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The first person to hack the iPhone is building a self-driving car

bloomberg.com

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Re: The first person to hack the iPhone is building a self-driving car

#421

Post by rmason »

jpfr wrote: post #37

Prototypical case of the 80/20 rule. He has implemented the happy case. But that system is nothing people realistically would want to drive their cars. What he did is impressive. But the results are not that outlandish for a talented person. 1) Hook up a computer to the CAN-Bus network of the car [1] and attach a bunch of sensor peripherals. 2) Drive around for some time and record everything to disk. 3) Implement so…

Throughout history there are many cases of the lone tinkerer who achieves the breakthrough going up against much better funded adversaries.

Take the case of the Wright Brothers who faced two well funded adversaries. Samuel Pierpont Langley had a chair at Harvard, worked at the Smithsonian and had among others funding him $50K from the US War Department. Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, was an avid aviation enthusiast and an already wealthy man. One of Bell's assistants was Glenn Curtiss who went on to found his own plane company.

Who would bet on two bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio? No one, yet they were the first to fly.

The first popular microcomputer would surely come from IBM or HP yet it didn't. Two guys in a Cupertino garage built it and neither of them was a college graduate.

This guy may fail but I am not going to bet against him. In fact I hope they televise the race between the Comma and the Tesla. I'll bring the popcorn.

Re: The first person to hack the iPhone is building a self-driving car

#422

Post by WalterBright »

jpfr wrote: post #37

Prototypical case of the 80/20 rule. He has implemented the happy case. But that system is nothing people realistically would want to drive their cars. What he did is impressive. But the results are not that outlandish for a talented person. 1) Hook up a computer to the CAN-Bus network of the car [1] and attach a bunch of sensor peripherals. 2) Drive around for some time and record everything to disk. 3) Implement so…

I know it's far from production ready. But he's demonstrated an ability to put together quite a diverse collection of hardware and software and get it all to work together. I'm impressed.

Re: The first person to hack the iPhone is building a self-driving car

#423

Post by tim333 »

webmasterraj wrote: post #297
bcohn91 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the first comment on HN minimizing this truly impressive project? Of course it's not perfect, he's ONE person.

One person can build something that starts a revolution. See Woz/Apple. The real issue here is that self-driving cars are probably the wrong place for that to happen in AI. At best, a solo project creates a crappy prototype where there was no product before (again, see Woz/Apple). The expectation for driverless cars is too high – they need to be 100% good, because your life is on the line, not 80% good. What's the AI…

>What's the AI project that would blow people away, even if it was a shadow of a working prototype?

Robot that can build a better robot?

Re: The first person to hack the iPhone is building a self-driving car

#424

Post by WalterBright »

rmason wrote: post #421
jpfr wrote: post #37

Prototypical case of the 80/20 rule. He has implemented the happy case. But that system is nothing people realistically would want to drive their cars. What he did is impressive. But the results are not that outlandish for a talented person. 1) Hook up a computer to the CAN-Bus network of the car [1] and attach a bunch of sensor peripherals. 2) Drive around for some time and record everything to disk. 3) Implement so…

Throughout history there are many cases of the lone tinkerer who achieves the breakthrough going up against much better funded adversaries. Take the case of the Wright Brothers who faced two well funded adversaries. Samuel Pierpont Langley had a chair at Harvard, worked at the Smithsonian and had among others funding him $50K from the US War Department. Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, was an avi…

Tracing the Wright's development process, it's the first example I know of of a directed research and development program. The Wrights formulated a clear goal, identified the problems needing solutions, developed a series of prototypes aimed at proving each solution, did laboratory experiments to resolve others, invented physical theories to resolve still more, carefully documented their progress, etc.

I.e. they did much more than simply throw some ideas and parts together and see what stuck, like every other contemporary experimenter.

Re: The first person to hack the iPhone is building a self-driving car

#425

Post by cscurmudgeon »

ogreveins wrote: post #176
metafunctor wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm afraid this may be also the end, more or less. From this point onwards, things get so much harder and more labor-intensive, that doing everything alone seems impossible.

I don't see why it would. Once you get enough base data you can start simulating the data from what you have, inputting different scenarios without actually encountering them IRL. Faking sensor input and randomizing should get it most of the way there.

Ah the naivety. Just like 50s AI research :D

History keeps repeating

Re: The first person to hack the iPhone is building a self-driving car

#426

Post by tim333 »

dymk wrote: post #227
hospes wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Millions of drunk people drive on the roads. People can buy assault weapons, with no training and background checks. People who make self-driving software should be the least of our concerns.

There are laws against drunk driving (and harsh penalties for those that are caught), and you can't buy a firearm without a background check from a dealer (with more states requiring gun show dealers perform background checks now, too). People building untested self driving cars is an entirely legitimate concern.

There aren't laws against driving while teenage:

"Nationally, 963,000 teen drivers were involved in police-reported motor vehicle crashes in 2013, which resulted in 383,000 injuries and 2,865 deaths"

I'd worry about that more than the odd geek with a laptop.

Re: The first person to hack the iPhone is building a self-driving car

#427

Post by cko »

snowwrestler wrote: post #311
jonny_eh wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And chess players. Computers will never beat the best chess players.

Jonny is being sarcastic--computers have already beaten the best chess players. But I would point out that even though that is true, people still make money today selling chess sets and chess software and chess books and chess tournament tickets to other people. edit: clarity

Ah, that explains it. Should have read parent post more carefully.

Re: The first person to hack the iPhone is building a self-driving car

#429

Post by dclowd9901 »

oldmanjay wrote: post #370
webmasterraj wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One person can build something that starts a revolution. See Woz/Apple. The real issue here is that self-driving cars are probably the wrong place for that to happen in AI. At best, a solo project creates a crappy prototype where there was no product before (again, see Woz/Apple). The expectation for driverless cars is too high – they need to be 100% good, because your life is on the line, not 80% good. What's the AI…

I don't follow why AI vehicles need to be 100% good. Plain old human-driven vehicles sure aren't and we accept their utility as being worth the trade.

We, as the flawed beings we are, can't accept both giving up control and not getting guaranteed safety as a result.

Re: The first person to hack the iPhone is building a self-driving car

#430

Post by tim333 »

jamesjyu wrote: post #171
paragpatelone wrote: post #77

"His self-funded experiment could end with Hotz humbly going back to knock on Google’s door for a job." The biggest thing here IMO is this is self-funded. Any startup trying to do what he is doing in this environment would have raised $50 Million, hired 100's of engineers from top notch schools, become accepted in YC, and have Marc Andreessen, Paul Graham, Sam Altman and all singing their praises. Kudos to him for be…

And yes, that happened http://www.getcruise.com/

Ta - I was trying to remember who the YC startup were trying the same stuff. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7933045

Seems they recently raised $15m http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/18/cruise-2/

Wonder how they compare tech wise to Geohot's thing

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