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Video suggests huge problems with Uber’s driverless car program

arstechnica.com

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Re: Video suggests huge problems with Uber’s driverless car program

#11

Post by hndamien »

sureaboutthis wrote: post #3

I have two problems with this article. 1) They make it appear that Uber is a car manufacturer. 2) Even though Uber has not been determined to be at fault, the author seems to want to make it that way anyway.

I think the standards are different in this case. While the pedestrian definitely should not have been where they were, and if this were an incident with a human driver, you would probably say the driver was not at fault, I think this is slightly different.

They are on the road with conditions because what they are doing is somewhat experimental still. There is a safety driver for a reason that did not respond. A human driver may have collided but would have responded and potentially avoided a fatality (if not a collision). The benefits of autonomous driving completely failed on all counts in this case, which imply that being on a public road is far to early for Uber - suggesting some fault to lie with Uber or the regulators.

Re: Video suggests huge problems with Uber’s driverless car program

#12

Post by stouset »

bambax wrote: post #9

"Testing" of driverless cars seem to be the wrong way around. Software should try to learn from human drivers: watch them instead of being watched by them. The way it would work would be: the human is driving and the software is, at the same time, watching the driver and figuring out an action to take. Every time the driver's and the software's behavior differ, is logged and analyzed to figure out why there was a dif…

At some point you still need to switch roles. We’re at that point.

Re: Video suggests huge problems with Uber’s driverless car program

#14

Post by lhorie »

matte_black wrote: post #10

Why don’t we require software engineers who work on self driving car software to go through licensing and certification. And then, if their code results in a death, they are liable and can have their license completely revoked, and they would be unable to work on self driving cars again.

My guess is that it's because the field is so new that there aren't really any experts that can define what are reasonable rules for said licensing and certifications

Re: Video suggests huge problems with Uber’s driverless car program

#15

Post by oldgradstudent »

kristianov wrote: post #13

I hope on-road testing could be more like human drug testing. After all, both affect human lives.

Drugs are tested under informed consent, not on unwilling third parties.

Maybe testing of autonomous vehicles should be done off public roads (at least at this stage of development).

Re: Video suggests huge problems with Uber’s driverless car program

#16

Post by c06n »

bambax wrote: post #9

"Testing" of driverless cars seem to be the wrong way around. Software should try to learn from human drivers: watch them instead of being watched by them. The way it would work would be: the human is driving and the software is, at the same time, watching the driver and figuring out an action to take. Every time the driver's and the software's behavior differ, is logged and analyzed to figure out why there was a dif…

> Software should try to learn from human drivers

Yeah, that doesn't work though. Basically because you would need to have an excellent situation representation to really understand the drivers' reactions to outside events. But that does not exist.

Perception and situation representation are key to mastering the driving task, and they both differ greatly between humans and machines.

Re: Video suggests huge problems with Uber’s driverless car program

#17

Post by ghaff »

lhorie wrote: post #14
matte_black wrote: post #10

Why don’t we require software engineers who work on self driving car software to go through licensing and certification. And then, if their code results in a death, they are liable and can have their license completely revoked, and they would be unable to work on self driving cars again.

My guess is that it's because the field is so new that there aren't really any experts that can define what are reasonable rules for said licensing and certifications

They exist. They're required for some roles:

https://insight.ieeeusa.org/articles/professional-licensure-...

Re: Video suggests huge problems with Uber’s driverless car program

#18

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

Are you suprised? Uber is a company that:

* Flouted Taxi regulations

* Living in legal gray zones in regards to contractors vs employees

* Designed a system to avoid law enforcement

* Performed shady tactics with its competitors

* Illegally obtained the private medical records of a rape victim

* Created a workplace where sexual harassment was routine

* Illegally tested self-driving cars on public roads in California without obtaining the required state licenses.

* Possibly stole a LIDAR design from a competitor

Now their vehicle killed a pedestrian in a situation that the self driving vehicles should be much better than humans at (LIDAR can see in the dark, and the reaction time of a computer is much better than humans.)

Uber has exhausted their "benefit of the doubt" reserve. Maybe, they need to be made an example of with massive losses to investors and venture capitalists as an object lesson that ethics really do matter, and that bad ethics will eventually hurt your bank account.

Re: Video suggests huge problems with Uber’s driverless car program

#19

Post by Animats »

bambax wrote: post #9

"Testing" of driverless cars seem to be the wrong way around. Software should try to learn from human drivers: watch them instead of being watched by them. The way it would work would be: the human is driving and the software is, at the same time, watching the driver and figuring out an action to take. Every time the driver's and the software's behavior differ, is logged and analyzed to figure out why there was a dif…

No, what that gets you is smooth normal driving and poor handling of emergency situations. People have tried using supervised learning for that - vision and human actions for training, steering and speed out. Works fine, until it works really badly, because it has no model of what to do in trouble.

Re: Video suggests huge problems with Uber’s driverless car program

#20

Post by Silhouette »

ghaff wrote: post #17
lhorie wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that it's because the field is so new that there aren't really any experts that can define what are reasonable rules for said licensing and certifications

They exist. They're required for some roles: https://insight.ieeeusa.org/articles/professional-licensure-...

But what qualifies the people administering those examinations to judge how good someone is at writing reliable software in safety-critical environments?
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