Uber’s self-driving cars start picking up passengers in San Francisco • Hacker News Board

Re: Uber’s self-driving cars start picking up passengers in San Francisco

#41

Post by RGamma » Wed, Dec 14, 2016, 2:55 PM UTC

joosters wrote: post #29

I wonder if everything you say & do is recorded in these? The car has all those cameras covering the outside of the vehicle, it would be little effort to add another inside, and I doubt Uber will be able to resist. Uber could claim they need to record passengers in order to spot damage or dirtying of the cab. (Otherwise passengers could blame any damage on the previous occupant.)

What planet have you been living on? Of course they will do that if not regulated. Officially they can claim blurb like "improving customer experience and safety", "compliance with law enforcement", "protection of our property", "automatic detection of medical emergencies" while their main economic interest will be the further dismantling (not much left to dismantle anymore in 2016 anyway) of privacy for marketing purposes and buyer manipulation.

Re: Uber’s self-driving cars start picking up passengers in San Francisco

#42

Post by ChrisBland » Wed, Dec 14, 2016, 2:57 PM UTC

joosters wrote: post #29

I wonder if everything you say & do is recorded in these? The car has all those cameras covering the outside of the vehicle, it would be little effort to add another inside, and I doubt Uber will be able to resist. Uber could claim they need to record passengers in order to spot damage or dirtying of the cab. (Otherwise passengers could blame any damage on the previous occupant.)

This is already occurring in almost every Taxi I've ever been in. They use it to protect the driver and passenger. This would be the first time all of that data is aggregated to one company for potential abuse but compared to what we see from gvt agencies, this is not my biggest concern.

Re: Uber’s self-driving cars start picking up passengers in San Francisco

#43

Post by smrtinsert » Wed, Dec 14, 2016, 2:57 PM UTC

lucker wrote: post #39

Bit of a conspiracy theory sort of question, but... is there any reason to believe that maybe self-driving car technology is being backed by the military-industrial complex as a way to run R&D for military automation and related technologies? That could explain why there was a sudden spike in interest in this technology several years ago, and it could also explain why enormous amounts of hype are continually being ge…

Very weak conspiracy theory. A better one is that the private sector lags military technology by at least 50 years.

Re: Uber’s self-driving cars start picking up passengers in San Francisco

#44

Post by joosters » Wed, Dec 14, 2016, 3:03 PM UTC

autotune wrote: post #27

bandrami wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What keeps people from doing that on subways now? Nothing but the social contract, and so subways are generally somewhat dirtier than cabs, but still get you from point A to point B.

The difference is you have much more privacy in an Uber vehicle. Someone about to make a mess in the subway might be more inclined to wait until they get off vs a private vehicle with just them in there.

Privacy? Everything you say & do in the cars will be recorded, and Uber isn't the kind of company that would treat that data well.

Re: Uber’s self-driving cars start picking up passengers in San Francisco

#45

Post by vintageseltzer » Wed, Dec 14, 2016, 3:04 PM UTC

lucker wrote: post #39

Bit of a conspiracy theory sort of question, but... is there any reason to believe that maybe self-driving car technology is being backed by the military-industrial complex as a way to run R&D for military automation and related technologies? That could explain why there was a sudden spike in interest in this technology several years ago, and it could also explain why enormous amounts of hype are continually being ge…

No, it's the other way around — the private industry's self-driving car technology is based on research funded and carried out by the military-industrial complex. See: Uber's takeover of the CMU robotics lab (NREC).

Re: Uber’s self-driving cars start picking up passengers in San Francisco

#46

Post by beambot » Wed, Dec 14, 2016, 3:05 PM UTC

aedron wrote: post #34

Uber's product is the company's stock. All of their "AI" and "self-driving" stunts so far have been transparent hype fuel that anyone with the slightest domain knowledge knows have no practical significance. Their PR department are, as can be expected, top notch though. I especially like how they put a populist spin on their announcements, like the beer delivery (yay, beer!) and now picking up passengers with their p…

Or... they're trying to learn the nuances of operating with and around real customers for their actual application.

