I keep thinking the key is to make 100% of cars self-driving, and networked so they can all communicate and negotiate, which takes the unpredictability and lack of attention of human drivers out of the equation, and then pedestrians and cyclists will adapt. If this was the case, then you could probably get rid of traffic lights and speed limits...but it's the kind of solution to accommodate software solutions that could handle it successfully (I don't like the term AI, because I don't think there's any such thing on a philosophical level). The only problem then remains with the small percentage of drivers left that are determined to drive, like sports car users and motorcyclists, who could interrupt the system by taking advantage of the stability afforded by it. Again, this could be resolved by fitting them with beacons, say, that communicate information about where they are and where they're going, but it'll be a hard sell. I'm pretty sure that most people aren't bothered in the slightest about driving themselves to work every day and operating a steering wheel and pedals to do it, if you could offer them a solution where they could be on their phones and don't have to drive themselves.
Can we have a less flamey discussion of self driving cars?
11–20 of 32 posts
Re: Can we have a less flamey discussion of self driving cars?
#121. No, any time people are saving by not driving a car while riding in one will quickly be gobbled up for productivity purposes rather than leisure. Think taking conference calls or working on spreadsheets while commuting to your office. Think truck drivers sitting in their truck all day while the truck mostly drives itself.
2. Going beyond AI, the fastest approach is commercial vehicles controlled by drivers operating from remote offices. Think buses, trucks, etc.
3. Test the cars in locations where people who could possibly be affected cannot afford to create lawsuits for any kind of accidents that may occur.
4. Absolutely not. Edge cases are fairly infinite.
5. Number of acceptable road deaths per year will be higher than what people want. However, the deaths will be more randomly distributed rather than being concentrated mostly on bad or unsafe drivers as we have today.
6. Driving will become a less valuable skill and thus there will be cheaper and fewer jobs available for such people who specialize in it.
Re: Can we have a less flamey discussion of self driving cars?
#13> Would it contribute positively to our world if competent self driving existed?
Define "competent". Existing isn't enough. In an ideal case of bug free self driving cars making up 100% of traffic on the road, yes the world is a better place with less vehicle related deaths.
Short of that utopia, we have a reality where software bugs cause injuries and deaths and the ultra wealthy companies avoid liability.
> What are the various approaches to get from here to there, and what are their relative merits and risks?
I see no realistic path to the utopian ideal. Even if some company can deliver a truly safe self driving car, it will be a long time before they are ubiquitous. And short of that, you have issues where even if the self driving car behaves safely, it may be acting in ways human drivers do not expect, and thus cause accidents anyway.
> Do the technically-savvy folks on this list think that a heuristic approach (i.e. a bunch of rules written by humans) could ever succeed at effective self driving in diverse conditions? Or is the machine learning + massive data approach more likely to solve it? Or do you consider it fundamentally unsolveable?
Manually coded self drivint has too mant corner cases, so no, I don't believe it is possible.
I don't believe it is possible via ML either. People have way too much faith in ML. I don't think truly safe 100% self driving cars is a realistic goal.
> What interesting moral and legal questions arise if effective self-driving becomes available?
How do we hold parties liable for the damage they cause? So far this doesn't seem to be happening.
> What might be the economic and environmental ramifications of a world with ubiquitous “robotaxis”?
It's not realistic so I don't think it's worth thinking about. It's like daydreaming about a world where nobody dies. Yes there are charlatans pushing this idea. No, it's not happening soon.
Re: Can we have a less flamey discussion of self driving cars?
#14The typical car is on the road 1% of the time. The typical driver-less car will be on the road whenever possible, so will see 100x usage. Just 1% of cars being driver-less will therefore double cars on the road. That will go to things that are good - taking the kids to soccer practice, go to things that are neutral - sleeping in the car as it drives to the beach, and it will go to things that are wasteful, like shipping a single package to a single customer and then going back to the store. But traffic congestion scales exponentially, and cars don't scale at all. So in reality, the entirety of the city will be a traffic jam and you won't be able to get anywhere. Just as we've seen buying GPU's during the crypto shortage, the bots will win, your time can't compete with automation.
So in reality in a world that has driver-less cars, the first thing we will see is a congestion tax. And the first thing we would like to see as a result of that congestion tax is better public transportation. Driver-less buses will do well, especially if they have dedicated lanes. Trains will do better. If you think that you can avoid public spending on public transportation because driver-less cars will save you, you are mistaken. You should be funding that such that if driver-less cars become a reality, but even if they don't, you will be ready.
