Despite High Hopes, Self-Driving Cars Are ‘Way in the Future’ • Hacker News Board

Re: Despite High Hopes, Self-Driving Cars Are ‘Way in the Future’

#351

Post by listic » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 9:21 PM UTC

Edmond wrote: post #169

Detractors of self-driving cars are always eager to lap up a story like this as proof that it will never happen or it would take decades...."Years" doesn't mean decades, even 10 yrs is a relative short time, i owned my last care for about 13 yrs. Some proponents of self driving cars might have gotten too ahead of the hype train but nevertheless, self-driving is here and soon would be common place. It would obviously…

An average American car is on the road for 13 years and this number keeps increasing. (source: lost)

Re: Despite High Hopes, Self-Driving Cars Are ‘Way in the Future’

#352

Post by Animats » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 9:22 PM UTC

The state of the art is discouraging for the money and years poured into it.

Recognizing solid obstacles is still unreliable. On the one side, there's Tesla running into stationary objects multiple times, and Uber running down a pedestrian. On the other side, there's a false alarm rate which causes sudden stops.

Low-speed self-driving vehicles ought to work reliably by now, but don't. Google's cute little bubble car, top speed 25MPH, was discontinued. Voyage has some cars in a retirement community. Some, as in 3. With safety drivers.[1] Local Motors has been issuing press releases for years, but not much is on the road. There are some self-driving shuttle buses, but they all have "safety drivers". EasyMile has real autonomous shuttle buses, but they had to drop the speed to about 10 MPH.

Worse, all these systems have a huge engineer to passenger ratio. Nothing is close to being financially realistic. That's not a permanent problem; in the early days of the Internet, it was said that the ratio of PhDs to packets was too high. But this is a long way from profitability.

It shouldn't be this bad.

[1] https://www.villages-news.com/2019/01/31/villager-treated-to...

Re: Despite High Hopes, Self-Driving Cars Are ‘Way in the Future’

#353

Post by chillacy » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 9:23 PM UTC

mhermher wrote: post #291

chillacy wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things are impossible till they aren’t. It’s not like we solved Go the board game, but we did build some killer AI which has now surpassed all human players. And that was within a matter of years: first it was a fluid game of human intelligence impossible for a machine, then it was obvious machines could be better.. but look at this other thing humans are still better at.

So, some things are actually impossible, provably so. Like the suggestions above.

Yes but whether self driving cars falls into "provably impossible", I'm not so sure. Given squishy bags of meat can do it.

Re: Despite High Hopes, Self-Driving Cars Are ‘Way in the Future’

#354

Post by YeGoblynQueenne » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 9:25 PM UTC

Majromax wrote: post #300

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Nobody's asking them to be able to drive at 70 MPH through a fog bank in Alaska with ice on the road, even if that is technically part of the requirements for Level 5 that even humans can't obtain. What is required is a vehicle that can decide not to drive at 70 MPH when it's going though a fog bank in Alaska. Humans can drive that fast in such low visibility, but we (often) have enough brains not to.

> Humans can drive that fast in such low visibility, but we (often) have enough brains not to. I think your "(often)" is doing a lot of work in this sentence. There are many unsafe conditions that don't require an icy road plus fog plus highway speeds: any bad thunderstorm is likely to combine poor visibility and the risk of puddles/hydroplaning, for example. But the highways don't clear out during summer thunderstor…

>> If self-driving cars become common and maintain a high safety standard, I think we'll also need to see a culture shift.

Good idea. In fact, at the moment self-driving cars aren't anywhere near as safe as humans (even when we forget our brains home) so I think we could benefit from such a "safety culture" tremendously already.

Re: Despite High Hopes, Self-Driving Cars Are ‘Way in the Future’

#355

Post by chillacy » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 9:26 PM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #308

chillacy wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things are impossible till they aren’t. It’s not like we solved Go the board game, but we did build some killer AI which has now surpassed all human players. And that was within a matter of years: first it was a fluid game of human intelligence impossible for a machine, then it was obvious machines could be better.. but look at this other thing humans are still better at.

mhermher's examples are 1) proven impossible, and 2) impossible until we get a completely different theory of physics, respectively. "Until they aren't" makes a nice glib dismissal, but is fails to address the actual impossibility that mhermher has pointed out. Now, neither of those examples is actually relevant to the topic at hand, namely, AIs driving cars. The question then is, what category are AI's driving cars…

Yea not the best phrasing, you raise a better distinction. And longer than my lifetime is closer than "never".

I don't believe that driving a vehicle is in a class of mathematical impossibilities.

Re: Despite High Hopes, Self-Driving Cars Are ‘Way in the Future’

#356

Post by dwighttk » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 9:30 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #340

eslaught wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only one who's terrified of the security implications of such a system? You're talking about running (from the car's perspective) untrusted code on a fleet of cars, dynamically and in real time. Even if it's cryptographically signed or whatever, you're one or a handful of exploits away from remote attackers having the capability to crash every autonomous car, simultaneously, at least in a geographical region…

I'm talking about doing what airplanes and ATC are already doing, but in an automated way.

What if we automate ATC first?

Re: Despite High Hopes, Self-Driving Cars Are ‘Way in the Future’

#357

Post by petschge » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 9:31 PM UTC

NateEag wrote: post #232

petschge wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are called railways and every civilized country already has them.

I believe you misspelled "small." The US does actually have railroads, but it's so huge that it's utterly unreasonable to build enough railways to be a major contender for general transit. At least, that's my perspective as a US citizen who commutes by train daily.

I US actually has ok railways ... for fright. Commuter trains are admittedly underdeveloped, even in regions that have similar size and population density to European countries.

Re: Despite High Hopes, Self-Driving Cars Are ‘Way in the Future’

#358

Post by eloff » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 9:32 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #340

eslaught wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only one who's terrified of the security implications of such a system? You're talking about running (from the car's perspective) untrusted code on a fleet of cars, dynamically and in real time. Even if it's cryptographically signed or whatever, you're one or a handful of exploits away from remote attackers having the capability to crash every autonomous car, simultaneously, at least in a geographical region…

I'm talking about doing what airplanes and ATC are already doing, but in an automated way.

It's that automated part where the vulnerability arises.

Re: Despite High Hopes, Self-Driving Cars Are ‘Way in the Future’

#359

Post by chillacy » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 9:33 PM UTC

treespace8 wrote: post #101

skywhopper wrote: post #41

This has been obvious all along to anyone who has ever driven or used a computer before and thought about the reality for more than a couple of minutes. But the press and VCs bought into the hype from the likes of Uber who needed to keep generating huge new investment to stay afloat and Tesla which is run by a delusional snake oil salesman who had a single hit with the Model S. The shocking examples of crazy unexpect…

I know this is far out there. But I believe the problem of fully autonomous anything via software is fundamentally impossible. The divide between analog and digital is just too big. Humans are underrated.

So how hard are you willing to short the entire software industry over the next 10 years? I definitely wouldn't bet against automation in the next few decades.

Re: Despite High Hopes, Self-Driving Cars Are ‘Way in the Future’

#360

Post by noego » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 9:35 PM UTC

To be honest, 80% of what I want is a self-driving car that can drive itself on the highways during regular weather conditions. Getting it on and off the highway, I don't mind doing that manually. I would love to be able to read or work during the hour that I spend on the highway everyday. I would love to take a overnight road trip where I can go to sleep in SF and wake up the next morning in LA. I'm aware that accidents/bugs will happen, and as long as the car's safety record is better than that of humans, that's fine with me. I've never spent more than $20k on a car before, but for a car that can drive itself on the highways, I'd pay a whole lot more.