Too many tech companies (and esp. robotics ones) do their development and testing under limited conditions, and then they're blindsided by real-world realities.

Getting contact with customers early is key. It's like the old military adage: No battle plan ever survives first contact with the enemy. In this case, the "enemy" is the real world.

Kudos to Uber for getting out there and working with customers -- it's much better than Google's autonomous cars, which have driven millions of miles and never had a single paying passenger!

Re: Uber’s self-driving cars start picking up passengers in San Francisco

#47

Post by joosters » Wed, Dec 14, 2016, 3:08 PM UTC

notheguyouthink wrote: post #35

joosters wrote: post #29

I wonder if everything you say & do is recorded in these? The car has all those cameras covering the outside of the vehicle, it would be little effort to add another inside, and I doubt Uber will be able to resist. Uber could claim they need to record passengers in order to spot damage or dirtying of the cab. (Otherwise passengers could blame any damage on the previous occupant.)

> The car has all those cameras covering the outside of the vehicle This raises a good point i never thought about. If in some day all of our cars have self driving or self aware features, then that means nearly all locations in the city are within reach of cameras and possibly microphones. I'm not "a paranoid" about privacy stuff, but that is quite impressive nonetheless. The future is going to be quite interesting.…

I didn't thought of it that way round! I was concerned with cameras & microphones inside the car, but as you say, it's likely that there will be microphones on the outside too.

Re: Uber’s self-driving cars start picking up passengers in San Francisco

#48

Post by mabramo » Wed, Dec 14, 2016, 3:09 PM UTC

nannal wrote: post #32

kraftman wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could just have the next person report it, which fines the previous person.

Does mean I can fine a person I don't know with the click of a button.

The only way I think this can work is if the customer who reports the incident describes exactly what they see in the report. Then the human who receives the dirty car and cleans it verifies that the car is not only dirty but meets the description of the reporter. How else could "dirty car" reports be audited?

In another case, a customer could actually throw garbage in the car and then report the car dirty - causing the previous customer to be fined. The only safety net against this I know is to record video inside the car while a customer is present.

Re: Uber’s self-driving cars start picking up passengers in San Francisco

#49

Post by Fricken » Wed, Dec 14, 2016, 3:16 PM UTC

beambot wrote: post #46

aedron wrote: post #34

Uber's product is the company's stock. All of their "AI" and "self-driving" stunts so far have been transparent hype fuel that anyone with the slightest domain knowledge knows have no practical significance. Their PR department are, as can be expected, top notch though. I especially like how they put a populist spin on their announcements, like the beer delivery (yay, beer!) and now picking up passengers with their p…

Or... they're trying to learn the nuances of operating with and around real customers for their actual application. Too many tech companies (and esp. robotics ones) do their development and testing under limited conditions, and then they're blindsided by real-world realities. Getting contact with customers early is key. It's like the old military adage: No battle plan ever survives first contact with the enemy. In th…

Ya, Uber just wants people to think they provide better service at lower prices than their competition; and the tricksters, they're doing it by working to provide better service at lower prices than the competition.

Feeling peckish? Ignore it. It's just the McDonald's corporation trying to raise the value of it's stock.

Re: Uber’s self-driving cars start picking up passengers in San Francisco

#50

Post by RGamma » Wed, Dec 14, 2016, 3:18 PM UTC

autotune wrote: post #13

How is this going to combat people who make a mess inside the vehicle after going 100 percent without human drivers/test engineers? If it picks up a drunk person at 3 AM who then throws up inside the car, is it vomit-aware and knows it needs a cleaning before picking up the next passenger?

"Using superadvanced machine learning techniques we've trained our great Uber Customer Surv^D^D^D^DSatisfaction Improvement Module (TM) to predict customer vomitting with over 90% accuracy and will automatically deploy a antiemetic for just $10 (free for Uber Prime customers). Tell us how we can improve Uber even more in the comments!(1)"

(1) Joke's on you. We already know better.