Re: Can we have a less flamey discussion of self driving cars?
#15AI/ML just isn't at a point yet where it can encounter something it's never seen and make a decision about it in a predictable way. Which is problematic with driving for two reasons. 1) crazy things happen on the road all the time, none of which are 100% predictable, since humans have free will. Sure, the majority of driving is very predicable, but it's that tiny fraction of clown cars that's a problem. 2) humans are…
> none of which are 100% predictable, since humans have free will.
Not just humans. The judgement call of "hit the critter with my car or try to avoid a crash while swerving to avoid it" is hard for humans too; how will we program our machines to make that choice for us?
My wife ran into a falling tree branch once, wasted the windshield but no other real damage, fortunately. It was traumatic for her and the circumstance wouldn't have been avoidable, human or computer driving.
Re: Can we have a less flamey discussion of self driving cars?
#16Until car companies can be sued into the ground for their self driving car killing someone, there won't be proper incentives in place to ensure the tech is safe and not a move fast and break things race between manufacturers that puts everyone at risk.
> sued into the ground
The consequences should be severe, but should not prevent the company from finding ways to learn from their mistakes. There's a middle ground here: if there's no consequences, then we get careless implementations without improvement. If the consequence is bankruptcy, then there's no version of the tech that would ever be released by a respectable company. So we need something in the middle, where the consequences are severe enough to motivate good tech, but not severe enough to block the tech altogether.
Re: Can we have a less flamey discussion of self driving cars?
#17If our goal is to save the world, the only answer is fewer cars. Drastically reducing the number of cars and roads and instead using public transportation, bicycles, walking, etc. is the solution to so many of our social problems. Even if we somehow replaced every car with a self-driving electric car, and recharged all those batteries with solar power, it would not save us. If you really want to save the world, stop using cars period.
Re: Can we have a less flamey discussion of self driving cars?
#18Until car companies can be sued into the ground for their self driving car killing someone, there won't be proper incentives in place to ensure the tech is safe and not a move fast and break things race between manufacturers that puts everyone at risk.
> sued into the ground The consequences should be severe, but should not prevent the company from finding ways to learn from their mistakes. There's a middle ground here: if there's no consequences, then we get careless implementations without improvement. If the consequence is bankruptcy, then there's no version of the tech that would ever be released by a respectable company. So we need something in the middle, whe…
The tech is inevitable IMO, so I disagree that bankruptcy shouldn't be on the table given the potential for harm (an errant update could result in nationwide or worldwide catastrophies). You want to be the first to deliver self driving? Better make sure it works.
Re: Can we have a less flamey discussion of self driving cars?
#19The typical car is on the road 1% of the time. The typical driver-less car will be on the road whenever possible, so will see 100x usage. Just 1% of cars being driver-less will therefore double cars on the road. That will go to things that are good - taking the kids to soccer practice, go to things that are neutral - sleeping in the car as it drives to the beach, and it will go to things that are wasteful, like shipp…
Surely those 100% utilised driverless cars would reduce the other cars on the road?
Re: Can we have a less flamey discussion of self driving cars?
#20> - Do the technically-savvy folks on this list think that a heuristic approach (i.e. a bunch of rules written by humans) could ever succeed at effective self driving in diverse conditions? Or is the machine learning + massive data approach more likely to solve it?
The only solution that sounds plausible to me is a hybrid approach.
Much like when building a car you can make the engine as complex as you like - but you keep things simple with the brakes. Aircraft autopilots sometimes have three separate processors, programmed by three separate teams.
In a self-driving car, I'd expect a heavily audited core of code to take care of not hitting clearly visible stationary objects like concrete barriers and fire trucks even if other parts of the system relied heavily on ML.
> Or do you consider it fundamentally unsolveable?
I think self-driving vehicles will trade off some types of accidents for others.
For example, you see a running child who disappears behind a truck, then a ball rolls out into the road? A skilled, attentive driver would anticipate that the kid might run into the road. But that needs fairly detailed scene understanding. Accidents like that might increase.
On the other hand, a lot of accidents are due to lack of attention - and a machine can provide consistent vigilance. So accidents arising due to drowsiness and drivers fiddling with the radio could be expected to decrease.