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

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

#231

Post by chrisco255 » Fri, Jul 06, 2018, 4:56 AM UTC

mchahn wrote: post #230

rohit2412 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I repeat this again and again, and am always surprised that nobody else likes to raise the unfair comparisons. I am willing to assume that waymo/Tesla etc have found the holy Grail, and made a driverless car safer than the average current human driver on the road. I'm not convinced that we should still allow these driverless cars on the road with no human backups. Not because of expectations or liability, but because…

Interesting. Maybe instead of humans intervening in the AI, the AI should intervene in the human's driving.

That sort of already happens with lane assist, auto parallel parking, brake warnings, adaptive cruise control, etc.

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

#232

Post by chrisco255 » Fri, Jul 06, 2018, 4:58 AM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #182

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.

>> Assuming ride-sharing Don't. Cost isn't stopping people today from ridesharing. Carpooling won't become cool just because there is no driver, in fact I could see it becoming less cool as you will be much more alone with strangers. Many people today would be uncomfortable on a bus at night without a third party present (ie the driver, or at least many other strangers). Think about all the extra traffic from autodri…

Carpooling has already become much more practical with Lyft Line, etc. No driver would mean even cheaper rides. Also, there's no reason your car couldn't park itself at work...or rent itself out (via Lyft/Uber) while you're at work. Assuming we get to that level of tech.

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

#233

Post by Izkata » Fri, Jul 06, 2018, 4:59 AM UTC

zawerf wrote: post #140

Animats wrote: post #124

Another bad article. As I keep pointing out, the way you start to do automatic driving is by first profiling the terrain to see where you can go. If it's not flat road, you don't go there. Doesn't matter why it's not flat. Then try to classify other road objects and predict their behavior. This only matters for moving objects. Waymo gets this, as we know from Urmson's talk at SXSW a few years back. Most of the DARPA…

> The most common problem, especially with Waymo, is being rear-ended while cautiously entering an intersection with limited visibility. Their system will start forward to get a better view, then detect cross traffic and stop This actually highlights a really hard problem that (perfect) self driving will need to solve: theory of mind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind Not only does the AI need to empathize…

> Not only does the AI need to empathize and predict how typical humans react, they also need to be easy for humans to empathize with. Humans typically use themselves as a template for a reasonable range of reactions.

Hm, this past season of Westworld kinda touched on how this very particular thought can easily go wrong.

Trying to avoid spoilers, one of the programmers commented on how the teeny tiniest tweak to parameters created Hosts that would [motions to what they were watching, a normally-benign personality killing townspeople for fun]. The awake Host with him commented "it's gone insane". His response was something along the lines of, "in the range of possible actions, what humans call 'sane' only exists in a very narrow band".

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

#234

Post by Animats » Fri, Jul 06, 2018, 5:16 AM UTC

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #23

chronic821 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imho, companies need to collaborate on certain aspects like perception instead of competing. I also work on self-driving cars. Why would I share technological innovations with another company?

So people don’t die. This is an example where companies could put people over profits and share what they’ve learned to keep things safe. I don’t see a lot of research papers (I see none) coming out of Waymo, Tesla, Uber, or Cruise.

That's the price we pay for the weakening of patents and the strengthening of trade secrets. Nobody knows how the newer stuff works.

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

#235

Post by kwhitefoot » Fri, Jul 06, 2018, 6:12 AM UTC

UncleEntity wrote: post #183

gwern wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citing the Uber case is particularly egregious. Have we all forgotten the NTSB report? It was only a few weeks ago. The Uber car tried to brake, but Uber had deliberately disabled the brakes for a more comfortable ride.

Which basically makes the argument, to provide "a more comfortable ride" they had to disable a critical safety system that didn't do its job good enough to be used all the time. There were so many false positives that it made the car a road hazard due to random hard breaking.

> There were so many false positives that it made the car a road hazard due to random hard breaking.

Do you know that for certain? Or is it just that Uber were too lazy to cope with any complications that might arise if Volvo's system braked?

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

#236

Post by dang » Fri, Jul 06, 2018, 6:52 AM UTC

totaldick wrote: post #202

georgeecollins wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I believe that you're not trolling but could you please email us (hn@ycombinator.com) with a clearly-non-trolling username that we can replace "totaldick" with? A name like that amounts to subtly trolling other users with every post you make.

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

#237

Post by alkonaut » Fri, Jul 06, 2018, 6:58 AM UTC

The Q isn’t when complete autonomy arrives, but how much autonomy we will add before the cost of adding more is vastly greater than having on-call humans take over. At that point the ROI of the research will fall as all you gain in going from 99.05 to 99.10 % autonomy is a few employees across a whole fleet of vehicles.

I agree with the pessimists: driving is 99% a mindless activity that even a mediocre AI will handle soon. But the last percent requires not just a better AI but a human. At least as long as it drives with other people in an environment designed for people.

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

#238

Post by a008t » Fri, Jul 06, 2018, 8:35 AM UTC

ebikelaw wrote: post #11

jtbayly wrote: post #2

Waymo seems to be the only question mark in my mind making me doubt my bet that we're a decade or more away from usable self-driving cars. If Waymo has truly solved the problem while everybody else is just trying to catch up and/or bluffing, I guess I wouldn't be that surprised. Edited to add: The reason is that they've apparently ordered 10's of thousands of these cars. Can they really use that many only in good-wea…

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.

Is part of Waymo's perceived success in that they are more conservative with deploying their technology? I.e. it is tested at lower speed, on specific routes, in specific weather etc.?

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

#239

Post by sgregnt » Fri, Jul 06, 2018, 11:06 AM UTC

dawhizkid wrote: post #55

As someone who worked at a ridesharing co, I'm also really curious about the ops side of things, like how will passengers behave when there's no driver in the car? Will people try to have sex, do drugs, make a mess? What happens when someone vomits in the car or is very drunk (actually a very common problem in ridesharing)?

Camera in the car?

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

#240

Post by sgregnt » Fri, Jul 06, 2018, 11:14 AM UTC

Zhenya wrote: post #33

I'm continually astounded by the Tesla hasbara: "Tesla and a host of other imitators already sell a limited form of Autopilot" Imitators? You mean GM, Mercedes and VAG that have had these systems for longer than Tesla are just bad copies of the glorious Tesla autopilot? Unreal.

Hasbara does not have a bad conotation. Did you mean "muhabarat" propoganda?