Self-driving cars are headed toward an AI roadblock • Hacker News Board

Re: Self-driving cars are headed toward an AI roadblock

#201

Post by s2g » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 10:14 PM UTC

Fricken wrote: post #54

CPLX wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true at all. There are a lot more use cases for self driving technology than taxi services. In fact I'm continuously perplexed as to why this specific use case, which is obviously the most challenging and likely to be the last to reach the market, is always first in these discussions.

There are very good reasons as to why Waymo and all the other major players are focused on robotaxis. A truck still needs to be able to drive in cities, and if you figure out how to automate all the other thing a trucker does you can replace 3 million of them. Big whoop. Robotaxis stand to challenge the economics of personal vehicle ownership, the potential market is many orders of magnitude larger.

> Robotaxis stand to challenge the economics of personal vehicle ownership

I have yet to hear a compelling reason why I would give up my car, and if I did why public transit isn't a better option.

Re: Self-driving cars are headed toward an AI roadblock

#202

Post by totaldick » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 10:17 PM UTC

georgeecollins wrote: post #199

totaldick wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not trolling. I don't think you know Brooks well enough, i've been following him since the 90s. Rodney Brooks is famous for his subsumption architecture and disregard of statistical methods. Because of the failures of Marvin Minsky GOFAI, the previous director of MIT AI, he went in the opposite direction completely and became highly skeptical of AI while serving as MIT AI head. This was the AI winter days of the 90s.

Why create a name "totaldick" to make a single post if not to troll? My response would be: You don't head the most prestigious AI lab in world with pure skepticism. I think you have elaborated on your true objection, his past skepticism about statistical methods. I don't think that equates to a blanket skepticism. I also refer you to the talk in my original post. He points out that there are breakthroughs and pitfall…

This is my only account, just signed up recently, and the name was just spur of the moment. Sorry if it comes across as trolling, that wasn't my intention. I just know a bit about Rodney Brooks, am a fan of his work, so I gave my 2 cents.

Re: Self-driving cars are headed toward an AI roadblock

#203

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 10:34 PM UTC

s2g wrote: post #201

Fricken wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are very good reasons as to why Waymo and all the other major players are focused on robotaxis. A truck still needs to be able to drive in cities, and if you figure out how to automate all the other thing a trucker does you can replace 3 million of them. Big whoop. Robotaxis stand to challenge the economics of personal vehicle ownership, the potential market is many orders of magnitude larger.

> Robotaxis stand to challenge the economics of personal vehicle ownership I have yet to hear a compelling reason why I would give up my car, and if I did why public transit isn't a better option.

In suburban environments, robotaxis are likely to be a key firm of public transit rather than an alternative (rideshare as public transit if already a thing in some suburban environments.)

Re: Self-driving cars are headed toward an AI roadblock

#204

Post by Zhenya » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 10:37 PM UTC

mdorazio wrote: post #129

freerobby wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All due respect, have you used any of the Autopilot clones? There are endless debates about what's better on paper, but everybody I know who's actually used them says Autopilot is much more mature. Comma.ai seems to be right on their tail, but it's an aftermarket system requiring a fair bit of DIY (so it's not very accessible yet for most end users). Tesla was first to market with auto steering, and seems to have the…

As someone who has used Autopilot and many of its "clones" as well as worked with several OEMs on these features, Tesla's offering is not more mature, it's more irresponsible. Autopilot is a combination of ADAS features that many other OEMs have had for a while and deliberately chosen not to tie together due to safety concerns. These concerns have been validated multiple times now by Autopilot errors. The "clones" ar…

Hey! Is there a way to contact you directly?

Re: Self-driving cars are headed toward an AI roadblock

#205

Post by xbkingx » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 10:42 PM UTC

InclinedPlane wrote: post #186

ebikelaw wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All journalists covering the self-driving car beat are basically required to ignore Waymo so they can continue writing “When will cars drive themselves? Experts say nobody knows” articles. If you ignore Waymo it’s a race; if you include Waymo it’s not. This article makes the further error of assuming “AI” is required for self-driving cars, rather than just a shitload of code.

Nobody has self-driving cars, not even Waymo. Every "self-driving car" has "disengagements" (a euphemism for "it stopped working") periodically every few thousand miles. That's simply unacceptable and needs to be sorted out. If a human driver was performing a panic stop for no reason or hitting a pedestrian or another car every 3 months or so we would take away their license. Waymo is doing better than almost everyon…

It's the classic problem of truly appreciating magnitude and scale. Humans are amazing at it within a very narrow realm, and then terrible beyond that narrow range.

This is the sad realization I had about brain-computer interfaces towards the end of my research. 99.9% is NOT good enough when the stakes are life and death and the factors within events that the environment throws at you are basically independent and continuous.

At least with self driving cars we can enforce some hard boundaries. In BCIs implementing boundaries is tantamount to denying the user of their free will.

