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Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

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Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#291

Post by yreg »

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.

Do you mean like the iPhone 4 antennagate? That shit was massively overblown. Apple did jack shit to fix it and the iPhone 4 was the world's best selling phone ever (at that time).

When Apple sometimes ships a product with a design defect – like the current MacBook Pro keyboards — they usually know about it and do it consciously.

As if other manufacturers didn't have problems of similar or greater scale.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#292

Post by robohoe »

dmitriid wrote: post #270
no1youknowz wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article is a bit sketchy, but serves my point-ish. They say Volvo is going to release a true self-driving car by 2021. But then it goes on to mention level 4. Let's pull it back a little and say by 2021, they release level 4. If any automaker is going to do Level 5 in the snow. It's going to be Volvo. Being a Swedish company (albeit owned by a Chinese firm now), they have a particular track record when it comes…

Current breed of Volvos are already amazing at assisting drivers. Lane control + speed control + steering control is already as close to autonomous driving as anything out there on the market. But they are doing the smart thing: - they keep these things separate and always under driver's control - they downplay the significance of these systems and don't market as THE BEST EVER THING ULTRA POWERFUL UNBELIEVABLE BREAK…

  Sweden has such things as constant low sun, snow, rain, sleet, active wildlife etc. etc.
California has those things too depending on geographic area of the state.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#293

Post by matthewdgreen »

whafro wrote: post #280
dmitriid wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Current breed of Volvos are already amazing at assisting drivers. Lane control + speed control + steering control is already as close to autonomous driving as anything out there on the market. But they are doing the smart thing: - they keep these things separate and always under driver's control - they downplay the significance of these systems and don't market as THE BEST EVER THING ULTRA POWERFUL UNBELIEVABLE BREAK…

I have a 2018 XC60 and it's been really great on the whole, but very clearly Not There Yet™: + During a dark and wet night a few weeks ago, I used Pilot Assist (lane/speed/steering control) and it genuinely saw the lane lines better than I was able to during major unexpected downpours. I was in control the whole time, but it was a great help along the way and made the drive a lot more comfortable. - Some of these sys…

Oversharing: I've been driving a Volvo XC90 with Pilot Assist and a Tesla Model 3 with autopilot. Of the two systems, I really preferred the Volvo -- but not, ironically, because it was better, but rather because it's worse.

The Volvo's system is very clearly about 70% there. Sometimes on sharp curves it just misses the lines and drifts into another lane. Sometimes it seems to basically just follow the car in front, which means that it will blindly follow a bad driver in doing stupid things. However, the upside of this is that its weak behavior (and willingness to yield to driver input) makes it so obviously an "assist" system that I would never really put a lot of faith in it, or trust it entirely. Thus to me it's just sort of a better version of the lanekeeping system.

The Tesla, on the other hand, really wants to drive the car. It hates taking feedback from me, and will often boot me out of autopilot mode if I disagree over, say, my position within a lane. It does a much better job seeing lanes and handles lane changes automatically. But: because it's so forceful and doesn't like my input, I find it much more stressful to drive. I don't trust it enough to let it have the absolute control it wants, and find myself missing Volvo's pretty-dumb-but-not-demanding system.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#294

Post by zbentley »

mohamedattahri wrote: post #279
zbentley wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 think there's a world of difference between difficulty and impossibility. I can see your point when someone speaks of the former, but I don't think anyone should nor can state that something's impossible.

That completely removes all meaning from the term, then.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#295

Post by zbentley »

AlanSE wrote: post #273
zbentley wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Even if the cars of the future won't be able to drive on all roads at all time, I don't see how it would matter all that much. Of course there will always be forms of rural driving where the terrain is unknown and there are limited options for sensor fusion available. But that's not what's important. What's import is DC, LA, and many other metro cities that can't build more roads, but still need population and econom…

> What's import is DC, LA, and many other metro cities that can't build more roads, but still need population and economic growth.

> People don't need a car to drive them anywhere at any time. They need a reasonable option to get to work in the places where the jobs are.

Mass transit. We know it works, and works well in circumstances you described. We know it increases in effectiveness in response to investment and added resources. Why bet on a long shot, if we know what works?

