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Is a self-driving car smarter than a seven-month-old?

economist.com

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Re: Is a self-driving car smarter than a seven-month-old?

#11

Post by capableweb »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #8

No, and the constant desire to apply the same scale of intelligence to dramatically different things is absolutely nonsense. A self-driving car does not need to understand the world in a way a human does, nor can it actually do so. It needs to understand the world in a way that enables it to successfully complete its assigned tasks. Full stop. Is an orange as smart as a screwdriver? Is an ant as smart as a waterfall?…

The article is not actually comparing the intelligence of babies with the "intelligence" of self-driving cars (since as you said, this makes no sense).

I cannot access the full article, but the leading paragraph says:

> BY THE AGE of seven months, most children have learned that objects still exist even when they are out of sight. Put a toy under a blanket and a child that old will know it is still there, and that he can reach underneath the blanket to get it back. This understanding, of “object permanence”, is a normal developmental milestone, as well as a basic tenet of reality.

So one could imagine the article is about "object permanence", something that is easier to compare between babies and self-driving cars. But not sure how interesting articles you can write about it (or interesting knee-jerk HN comments about said articles).

Re: Is a self-driving car smarter than a seven-month-old?

#12

Post by mdp2021 »

krisoft wrote: post #4
jakeisnotadog1 wrote: post #2

https://archive.is/Mne8h

Thank you. In the recent weeks I was considering to subscribe to the economist. But if this is the quality of their writing on a subject I can judge then I would rather not poison my mind with articles from them which I have no expertise over.

I am not sure, I think it is an almost acceptable introduction for the layman to the divergence between deterministic, classic AI and in-focus, out of ANN functions AI. It gives the reader a notion that the divergent paths exist - but not much further structured historic or divulgative context. Interesting and informative notions, e.g. the existence of fuzzy logic based systems, or artificial vision as tending to rely on textures instead of shapes, or the problem of transparency, are hinted without leaving the reader with more understanding. Real problems and historic achievements look as if a current matter born out of contemporary industrial issues. For example:

«How to give AI at least some semblance of that understanding - the reasoning ability of a seven-month-old child, perhaps - is now a matter of active research».

Err... «Now»?! No, that has been an explicit topic. Expert systems come to mind as one of the most explicit efforts to tackle it. And they are mentioned, at 60% - as a reference that the layman cannot decode! And an example of how the article makes academic matters seem like strategies promoted by industrial agents.

The Economist has better material. I now also have the doubt if on average it does stand without crutches - without the reader having to put it back into an historic framework of reality -, though.

Re: Is a self-driving car smarter than a seven-month-old?

#13

Post by capableweb »

mojuba wrote: post #10

I think it should be obvious to most of us that intelligence is a combination of statistical learning, tree search, and the kind of generalized knowledge about the physical world the article is talking about. I don't believe any of the three components alone can excel at any meaningful or interesting task. ML can play go, but can't fold clothes, isn't it absurd? Going back to self-driving, the main challenge on the r…

> Really, where is this enthusiasm around ML coming from?

Same as most other "enthusiasm" in this industry: HYPE!

Everything from self-driving to machine learning, TypeScript, React, Containers and everything in between is driven by hype, that is usually supported by huge companies investing in marketing to create said hype. Once the ball is rolling, it'll keep on rolling until people realize they got got, then we all move on to something else to hype. Rinse and repeat.

Re: Is a self-driving car smarter than a seven-month-old?

#14

Post by mdp2021 »

mojuba wrote: post #10

I think it should be obvious to most of us that intelligence is a combination of statistical learning, tree search, and the kind of generalized knowledge about the physical world the article is talking about. I don't believe any of the three components alone can excel at any meaningful or interesting task. ML can play go, but can't fold clothes, isn't it absurd? Going back to self-driving, the main challenge on the r…

> Really, where is this enthusiasm around ML coming from

Pioneering, squeezing the potentials out of a technology which has immensities to offer - just not necessarily ready for specific industrial applications. That, the article shows pretty well: a problem - "self driving vehicles" - was proposed and the tehcnology is imperfect for that one specifically.

Re: Is a self-driving car smarter than a seven-month-old?

#15

Post by mdp2021 »

capableweb wrote: post #11
ceilingcorner wrote: post #8

No, and the constant desire to apply the same scale of intelligence to dramatically different things is absolutely nonsense. A self-driving car does not need to understand the world in a way a human does, nor can it actually do so. It needs to understand the world in a way that enables it to successfully complete its assigned tasks. Full stop. Is an orange as smart as a screwdriver? Is an ant as smart as a waterfall?…

The article is not actually comparing the intelligence of babies with the "intelligence" of self-driving cars (since as you said, this makes no sense). I cannot access the full article, but the leading paragraph says: > BY THE AGE of seven months, most children have learned that objects still exist even when they are out of sight. Put a toy under a blanket and a child that old will know it is still there, and that he…

> I cannot access the full article

(You missed the link to the copy at archive.is :) )

Re: Is a self-driving car smarter than a seven-month-old?