Re: Self-driving cars are headed toward an AI roadblock

#206

Post by vntok » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 10:53 PM UTC

notahacker wrote: post #168

vntok wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have a look[1]. Observe how they all kind of look like each other regardless of the country: shoulder pads, head cover, belt, uniform colour, formal attire, etc. Once the model knows the baseline, that is "a uniformed individual waving characteristically in front of the car", don't you think it would be quite easy to teach it with a mere few hundred pictures how local police officers look like in the current region?…

They don't look remotely similar to me, especially considering that black, blue, navy, grey and khaki (and reflective yellow for people on roads) are not unpopular colours for clothes worn by people who are not police officers or otherwise involved in traffic direction, many of whom may have cause to move their arms in ways comparable to signals. Humans are just a lot better at gauging intention and even simple stuff…

> They don't look remotely similar to me

All of these agents follow a similar pattern of clothing (as I said, combination of similar garnments and colours) and behaviour (placement on the road, gesturing with authority, directly facing the car, etc.). Machine learning algorithms are especially good at recognizing patterns and storing their abstracted form, so it should come as no surprise that understanding what a police officer looks like in abstract is not the main issue of self driving.

> Humans are just a lot better at gauging intention and even simple stuff like parsing the word "police" at an oblique angle

Google seems to understand these intentions well enough, and at a much higher level than mere word parsing. This video is from 2015: https://youtu.be/tiwVMrTLUWg?t=9m5s

You got the car understanding all that happens at a complex intersection at 9'05, understanding what a police car looks like at 9'35, then detecting and reacting to a schoolbus and then parsing a police officer gestures right at the 10' mark. I'd say chances are these are pretty solved situations 3 years later. You can even see some creatures from their "zoo" of patterns for cars & people at 10'35.

Additionally, here is an article from last year: https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/googles-waymo-teaching-police-us-w...

> "When a Waymo car hears sirens, it will automatically pull over, yield, and stop. For example, when a number of vehicles are moving towards the scene of an accident on a highway and ambulances and other emergency vehicles are headed toward it, driverless cars will move aside and give way. Using audio sensors, the cars can detect exactly which direction the sirens are coming from and move out of the way."

Re: Self-driving cars are headed toward an AI roadblock

#207

Post by the8472 » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 11:06 PM UTC

notahacker wrote: post #188

the8472 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All we need is that they don't kill more people than average human drivers do per passenger-mile. Assuming ride-sharing we could even let them be a little more deadly than human drivers and still save lives.

If cars which require no effort whatsoever to operate and cost significantly less than taxis are on the market, it's a safe bet that being slightly less dangerous per passenger mile will kill far more people than are currently killed on the roads due to more, longer car journeys. That's before we even get into the fact a car which is slightly less likely to cause a fatal accident than the average human driver on an a…

Of course if people make more journeys, i.e. become more mobile, you could argue that the increased number of deaths should be balanced against life-hours of drivers freed up while also improving quality of life of passengers at the same time, i.e. it might still be QALY-neutral or even positive.

> than the average sober, careful and experienced human driver

But ultimately we do accept the fatality rates caused by all drivers and not just the good ones as a cost of having individual transportation. If we didn't only teetotalers would be allowed to operate cars to remove one risk factor. And we also accept the risk of inexperienced drivers because we have to teach them eventually, the same reasoning can be applied to autonomous cars (just substitute teaching with data gathering)

The total distance driven also does not just depend on technology alone but on urban planning. AVs may change that dramatically over time.

Re: Self-driving cars are headed toward an AI roadblock

#208

Post by tim333 » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 11:22 PM UTC

InclinedPlane wrote: post #186

ebikelaw wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All journalists covering the self-driving car beat are basically required to ignore Waymo so they can continue writing “When will cars drive themselves? Experts say nobody knows” articles. If you ignore Waymo it’s a race; if you include Waymo it’s not. This article makes the further error of assuming “AI” is required for self-driving cars, rather than just a shitload of code.

Nobody has self-driving cars, not even Waymo. Every "self-driving car" has "disengagements" (a euphemism for "it stopped working") periodically every few thousand miles. That's simply unacceptable and needs to be sorted out. If a human driver was performing a panic stop for no reason or hitting a pedestrian or another car every 3 months or so we would take away their license. Waymo is doing better than almost everyon…

The cars that have been driving around Phoenix certainly seem self driving. Humans also drive imperfectly and that doesn't mean they don't exist.

see

>A select group of Arizonans has been shuttling around the Phoenix area in self-driving cars for the past year, providing insight into the future of the technology. http://ktar.com/story/2105890/waymo-early-rider-program-prov...

Re: Self-driving cars are headed toward an AI roadblock

#209

Post by tim333 » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 11:36 PM UTC

phyzome wrote: post #139

dang wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't post like this to HN. It degrades discussion and encourages worse. Downward-spiraling is the internet default, so effort is needed to avoid it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Can you tell me more about downward-spiraling, and how this relates to the guidelines? The guy in the article seems to be implying that pedestrians don't have the right to be in the road. I think it's pretty OK to be dismissive of that.

Ng didn't say anything about giving up on crosswalks. He mentioned "bouncing on a pogo stick in the middle of a highway" could be a bad idea but I guess that's true with human drivers too.

Re: Self-driving cars are headed toward an AI roadblock

#210

Post by saas_co_de » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 11:45 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #172

saas_co_de wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is right on. Waymo is not an autonomous car in the way people typically imagine them. More like a remote control street car on a digital track.

It doesn't work that way. Waymo's remote control does not even support direct manual remote control. It just lets the remote operator give some direction to the onboard systems.

I am giving an analogy. Street car on digital track is the first part of it. The remote control aspects are there as well. It is not "direct" remote control. It is like a drone. You give a direction and the onboard computers execute on it. Direct remote control is not possible because of latency. But it also seems that the commercial launches of these vehicles might be dependent on 5G networks being available (lower latency, better reliability) in which case the remote control capabilities will be greatly enhanced before launch.