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A trucker trying to hack the haulage industry [video]

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Re: A trucker trying to hack the haulage industry [video]

#21

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

akira2501 wrote: post #9
acadien wrote: post #6

Self driving cars are going to upend this industry (eventually). Many mining companies are actively working on getting their mining equipment to be automated to do the riskier jobs without risking drivers. The same ideas apply here. Remove the driver and suddenly you have a truck that runs deliveries 24/7 and only stops to refuel and get serviced. One would hope that as the technology gets more sophisticated the numb…

It's not really the vehicles. It's the loading docks, the fueling stations, the truck scales and all the rest of the infrastructure that supports trucking. All of those are going to need to have "automated truck" support as well, not to mention, when an 18 wheeler blows out a tire, you need some skills to bring the truck to a successful stop, but even more skills and equipment to effect the repair. Mining operations…

> when an 18 wheeler blows out a tire, you need some skills to bring the truck to a successful stop, but even more skills and equipment to effect the repair.

An automated truck won't need a conventional cab. It could essentially be a powered sled that rigidly attaches to a trailer with much less forward projection. This would be easier to control in emergency stops.

Re: A trucker trying to hack the haulage industry [video]

#22

Post by B0Z »

acadien wrote: post #6

Self driving cars are going to upend this industry (eventually). Many mining companies are actively working on getting their mining equipment to be automated to do the riskier jobs without risking drivers. The same ideas apply here. Remove the driver and suddenly you have a truck that runs deliveries 24/7 and only stops to refuel and get serviced. One would hope that as the technology gets more sophisticated the numb…

Honest question. Don't you think this kind of AI is precisely the AI that Gates, Musk, and Hawking are warning against?

Re: A trucker trying to hack the haulage industry [video]

#23

Post by [deleted] »

B0Z wrote: post #22
acadien wrote: post #6

Self driving cars are going to upend this industry (eventually). Many mining companies are actively working on getting their mining equipment to be automated to do the riskier jobs without risking drivers. The same ideas apply here. Remove the driver and suddenly you have a truck that runs deliveries 24/7 and only stops to refuel and get serviced. One would hope that as the technology gets more sophisticated the numb…

Honest question. Don't you think this kind of AI is precisely the AI that Gates, Musk, and Hawking are warning against?

[deleted]

Re: A trucker trying to hack the haulage industry [video]

#24

Post by burger_moon »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #21
akira2501 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really the vehicles. It's the loading docks, the fueling stations, the truck scales and all the rest of the infrastructure that supports trucking. All of those are going to need to have "automated truck" support as well, not to mention, when an 18 wheeler blows out a tire, you need some skills to bring the truck to a successful stop, but even more skills and equipment to effect the repair. Mining operations…

> when an 18 wheeler blows out a tire, you need some skills to bring the truck to a successful stop, but even more skills and equipment to effect the repair. An automated truck won't need a conventional cab. It could essentially be a powered sled that rigidly attaches to a trailer with much less forward projection. This would be easier to control in emergency stops.

Except that trucks usually don't haul the same trailer day in and day out. Also when a truck is loaded the driver has to check weight, balance and shift the pins around on the trailer and 5th. Who does that what the load shifts because the truck made an evasive maneuver out on the road in bfe middle of Utah? There's a lot of aspects to driving otr that people don't realize. This industry already operates on tight margins so bringing in new tech which may be beneficially in the long run is hard to justify for most small companies and owner operator outfits.

Re: A trucker trying to hack the haulage industry [video]

#26

Post by TeMPOraL »

B0Z wrote: post #22
acadien wrote: post #6

Self driving cars are going to upend this industry (eventually). Many mining companies are actively working on getting their mining equipment to be automated to do the riskier jobs without risking drivers. The same ideas apply here. Remove the driver and suddenly you have a truck that runs deliveries 24/7 and only stops to refuel and get serviced. One would hope that as the technology gets more sophisticated the numb…

Honest question. Don't you think this kind of AI is precisely the AI that Gates, Musk, and Hawking are warning against?

No, they're warning us about an AI which could outsmart or outperform us, and lead to our demise as it pursues the goals we've encoded into it without realizing they lead to a result we don't want.