#16

Post by mdp2021 »

mlang23 wrote: post #9

What a stupid headline. Talk about comparing apples and oranges... But this is normal now. Since the Google car, the media is forcing the self-driving car narrative down its readers throats. There is another similar topic which is dear to my heart. Implants that make the blind see again. I feel article about these, and self-driving car, read similarily stupid.

No, it was just rhetoric to say that ANN do not work as the layman may expect, in the terms of "small children know about the permanence of formerly perceived objects, but ANN may not".

Re: Is a self-driving car smarter than a seven-month-old?

#17

Post by andreyk »

mojuba wrote: post #10

I think it should be obvious to most of us that intelligence is a combination of statistical learning, tree search, and the kind of generalized knowledge about the physical world the article is talking about. I don't believe any of the three components alone can excel at any meaningful or interesting task. ML can play go, but can't fold clothes, isn't it absurd? Going back to self-driving, the main challenge on the r…

"ML-based FSD is a dead end, always has been from the beginning"

To be fair, Google's (Waymo's) FSD is most definitely not fully ML-based, and afaik neither is Tesla's. Sure some people may speak like that's the case, but the technical approaches these companies take are not so naive.

Re: Is a self-driving car smarter than a seven-month-old?

#18

Post by mojuba »

capableweb wrote: post #13
mojuba wrote: post #10

I think it should be obvious to most of us that intelligence is a combination of statistical learning, tree search, and the kind of generalized knowledge about the physical world the article is talking about. I don't believe any of the three components alone can excel at any meaningful or interesting task. ML can play go, but can't fold clothes, isn't it absurd? Going back to self-driving, the main challenge on the r…

> Really, where is this enthusiasm around ML coming from? Same as most other "enthusiasm" in this industry: HYPE! Everything from self-driving to machine learning, TypeScript, React, Containers and everything in between is driven by hype, that is usually supported by huge companies investing in marketing to create said hype. Once the ball is rolling, it'll keep on rolling until people realize they got got, then we al…

Agreed though probably not with everything in your list, but it is true that it's the hype, typically originating from the executives of giant corporations that are capable of buying small startups in bulk. That's the source of some good things and some bullshit too. Then the investors follow suit, fund startups that can be potentially acquired and it doesn't even matter to them whether the thing works or not.

Re: Is a self-driving car smarter than a seven-month-old?

#19

Post by yawaworht1978 »

The main challenge for fsd tech is they do not have the tech that a human naturally has, anticipation, hearing, interpretation, all integrated into vision, we see good at dusk, daylight, dawn, night to a degree, we know how to deal with rain and snow and ice. In other words, humans don't need a human fallback system like the self driving systems do.

The thing that self driving systems can do, lane keeping and stop and go traffic in a straight line could be done by a human Hild within a few hours of training, less if it's an auto gear box.

The fsd software is plain infantile compared to a human driver, it might keep a lane better than a human who does not have any business driving a car in the first place(blind, on drugs, sleepy , alcohol).

In the beginning, cars didn't have good brakes or suspensions and that led to accidents as well, but once cars where road safe, it didn't take humans long to accumulate the driving skills. In Europe, people get a driver's licence after 12-30 observed hours of driving practice and a theory test and are deemed road worthy, it works more or less. Fsd tech is now 10years old with God knows how many dev hours and collected data behind it and no hope for full fsd on the horizon anytime soon.

It's quite simple, if machines were better, they would have replaced humans, but the human brain and body is quite far more sophisticated than any of these fsd systems. Sure, for some tasks, machines are better suited and the change has happened.

Call me authoritarian or whatever, I would prohibit the sale of these systems for the time being. If the companies want to raise money for it, do it, don't charge the buyers upfront. And most importantly, don't release your beta ware to the streets where my kids are walking or are in another car. I didn't sign up for this last time I checked. The regulatory bodies are suspiciously quiet on the matter(slow is normal). A whitelist approach should be deployed, hell, in most of Europe, if you change as much as an exhaust system or use tinted windows, or different wheels, it's illegal unless there are homologation papers.

Re: Is a self-driving car smarter than a seven-month-old?

#20

Post by andreyk »

"BY THE AGE of seven months, most children have learned that objects still exist even when they are out of sight ... It is also something that self-driving cars do not have. And that is a problem. Autonomous vehicles are getting better, but they still don’t understand the world in the way that a human being does. For a self-driving car, a bicycle that is momentarily hidden by a passing van is a bicycle that has ceased to exist."

Where is this assertion coming from? Self driving requires planning which requires forward prediction and continuous object tracking, I highly doubt this is at all true.

"Modern AI is based on the idea of machine learning."

sigh..... while it's true a lot of the most ground-breaking advancements in AI over the past decade has been due to ML, it's not like it's the only set of techniques that are worked on as part of AI. For instance, self driving is a case in which many techniques that are used (planning, sensor fusion, filtering, etc.) are not ML-based.

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