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#296

Post by sixothree »

SomeHacker44 wrote: post #265
flyingpenguin wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

We have additional sensors useful for driving: force sensors on the steering wheel (works better with lower levels of power steering) as well as our accelerometers in our inner ear. The latter has redundancies in pressure sensors located around the body, though to be fair I only used those back in my car racing days.

I never realized how oblivious people are force feedback from the steering wheel until I was passenger in a car on a windy day. We got out onto an open space and I could see him really correcting. I remarked about how much wind there was and he asked what I meant.

My point is I have never heard about self-driving cars having an understanding of crosswinds. I just hope they aren't as oblivious as my friend.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#297

Post by standerman »

neya wrote: post #61

I don't think Apple has advancements in machine learning tech as much as its competitors. For example, take a look at how primitive Siri is. It struggles a lot in comparison to its competitors even for some basic commands. Or, take a look at Apple Music's recommendation system in comparison to Spotify's discover weekly. Now, take a look at Amazon and Google. They both have their own cloud infrastructure (which ironic…

Apple bought Shazam, and their recommendation system is quite good.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#298

Post by DeonPenny »

tiew9Vii wrote: post #73
neya wrote: post #61

I don't think Apple has advancements in machine learning tech as much as its competitors. For example, take a look at how primitive Siri is. It struggles a lot in comparison to its competitors even for some basic commands. Or, take a look at Apple Music's recommendation system in comparison to Spotify's discover weekly. Now, take a look at Amazon and Google. They both have their own cloud infrastructure (which ironic…

From what I read Apple are taking a different approach? Google/Amazon are harvesting massive amounts of data and training against it and Apple are taking a privacy first approach saying you shouldn’t have to harvest lots of data for intelligent AI. Currently the harvesting data for models look to be working better for Google / Amazon with current technology. The question is how will Apple progress long term and given…

>you shouldn’t have to harvest lots of data for intelligent AI

That shows they don't understand how AI work. That literally like code for traditional programming. It's literally impossible based on how modern ML works.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#299

Post by DeonPenny »

digitalzombie wrote: post #106
tiew9Vii wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I read Apple are taking a different approach? Google/Amazon are harvesting massive amounts of data and training against it and Apple are taking a privacy first approach saying you shouldn’t have to harvest lots of data for intelligent AI. Currently the harvesting data for models look to be working better for Google / Amazon with current technology. The question is how will Apple progress long term and given…

You can harvest data and anonymize it. My friend at Google supposedly is doing this via research at Google. I'm not going to say Google care about our privacy as much as Apple but they are researching this probably for medical and for when opportunity arises. To be perfectly honest I think Apple's stance on privacy is all marketing, there are cases where they refused to unlock phones for the FBI but there are other c…

Yeh most company anonymize it because "data snooping" makes your algorithm worse. But try telling a layman that.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#300

Post by notahacker »

dmitriid wrote: post #270
no1youknowz wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article is a bit sketchy, but serves my point-ish. They say Volvo is going to release a true self-driving car by 2021. But then it goes on to mention level 4. Let's pull it back a little and say by 2021, they release level 4. If any automaker is going to do Level 5 in the snow. It's going to be Volvo. Being a Swedish company (albeit owned by a Chinese firm now), they have a particular track record when it comes…

Current breed of Volvos are already amazing at assisting drivers. Lane control + speed control + steering control is already as close to autonomous driving as anything out there on the market. But they are doing the smart thing: - they keep these things separate and always under driver's control - they downplay the significance of these systems and don't market as THE BEST EVER THING ULTRA POWERFUL UNBELIEVABLE BREAK…

They've also set trucks that can reliably drive around private roads, mines and loading zones without having to handle much in the way of novelty or people as a practical near term goal they'll probably make a commercial success of even if fully autonomous cars are decades away or incapable of ever being viable for regular unsupervised road use.

Obviously it helps that they're already a leading truck manufacturer, but it's interesting to note how many other ventures have gone for the "eliminate the taxi sector and reinvent car ownership" over the low hanging fruit for [semi]-autonomous vehicle markets.

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