Re: A trucker trying to hack the haulage industry [video]

#27

Post by kbenson »

B0Z wrote: post #22
acadien wrote: post #6

Self driving cars are going to upend this industry (eventually). Many mining companies are actively working on getting their mining equipment to be automated to do the riskier jobs without risking drivers. The same ideas apply here. Remove the driver and suddenly you have a truck that runs deliveries 24/7 and only stops to refuel and get serviced. One would hope that as the technology gets more sophisticated the numb…

Honest question. Don't you think this kind of AI is precisely the AI that Gates, Musk, and Hawking are warning against?

I don't think so. I think a case can be made that he's talking less about SkyNet and more about the risks something like an automated trading algorithm (or planning system, or any case where we put too much trust in a system as infallible) ten years in the future causing major disruption due to too much trust in a fallible system as being infallible.

There's also the possibility that a true AI (not just a complex expert system as above) may be fallible just like a person in not being able to correctly account for the unknown unknowns.

In the end I think it's about the difference between automating positions to make them more efficient (meaning it's still possible to do manually but less efficiently) and relying on things that are essentially impossible to do manually, such as an economic planning AI which may outperform regular economists 95% of the time. The question is what happens in that 5%, and will it catch the problem, and if not, will we keep listening to it as it takes us down a dangerous path.

Re: A trucker trying to hack the haulage industry [video]

#28

Post by [deleted] »

akira2501 wrote: post #9
acadien wrote: post #6

Self driving cars are going to upend this industry (eventually). Many mining companies are actively working on getting their mining equipment to be automated to do the riskier jobs without risking drivers. The same ideas apply here. Remove the driver and suddenly you have a truck that runs deliveries 24/7 and only stops to refuel and get serviced. One would hope that as the technology gets more sophisticated the numb…

It's not really the vehicles. It's the loading docks, the fueling stations, the truck scales and all the rest of the infrastructure that supports trucking. All of those are going to need to have "automated truck" support as well, not to mention, when an 18 wheeler blows out a tire, you need some skills to bring the truck to a successful stop, but even more skills and equipment to effect the repair. Mining operations…

[deleted]

Re: A trucker trying to hack the haulage industry [video]

#29

Post by TeMPOraL »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #10
acadien wrote: post #6

Self driving cars are going to upend this industry (eventually). Many mining companies are actively working on getting their mining equipment to be automated to do the riskier jobs without risking drivers. The same ideas apply here. Remove the driver and suddenly you have a truck that runs deliveries 24/7 and only stops to refuel and get serviced. One would hope that as the technology gets more sophisticated the numb…

I've always be leery of self driving cars. They run on software. Software is only is good as the guy programming it. What happens when the software develops a bug? Be it in the middle of rush hour traffic, or hurling down the highway at 70mph? For all of the great things we know self driving cars can potentially bring to the table, how do we account for the issue of buggy software?

> I've always be leery of self driving cars. They run on software. Software is only is good as the guy programming it.

Software is as good as the best team we can find to write it, and then it can get constantly improved - unlike meat drivers, whose firmware cannot be easily flashed. Moreover, when switching from human control to software you're trading the need for quick evaluation and reaction of driving conditions repeated times number of drivers for a long, concentrated time spent on development and testing. It seems to me like a good trade-off. You can spend all the time you want writing, testing and fixing software up until you reach the point it drives better than humans.

And then you have usual, obvious advantages - self-driving cars won't get tired, emotional, distracted by texting and definitely won't be driving in blatant disregard of traffic laws because "they're pointless and that's how real drivers do things".

Re: A trucker trying to hack the haulage industry [video]

#30

Post by TeMPOraL »

plaguuuuuu wrote: post #19
rogerbinns wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean you'd prefer humans to do the driving? Youtube is full of human examples - start here as an example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwL7S--E5oQ - and note that it ranges from minor fender benders through some very serious injuries and destruction. There are lots of examples of not being able to stay in lane, pulling out, not seeing stopped traffic, not paying attention to surroundings. Humans can't even get…

All the same, I have a large amount of trust in my own driving. I trust my driving more than my own programming. And I sure as hell trust my code more than some sketchy offshore team's. It's only a matter of time before the first car segfaults. Plus it's a huge security risk. Cars are internet-connected these days.

Well, for one you can be pretty sure that self-driving car software isn't going to be written by hippie webdevs changing frameworks every other week. Companies and programmers that tend to work on this kind of software have pretty good track records - we don't see planes falling out of the sky or medical machines randomly killing patients all the time. Uou're going to have an app store for your car drivers.
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