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Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

cnbc.com

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Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#251

Post by xiphias2 »

EForEndeavour wrote: post #246
simonh wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how you get to accuse one of the most knowledgeable experts in the field, who's dedicated a career to building autonomous vehicles, of... not wanting fully autonomous vehicles. Wanting things isn't always a good measure of our ability to actually obtain them.

He (pkhamre) didn't say that John Krafcik (Waymo CEO) "not wanting fully autonomous vehicles" at all. He is criticizing the practice of confidently predicting the forever (im)possibility of something based on a projection of current technologies decades into the future. Krafcik's a world leader in the field of autonomous cars, so we have good reason to weight his opinions more heavily than those of random HN users. O…

At the same time Waymo put a lot of money into working with lidars, which helps Waymo to get to Level 4 faster, which is great, but it seems like on long term Elon is right that to get to L5 autonomous cars have to improve enough to be able to work only with cameras and microphone. John may not want to say this.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#252

Post by [deleted] »

krn wrote: post #244
toasterlovin wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like it’s disputed. Still, of the safest cars mentioned at the end of the article, none are made by Volvo.

EuroNCAP tests are a way more advanced than those done in North America[1]: "Ford Mustang hits the wall with 2-star Euro NCAP score [...] Lack of modern safety technology and other flaws mark Ford's sports car down in the latest round of tests. That's the lowest score a brand new vehicle has achieved in quite some time. [...] In NHTSA tests the Mustang scored five starts in every metric." [1] https://www.evo.co.uk/fo…

[deleted]

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#253

Post by mtreis86 »

imandride wrote: post #250

I can only imagine Apple selling cars like they currently do their hardware. They ship a product that had multiple design defects. Then deny the claims or blame it on the users, until the users start suing them. Having people beta test your phones is one thing. But in no way do I trust a vehicle made by Apple on the roads.

You go in to the dealership because your three year old car needs repairs. They tell you its going to need a new engine and suspension and going to cost almost as much as a new car, and try to sell you on one instead of the repair. Mechanic down the street replaces your shocks and an intake manifold gasket for less than a tenth the cost of the dealer repair quote.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#254

Post by rushabh »

chx wrote: post #93

Maybe Apple doesn't want to pursue a dream which, as far as we know, can only have a limited outcome? They don't really like such compromises in products. Check this: https://medium.com/s/story/self-driving-cars-will-always-be-... > Waymo’s CEO, John Krafcik, has admitted that a self-driving car that can drive in any condition, on any road, without ever needing a human to take control—usually called a “level five” au…

Makes me think that autonomous vehicles may run on specially designated roadways, like a highly flexible, adaptive version of railway.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#255

Post by _ea1k »

chx wrote: post #93

Maybe Apple doesn't want to pursue a dream which, as far as we know, can only have a limited outcome? They don't really like such compromises in products. Check this: https://medium.com/s/story/self-driving-cars-will-always-be-... > Waymo’s CEO, John Krafcik, has admitted that a self-driving car that can drive in any condition, on any road, without ever needing a human to take control—usually called a “level five” au…

To be honest, that article and the articles like it bother me. Krafcik said there will always be constraints, without spelling out what those constraints will be or their severity.

Then the author wrote a line saying they won't work in the snow or rain (implying any snow or rain at all). To me, that assertion doesn't follow from the quote.

Where did Krafcik say that they won't be able to deal with light to medium rain? Where did he say that they won't be willing to deal with light to medium snow? There are a lot of other articles asserting these things, but few detailed quotes.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#256

Post by kthejoker2 »

paraschopra wrote: post #217
Quarrelsome wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you shouldn’t have to harvest lots of data for intelligent AI. Er.... that's not how it works. As a Valve employee put it (a talk about ML recognising cheaters), machine learning is just an equation: y = f(x) where you can actually derive the FUNCTION f if you have enough x/y pairs. Without those pairs then most of the successful techniques in machine learning fail to function. Yes you can generate your own data bu…

Not true. You can code your prior knowledge into the model, and make do with way less x/y pairs. Data is a substitute for doing engineering by hand. If you do the latter, you require less data.

Traffic is a chaos system, you can't engineer the edge cases. At best you have heuristics.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#257

Post by spacenick88 »

simonh wrote: post #245
adrianN wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sensors on humans don't work well in snow or rain either. That doesn't stop us from driving.

Humans can make risk/reward calculations that computers can't. Top take an extreme example, a given set of snow and ice conditions might be bad enough that any reasonable person would not want to drive in them. In such a situation, any well designed self-driving car would refuse to drive. BUT my wife is pregnant, it's a difficult pregnancy with a high risk of death for her and the infant, and she's suddenly gone into…

So would we call it a loss of autonomy if a human occupant would only grant an override saying "Standing still is not an option!"? I guess you would want such a feature when there is no steering wheel, e.g. if there is a forest fire close behind you.

While a computer can't judge that situation and doesn't "care" if it is destroyed it very well can keep driving no matter what.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#258

Post by _ea1k »

windexh8er wrote: post #230
rubidium wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They work amazing when properly developed. Growing up in a land with 4-5 months of winter, I was very comfortable in the snow and ice. Still scary as hell at times but the human body is remarkably adaptable to the environment. 30 feet visibility with snow and ice on the roads engages all the senses (except smell). Listening to the sound the tires are making helps know what they’re encountering. Inner ears helping kno…

I also live in a US state where snow is the norm for that amount of time. I would argue "comfortable" is not safe and also, ultimately, not Level 5. There are some situations that are just not passable while maintaining safety. That's the reality and you are making risk choices that are subjective which cannot be understood by the AV. But we shouldn't assume because there will always be situations where a car will re…

> I agree that I think it'll get there. But, like air travel there are limits and limits ground flights.

+1 - And I feel like this is really what Waymo was saying.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#259

Post by flyingpenguin »

zbentley wrote: post #248
pkhamre wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the Medium-article you posted: > In short, sensors on autonomous vehicles don’t work well in snow or rain—and that may never change. With that attitude, you are stuck in the past and don't want to make progress with technology.

> With that attitude, you are stuck in the past and don't want to make progress with technology. The statement you quoted is qualified, not an assertion of impossibility. Your claim is silly; the alternative to breathless hype isn't Luddism, it's getting educated about a field and proceeding, if possible, in an informed way. Claiming delusional enthusiasm (with a side of hucksterism and a strong odor of financial inc…

I have always wondered about this sensor thing. We drive and our only sensors are a pair of cameras on a mobile swivel and two microphones.

I feel like at Some point we have to have enough computing power to just stick Multiple Cameras behind glass with wipers and dehumidifiers and alarms if they are obstructed. Basically just humans but better?

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#260

Post by Khanhanhan »

rjf72 wrote: post #243
Quarrelsome wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you shouldn’t have to harvest lots of data for intelligent AI. Er.... that's not how it works. As a Valve employee put it (a talk about ML recognising cheaters), machine learning is just an equation: y = f(x) where you can actually derive the FUNCTION f if you have enough x/y pairs. Without those pairs then most of the successful techniques in machine learning fail to function. Yes you can generate your own data bu…

There are different ways of training things than relying other people's data. For instance alpha zero is still the most remarkable achievement in ML or 'AI' in my opinion, and it used 0 human games in learning to play chess. It training was entirely from self-play. I think models that rely on learning from these sort of weighted monte carlo type systems are likely to end up far more robust than ones that try to learn…

Driving, unlike chess, is a game with no bounding rules and potentially tragic consequences.
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