast to be able to take those pictures. When not driving at full speed, it's not really a good learning set.

I'd argue that the vast majority of the roads where one drives faster than 50 km/h are very simple. This is especially true for highways; they have to be, because humans are bad at thinking at 120 km/h and even worse at surviving collisions at that speed. There's an overabundance of signs and road marking, and an incredible effort has been put into making it relatively hard for drivers to behave irrationally. Compare that with, say, a multi-lane roundabout in the inner city.

Once you've got enough data to reliably survive that kind of situation, you're 90% of the way there.

Re: Google Street View: A wolf in sheep’s clothing

#16

Post by Tycho » Tue, Jun 05, 2012, 7:38 AM UTC

wavephorm wrote: post #12

The driver-less car seems like just a side-project of Google's primary business goal: to steal Social Network marketshare from Facebook in the form of shoving Google Plus down our throats. I mean, what's more important, innovating and giving people a technology which will improve their lives, or forcing them to use a website in which to show them cat pictures and click on context-aware advertisements?

Interestingly, the age of the driverless car would suit Google's core business for two reasons:

1. People would have more time to surf the web (instead of driving)

2. People will have more disposable income (because presumably driverless cars will save us all a lot of money)

Re: Google Street View: A wolf in sheep’s clothing

#17

Post by koide » Tue, Jun 05, 2012, 7:51 AM UTC

Everyone who took Sebastian Thrun's Udacity "Building a self driving car" course (or everybody that has had training in robotics) will see that there's a whole lot more than mere training data to build a self driving car.

It could be helpful in certain scenarios, but it's for sure not enough for the data for the cars to be the main reason behind street view. As the author himself notices, the map business is huge, and it's even bigger when coupled with always connected location aware devices.

An unlikely, if fun, story.

Re: Google Street View: A wolf in sheep’s clothing

#18

Post by vezycash » Tue, Jun 05, 2012, 7:53 AM UTC

Tycho wrote: post #16

wavephorm wrote: post #12

The driver-less car seems like just a side-project of Google's primary business goal: to steal Social Network marketshare from Facebook in the form of shoving Google Plus down our throats. I mean, what's more important, innovating and giving people a technology which will improve their lives, or forcing them to use a website in which to show them cat pictures and click on context-aware advertisements?

Interestingly, the age of the driverless car would suit Google's core business for two reasons: 1. People would have more time to surf the web (instead of driving) 2. People will have more disposable income (because presumably driverless cars will save us all a lot of money)

you forgot to add the project glass thing. Ads would literally be in your face! Sometime in the future, they'll also be able to control people's psyche through all the glass thing to mask their evil doings.

Re: Google Street View: A wolf in sheep’s clothing

#19

Post by natep » Tue, Jun 05, 2012, 8:02 AM UTC

pauljburke wrote: post #3

melvinram wrote: post #2

Decent thought experiment but the whole "wolf in sheep's clothing" part is just link bait title or a really bad analogy. A more appropriate analogy would be "a head fake" as the late Randy Pausch so aptly put it.

Probably just a really bad analogy. They also used "vicious cycle of driving and learning" where "virtuous circle" (which I take to mean a system with positive feedback) would be more appropriate.

Well, both vicious and virtuous cycles involve positive feedback (i.e. in the direction of current change). The difference is that virtuous cycles tend towards positive outcomes.

The whole piece uses terms with negative connotations to convey what I think is meant to be a positive message of being impressed by ingenuity. So, I'm not sure which is the more charitable interpretation: he was extremely careless in writing the post, or was deliberately misleading to get views.

Re: Google Street View: A wolf in sheep’s clothing

#20

Post by damian2000 » Tue, Jun 05, 2012, 8:13 AM UTC

vezycash wrote: post #18

Tycho wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, the age of the driverless car would suit Google's core business for two reasons: 1. People would have more time to surf the web (instead of driving) 2. People will have more disposable income (because presumably driverless cars will save us all a lot of money)

you forgot to add the project glass thing. Ads would literally be in your face! Sometime in the future, they'll also be able to control people's psyche through all the glass thing to mask their evil doings.

Plan is to project the ads onto the windscreen of your car - since its driverless you don't need to see out of it anymore. ;-)